We haven’t done an architectural history category post in awhile, so I thought we’d look at one of my favorite influential churches, that of Santissimo Nome di Gesù all’Argentina in Rome. Don’t worry, we’ll just call it Il Gesù, literally “The Jesus” in Italian from now on. As I remarked in my photographs of the Luxembourg Palace in Paris, in Europe there are usually not large parking lots or vacant lots across from major landmarks, so the view down the avenue of Corso Vittorio Emmanuele II gives you an impression of what it’s like to walk up on the church.
Of course, with a special lens you can fit the front facade comfortably in your frame, but what I like about Rome is how there is a constant imperfect vista unfolding in front of you, waiting to be explored. Il Gesù was designed by the architects Giacomo della Porta and Giacomo della Vignola. Della Porta is given credit for the front facade, which is based off Leon Battista Alberti’s seminal facade from the Renaissance in Florence for Santa Maria Novella, but highly jazzed up and influenced by the former’s influence from Michelangelo’s architecture. You’d think the inscription on the front would be the name of the church but you’d be wrong; as is usually the case it actually identifies the patron, and it says that Alexander Cardinal Farnese made this in 1575. The church was indeed constructed from around 1568-1580.
What the standard art history textbooks say about this church is that it is proto-Baroque, which is the style that evolved out of the Council of Trent in the 1600s. The problem is that the Council of Trent occurred from 1545-1563, so what was the art and architecture called from 1563 to 1600? I hate survey textbooks and classes…
Anyway, art and architecture immediately began to react to the dictums of the Council of Trent, which called for more didactic, clear and easily understandable art, along with churches with wide open floor plans that focused on preaching to the congregation. As you can see here, Il Gesù has a long, broad nave with a large apse. The transepts are present, but they are subsumed in favor of the apse and high altar in the apse. Likewise, while there are side aisles, they are deemphasized to the left and right. There is no ambulatory around the apse, and no choir as you might see in a Gothic church.
We also certainly see the influence of Classical architecture, and also Alberti’s Church of Sant’ Andrea in Mantua.
Now, it would be remiss, since this church is called Il Gesù, to not mention that this church is operated, for lack of a better term, by the Society of Jesus, or as most Americans call them, the Jesuits.
In the late Seventeenth Century, in the Late Baroque, the leader of the Jesuits asked his friend Gian Lorenzo Bernini for a recommendation of a painter to fresco the barrel vault and dome of the church.
There’s a debate how much Bernini helped his acolyte, but regardless, he recommended his young friend Giovanni Battista Gaulli to paint all the frescoes while the former’s stuccoist Antonio Raggi added the decorative frame and angels.
A little while later, Andrea Pozzo, a member of the Jesuits, provided a wild altar dedicated to St. Ignatius of Loyola.
If you can read the sign in Italian, you know to come at a certain time and wait. Music starts to play, and then all of a sudden, Pozzo’s original Seventeenth Century mechanism begins to whir and turn, and the giant painting above lowers, revealing a silver statue of St. Ignatius, seen below. Theatricality at its best.
Out back, the brickwork of the apse reminds me of the old St. Boniface.
How ornate is that interior?
Per @grok/AI
The period you’re asking about—roughly 1563 (the end of the Council of Trent) to around 1600—is generally referred to in art history as **Late Renaissance** or **Mannerism**, depending on the region, medium, and specific building.
### Key terms for architecture 1563–1600
1. **Late Renaissance** (preferred term for most architecture in this period)
– The style that directly followed High Renaissance classicism (Raphael, Bramante, early Michelangelo) but incorporated the Church’s post-Trent demands for clarity, decorum, and emotional engagement.
– Architects: Giacomo Vignola, Andrea Palladio (especially 1560s–1580s), Giacomo della Porta, Galeazzo Alessi.
2. **Mannerism / Manierismo** (more commonly applied to painting and sculpture, but sometimes to architecture)
– Deliberate complexity, elongated forms, sophisticated artificiality.
– In architecture it shows up as strained proportions, “giant orders” that run through multiple stories, broken pediments, and a general restlessness (e.g., Giulio Romano’s work earlier, or some of Vignola’s façades).
3. **Counter-Reformation style** or **post-Trent style** (functional/descriptive labels, not stylistic ones)
– Used when scholars want to stress the theological impetus rather than purely formal qualities.
4. **Proto-Baroque** (sometimes retroactively applied, but problematic)
– Most standard textbooks today avoid calling anything before c. 1590–1600 “proto-Baroque.” The term is more commonly reserved for the very late 1580s–early 1620s (e.g., Carlo Maderno’s façade of St. Peter’s 1607–1615, early Bernini, etc.).
### The church everyone calls “proto-Baroque”: Il Gesù in Rome
The mother church of the Jesuits, **Chiesa del Gesù** (façade 1568–1584 by Giacomo della Porta and Vignola), is the classic example that creates the confusion.
What art historians actually say about Il Gesù (current consensus):
– Interior (begun 1568): Late Renaissance / early Counter-Reformation style
– Façade (1571–1584): the first major façade that clearly anticipates full Baroque (double volutes, giant order, concentrated ornament in the portal zone, dramatic forward thrust).
– Because of this façade, many textbooks label the whole building “the first Baroque church” or “proto-Baroque.”
Strictly speaking, however:
– 1568–1580 → Late Renaissance with Counter-Reformation characteristics
– 1584 façade → the decisive turning point that most scholars now place at the beginning of the Early Baroque
### Timeline most scholars use today
– High Renaissance: c. 1495–1520/1530
– Mannerism (painting/sculpture) / Late Renaissance (architecture): c. 1520/1530–1590
– Early Baroque: c. 1585/1590–1650 (Rome first, then spreading)
– Turning-point works: Il Gesù façade (1584), Carlo Maderno’s early projects (1590s), Caravaggio’s revolutionary paintings (1599–1606), Annibale Carracci’s Farnese Gallery (1597–1600), etc.
So from 1563 to roughly 1590 the architecture is best called **Late Renaissance** (or “Counter-Reformation Late Renaissance”), and only in the 1590s does the term **Early Baroque** (or occasionally “proto-Baroque”) become widely accepted.
In short: the style from 1563–c.1590 was **Late Renaissance** responding to the decrees of Trent; the full Baroque is usually considered to have begun in the 1590s in Rome.
This architecture and art is sort of a reaction against Mannerism. My Italian art colleagues actually don’t like to use the term Renaissance for art this late in Sixteenth Century.
“Theat”..”16th-Century-Completed-Cathedral-ComPlex”..”was-DeFinNetLy”..
“of-aye-more”..”Central-Italian”..
“Character”..”ComPared-to”..”OthEr”..
“Late -Renaissance-Period”..”Completed”..
“Catherdral-ComPlexEs”… :shrug:
“Aye”..”meant”..”to-type”..”in”..”That”… |:<|