Sant'Ignazio Church

Interesting facts

The architect Orazio Grassi, a Jesuit mathematician and astronomer, is better remembered as one of Galileo's opponents in a famous dispute over comets.

On Pozzo's ceiling, light from Christ reaches Ignatius and splits towards four continents: Europe on a horse, Asia on a camel, Africa on a crocodile, America on a puma.

Ludovisi first chose a site near the Jesuit novitiate on the Quirinal, but the pope objected that a tall church there would block the view.

The painter Domenichino submitted designs, but the Jesuits insisted the new church must follow their mother church, the Gesù.

Pozzo won approval for the false dome by showing the college rector an oil sketch, which survives in Rome's Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica.

Having perfected the trick here, Pozzo went on to paint similar false domes in Frascati, Montepulciano, Arezzo, L'Aquila, Vienna and Ljubljana.

By 1884 candle soot had blackened the painted dome until it was almost invisible, and a gunpowder depot explosion in 1891 tore the canvas.

In the apse Pozzo painted four straight columns on a curved surface, another feat of perspective, and in 1693 he published a celebrated treatise on perspective.

The colossal plaster statue of Saint Ignatius by Camillo Rusconi served as the model for his marble version in St Peter's Basilica.

The church is about 81.5 metres long and 43 metres wide, and the earlier church it replaced stood on ground once occupied by a temple of Isis.

Why it is worth it

In the church of Sant'Ignazio in Rome the ceiling opens into the sky. Across the great barrel vault of the nave, the Jesuit painter Andrea Pozzo painted columns, arches and cornices that seem to continue the real architecture upwards into an endless heaven, where Saint Ignatius of Loyola is received into paradise amid crowds of floating figures. A marble disc set in the floor marks the point from which the illusion works perfectly; further along, a second marker gives the best view of a dome over the crossing that does not exist at all.

The church was built for the Roman College, the Jesuit school founded in 1551 that grew into the Pontifical Gregorian University. When Ignatius was canonised in 1622, Pope Gregory XV, a former pupil of the college, proposed a new church in his honour, and his nephew Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi paid for it. After considering several plans, including one by Carlo Maderno, the cardinal chose a design by the Jesuit mathematician Orazio Grassi. The foundation stone was laid on 2 August 1626, the church opened for worship for the Jubilee of 1650, and it was consecrated only in 1722. Its Latin-cross plan follows the Jesuits' mother church, the Gesù, and it ranks with it among the great preaching churches of Counter-Reformation Rome. The small Rococo square in front of the church was designed by Filippo Raguzzini.

Pozzo, a Jesuit lay brother, painted the nave vault around 1685, presenting the work of the order spreading to the four continents. The money for a real dome had run out, so in 1685 he supplied a painted one on a large canvas over the crossing; it was later destroyed by fire and faithfully reproduced in 1823 by Francesco Manno from Pozzo's own drawings. Pozzo also painted the apse with scenes from the saint's life. The rest of the interior is rich with coloured marble, gilding and stucco: Pierre Le Gros carved the marble relief of St Aloysius Gonzaga in glory and the monument to Gregory XV and Cardinal Ludovisi, and Aloysius Gonzaga, Robert Bellarmine and John Berchmans are buried here.

Getting there

Sant'Ignazio stands in the Campo Marzio district of Rome's historic centre, between the Pantheon and Via del Corso. The nearest airport is Ciampino (CIA), about 15 km away; Rome Fiumicino (FCO) is about 23 km away.

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From the encyclopaedia

The Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola at Campus Martius is a Latin Catholic titular church, of deaconry rank, dedicated to Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, located in Rome, Italy. Built in Baroque style between 1626 and 1650, the church functioned originally as the chapel of the adjacent Roman College, which moved in 1584 to a new larger building and was renamed the Pontifical Gregorian University. It is one of the great 17th century preaching churches built by Counter-Reformation orders in the Centro Storico.

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Interesting facts

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