The Baroque Machine of Andrea Pozzo in the Chapel of st Ignatius in Rome (manortiz) скачать в хорошем качестве

The Baroque Machine of Andrea Pozzo in the Chapel of st Ignatius in Rome (manortiz)

— Every afternoon at 5:30 sharp, the "ta-da" moment arrives at the Chiesa del Gesù, the mother church of the Jesuit order. As choral music fills the church, a meticulously choreographed light show begins in the left transept of the Chapel of St. Ignatius of Loyola. During the startling crescendo, a painted altarpiece descends slowly, exposing a deep niche in which a majestic silver statue depicts St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits, jetting into heaven. It is a quintessential Baroque spectacle, one that fell out of favor about a century ago. At the time, the church's caretakers retired the canvas altarpiece, which depicts Christ presenting a royal standard to St. Ignatius, and the mechanical apparatus that lowers and raises it, so that the silver statue could remain on display. "That was the taste of the time," the Rev. Daniele Libanori, the church's deputy rector, said of that early-20th-century decision. He is not a huge fan of the larger-than-life sculpture, which was designed around 1698 by Pierre Le Gros the Younger. (What's on display today is actually a 19th-century stucco copy plated in silver. The silver original was melted down in 1798 during an occupation by Napoleon's forces.) "The statue's a little over the top, but it does make a big impression," he said. Father Libanori much prefers the altarpiece, which he discovered five years ago, after he first arrived at the church and started exploring its nooks and crannies. He found the enormous canvas, painted around 1695 by Andrea Pozzo, a Jesuit lay brother, under the altar, still wedged into a frame that had been constructed so it could be raised by pulleys. It had been pretty much ruined by mold, he said. In addition to the thrill of finding a lost work by Pozzo, known as one of the Baroque period's greatest trompe l'oeil specialists, Father Libanori was excited by the prospect of restoring the transept to the way it was conceived in the 17th century. With the altarpiece back in place, the chapel becomes a spiritual itinerary as well as "the highest expression of the union of all the arts," he said in a recent interview in his office. "There's a buildup of anticipation, to know what's behind the altarpiece," he said of the sound and light show. The daily spectacle at the Gesù is an object lesson in the religious culture of the Baroque era, when the Roman Catholic Church encouraged artists to stir the emotions of the spectator and the Jesuit order reveled in using theater as a pedagogical tool ... See full article in http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/art...