It is difficult to find a street more charmless and congested than the Via del Plebiscito in the heart of Renaissance and Baroque Rome. And yet it borders the monumental fifteenth-century Palazzo Venezia while the Doria Pamphilj, Grazioli, and Altieri palaces create a noble and uninterrupted architectural screen on the opposite side. Matters hardly improve when, a short distance further, the Piazza del Gesù is reached. The pinched, irregularly shaped clearing of the square is sadly inadequate: it hardly allows a proper view of the majestic façade of the Chiesa del Gesù that dominates it. Of the literally hundreds of Roman churches, “il Gesù” is one of the most historically and artistically significant, identified as it has been since its founding in 1568 with the Counter-Reformation movement and the consequent meteoric rise of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuit Order. Behind both enterprises was the immensely powerful Farnese family: Pope Paul III, who convened the Council of Trent in 1545; and his grandson Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, the founder and patron of “il Gesù.” Indeed, it is impossible to miss the huge escutcheon bearing the Farnese arms on the soaring façade designed by Giacomo della Porta and Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola—a design that served as a virtual prototype for countless High Baroque churches in Italy and throughout Southern Europe.
All the strands of this fascinating story have been brilliantly brought together in an illuminating exhibition at the Fairfield University Art Museum. The prime mover in the ambitious undertaking