Church of the Gesù, Jesuit church in Italy
The Church of the Gesù is the mother church of the Society of Jesus, standing on Piazza del Gesù in the Pigna district of Rome. Its two-tiered stone façade, completed by Giacomo della Porta, carries the Latin inscription naming Cardinal Alessandro Farnese as its donor and is topped by a triangular pediment with a cross. Inside, a single wide nave without aisles leads the eye to the high altar, flanked by interconnecting chapels behind arched openings.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola conceived the church in 1551; Michelangelo offered a design, but the building was funded by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese and begun on 26 June 1568 to a plan by Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola. After Vignola died in 1573, Giacomo della Porta revised the façade and built the dome and apse. It was consecrated on 25 November 1584 and served as the Jesuits' mother church until the order's suppression in 1773.
The name Gesù comes from the official title Chiesa del Santissimo Nome di Gesù, and the IHS monogram over the main door repeats the first three letters of Jesus' name in Greek. The first chapel on the right is dedicated to Saint Andrew because the church demolished on this site, Santa Maria della Strada, had been dedicated to him. The chapel of the Passion holds a bronze urn with the remains of Saint Joseph Pignatelli, canonised in 1954, and since 2014 a Descent from the Cross by Safet Zec.
The church faces Piazza del Gesù in the Pigna rione, a short walk from Largo di Torre Argentina and the Pantheon. The entrance is up a flight of steps; the single nave and side chapels are entered directly, with no narthex. Visit outside Mass times, when the chapels behind their balustrades may be closed off.
The nave has no aisles: identical chapels open behind balustraded arches, and the transepts are cut to stubs framing their end-wall altars. Acoustics drove the plan, so sermons carried to the whole congregation. Vignola's rejected façade design survives in a 1573 engraving.
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