Apotheosis of the Franciscan Order

1707 · Basilica Santi XII Apostoli, Rome

religious

Pietro da Cortona's illusionistic effects were taken to extremes by the religious decorators of the second half of the 17th century. Baciccio and Andrea Pozzo were the most successful among them. Bacciccio's masterpiece was the painted ceiling in the Church of Il Ges in Rome.

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About the Artist

Baciccio

1639 – 1709

Italian painter, born in Genoa (Giovanni Battista Gaulli) and active mainly in Rome, where he settled in 1657 and became a protégé of Bernini. He achieved success as a painter of altarpieces and portraits (he painted each of the seven popes from Alexander VII to Clement XI), but is remembered mainly for his decorative work and above all for his Adoration of the Name of Jesus (1674-9) on the ceiling of the nave of the Gesu. This is one of the supreme masterpieces of illusionistic decoration, ranking alongside Pozzo 's slightly later ceiling in Sant'Ignazio. The stucco figures that are so brilliantly combined with the painted decoration (from the ground it is not always possible to tell which is which) are the work of Bernini 's pupil Antonio Raggi (1624-86).

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