thumb|Nave

The Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola at Campus Martius (, ) is a Latin Catholic titular church, of deaconry rank, dedicated to Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, located in Rome, Italy. Built in Baroque style between 1626 and 1650, the church functioned originally as the chapel of the adjacent Roman College, which moved in 1584 to a new larger building and was renamed the Pontifical Gregorian University. It is one of the great 17th century preaching churches built by Counter-Reformation orders in the Centro Storico (the others being The Gesù, also of the Jesuits, San Carlo ai Catinari of the Barnabites, Sant'Andrea della Valle of the Theatines, and the Chiesa Nuova of the Oratorians).

History

The opened very humbly in 1551, with an inscription over the door summing up its simple purpose: "School of Grammar, Humanity, and Christian Doctrine. Free". Plagued by financial problems in the early years, della Valle, donated her family isola, an entire city block and its existing buildings, to the Society of Jesus in memory of her late husband the Marchese della Guardia Camillo Orsini, founding the . She had previously intended to donate it to the Poor Clares for the founding of a monastery. The nuns had already started to build what had been intended to become the Church of Santa Maria della Nunziata, erected on the spot where the Temple of Isis had stood.

The nave's west wall has a sculptural group depicting Magnificence and Religion (1650) by Alessandro Algardi. Algardi also helped design the high reliefs in stucco that run on both lateral nave walls just above the entries to the chapels and beneath the nave's grandiose entablature.

Other artworks in the church include a huge stucco statue of St. Ignatius by Camillo Rusconi (1728). The church is also the resting place of Bartol Kašić.

Frescoes of Andrea Pozzo

thumb|left|"Dome" of Sant'Ignazio

thumb|[[Andrea Pozzo's painted ceiling with trompe-l'œil architecture]]

Andrea Pozzo, a Jesuit lay brother, painted the grandiose fresco that stretches across the ceiling of the nave around 1685. It celebrates the work of Saint Ignatius and the Society of Jesus in the world presenting the saint welcomed into paradise by Christ and the Virgin Mary and surrounded by allegorical representations of all four continents.

By the skilful use of linear perspective, light, and shade, he made the great barrel-vault of the nave of the church into an idealized aula from which is seen the reception of St. Ignatius into the opened heavens.

Pozzo also frescoed the pendentives in the crossing with Old Testament figures: Judith, David, Samson, and Jaele.

Pozzo also painted the frescoes in the eastern apse depicting the life and apotheosis of St Ignatius. (1697–99) by the French sculptor Pierre Le Gros. Andrea Pozzo painted the ceiling which also shows the Glory of the Saint. Buried in the side altar next to Gonzaga is Cardinal St. Robert Bellarmine.

The chapel in the left transept houses the relics of St. John Berchmans.

The chapel just to the right of the church's presbytery (at the south-east corner) houses the funerary monuments of Pope Gregory XV and his nephew, Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, the church's founder. Pierre Le Gros designed the monument and executed most of it himself c. 1709–14 with the exception of the two flying personifications of Fame which are by Pierre-Étienne Monnot.

The chapel in the left transept has a marble altarpiece of the Annunciation by Filippo Della Valle, with allegorical figures and angels (1649) by Pietro Bracci, and a frescoed ceiling with The Assumption by Pozzo. The second and first chapels to the left have paintings by Jesuit Pierre de Lattre, who also did the sacristy paintings.

List of cardinal deacons

The cardinal deaconry of Sant Ignazio di Loyola a Campo Marzio was established 28 June 1991. Its cardinals include:

  • Paolo Dezza, S.J. (28 June 1991 – 17 December 1999)
  • Roberto Tucci, S.J. (21 February 2001 — 12 February 2011; as cardinal priest 21 February 2011 — 14 April 2015)
  • Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, S.J. (28 June 2018 - present)

See also

  • :Category:Burials at Sant'Ignazio, Rome
  • Churches of Rome
  • Anamorphosis
  • List of Jesuit sites
  • 17th-century Western domes

<gallery>

File:Lazio Roma SIgnazio tango7174.jpg|Apse

File:Church of Sant'Ignazio di Loyola - interno.jpg|Interior

File:Dome of cappella sacripante in Sant'Ignazio (Rome) HDR.jpg|Bellarmine chapel dome

File:Medallion Ludovico Ludovisi Sant Ignazio.jpg|Medallion of Ludovico Ludovisi by Le&nbsp;Gros

File:SantIgnazio-SLuigiGonzaga02-SteO153.JPG|Glory of St Aloysius Gonzaga (1697–99) by Le&nbsp;Gros

File:Filippo della Valle – Annunziata.jpg|Annunciation (1750) by Della Valle

File:03Rome-Sant'Ignazio di Loyola60.jpg|The icon of the Holy Family, the Madonna and Child was canonically crowned on 1676 as authorized by Pope Clement X

</gallery>

References

Bibliography

  • Remigio Marini, Andrea Pozzo pittore (Trent, 1959).
  • N. Carbonieri, Andrea Pozzo architetto (Trent, 1961).
  • B. Canestro Chiovenda, "Della “Gloria di s. Ignazio” e di altri lavori del Gaulli per i gesuiti," Commentari 13 (1962), 290 ff.
  • Zaccaria Carlucci, La chiesa di S. Ignazio di Loyola in Roma ([Roma] : [Chiesa di S. Ignazio], [1995]).
  • Evonne Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque (Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004).
  • Church of St. Ignatius website