St. Ignazio Church Ceiling Fresco

St. Ignazio Church Ceiling Fresco

Andrea Pozzo, a Jesuit lay brother, painted the grandiose fresco that stretches across the nave ceiling (after 1685).[8] It celebrates the work of Saint Ignatius and the Society of Jesus in the world presenting the saint welcomed into paradise by Christ and the Virgin Mary and surrounded by allegorical representations of all four continents. Pozzo worked to open up, even dissolve the actual surface of the nave's barrel vault illusionistically, arranging a perspectival projection to make an observer see a huge and lofty cupola (of a sort), open to the bright sky, and filled with upward floating figures. A marble disk set into the middle of the nave floor marks the ideal spot from which observers might fully experience the illusion. A second marker in the nave floor further east provides the ideal vantage point for the trompe l'oeil painting on canvas that covers the crossing and depicts a tall, ribbed and coffered dome. The cupola one expects to see here was never built and in its place, in 1685, Andrea Pozzo supplied a painting on canvas with a perspectival projection of a cupola. Destroyed in 1891, the painting was subsequently replaced. Pozzo also frescoed the pendentives in the crossing with Old Testament figures: Judith, David, Samson, and Jaele.

Andrea Pozzo's painted ceiling

Pozzo also painted the frescoes in the eastern apse depicting the life and apotheosis of St Ignatius. The Siege of Pamplona in the tall panel on the left commemorates the wounding of Ignatius, which led to the convalescence that transformed his life. The panel over the high altar, Vision of St Ignatius at the Chapel of La Storta, commemorates the vision that gave the saint his divine calling. St Ignatius sends St Francis Xavier to India recalls the aggressive Jesuit missionary work in foreign countries, and finally, St Ignatius Receiving Francesco Borgia recalls the recruitment of the Spanish noble who would become General of the Company of Jesuits. Pozzo is also responsible for the fresco in the conch depicting St. Ignatius Healing the Pestilent.