Apotheosis of St Ignatius

1685 · Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome

religious

This small oil painting showing the Apotheosis of St Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuit order, is a bozzetto - a preparatory sketch for the fresco Baciccio executed for the vaulting of the left transept of the order's principal church of Il Ges in Rome. The bozzetto differs from the fresco only in a few of the angel figures and in the use of stronger colours. Although the apotheosis of the saint has a firm place in the overall ecclesiastical programme of the church, from which it cannot be dissociated, this oil study is nevertheless an independent painting, executed with greater care than one might expect of a sketch.

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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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