English: Catalogue Entry:

This large and luminous bozzetto (preparatory oil sketch) provides a rare working document for the genesis of one of the most outstanding examples of Baroque ceiling decoration, The Triumph of the Name of Jesus in the Gesù church in Rome. The great sculptor and architect Bernini helped Baciccio secure the commission of decorating the ­barrel-vaulted mother church of the Jesuit order, which had been consecrated in 1584. Although there is no written iconographic program, the subject of the ceiling fresco was inspired by Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians 2:10, "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth." In the bozzetto, the full conceptual and visual thrust of the thundering biblical message is conveyed in the radiant and levitating clusters of saints and angels adoring the symbol of Christ, while their damned counterparts, including fallen angels, heretics, and vices, hurtle into darkness below; these figures are blinded by and excluded from the vision of heaven that overwhelms the worshiper with its illusionary proximity, seeming to open the ceiling to the sky above as one moves from darkness into light.

Gallery Label:

This luminous oil sketch is a rare surviving bozzetto (working study) for one of the most important illusionistic Baroque frescoes, The Triumph of the Name of Jesus, on the ceiling of Il Gesù in Rome. Saints and cherubs bathed in radiating, divine light adore the monogram of Jesus, IHS, while the souls of the damned plunge into darkness, excluded from the vision of heaven that opens the ceiling to the sky above. The conceit recalls the work of Gaulli’s mentor Bernini, whose Cathedra Petri in Saint Peter’s also features a glowing IHS surrounded by fluttering putti. Indeed, his contemporaries said Bernini conceived the ceiling, while his assistant Antonio Raggi executed the stucco angels at the corners of the imagined architectural framework. Partially decipherable inscriptions on the three incised arcs on each side of the ceiling—visible only under infrared light—appear to indicate the locations for scaffolding, providing evidence of the complexities involved in decorating the church.