(music) (jazzy piano)
Steven: This is Steven Zucker up here with
Beth Harris and Frank Dabell, an art historian in Rome.
We're standing outside an extraordinary church.
Beth: We're standing in the middle of traffic essentially,
really in the heart of the city.
Frank: It's not quite a traffic island,
but we are in the midst of Rome.
We're very close to the Pantheon and
10 minutes from the Forum.
That explains the centrality of this church
founded as the mother church of the Jesuit Order
in the mid to late 1500s after the death of
Saint Ignatius of Loyola, its founder.
The church is called the Gesu,
which simply means "Jesus".
This is a glorification of the name of Jesus.
Steven: And you can actually see it right there
emblazened on the facade of the church.
Frank: Yes, the IHS which is sometimes read in Latin,
sometimes in Greek as an interpretation of
the letters of Jesus' name.
Beth: We also see the name of the patron.
Frank: The name of the patron is very important,
Alexander Farnese; an enormously rich,
powerful and art-loving Cardinal.
I might add that we're standing in the pouring rain,
Frank: So I think it's time to go inside.
Steven: I think let's run in.
Steven: As we walk in here now,
although the color is gorgeous,
it's softened because it's dark.
Frank: It's dark today because it's cloudy.
As you can hear, we're still in the heart of Rome
Beth: (laughs) Traffic going by.
Frank: But this is the point ...
The sound of it reminds me,
this is something that is turned up loud.
This is loud, and it's loud and clear.
This is a very rational space, with it all,
with a Baroque's appeal to many people's
imagination rather than intellect.
This is really a delight for both the senses
and the mind because there is a sense of focus.
It's not a complicated space.
We come back to that name of Jesus on the ceiling
which encompasses the theme of the whole church.
Steven: It seems as if that notion of simplicity,
you could never use the word "spare" here,
but you can say that there has been a sort of
removal through the Council of Trent.
Frank: Yes. While the Council of Trent wanted to
direct this in simplicity.
This looks very ornamental because
it's the materials themself, but
if you analyze materials, you could even say that
they're spare because they're classicizing.
They are the kind of fluted Corinthian columns
and pilasters that we would see in
Renaissance churches, it's just that they're made
of Sicilian jasper, ochre marble and
all sorts of other rich materials, some of them
actually spolia, that is recycled pieces
from Ancient Rome ... I don't know exactly what,
but it was a common practice to rebuild
the new Christian Rome out of its ancient "pagan past".
Beth: We've got this total focus on the altar,
the real removal of the aisles as a space for traffic.
Frank: There's a space for individual chapels
on the sides, but the emphasis is on the great space,
above us this huge explosive ceiling with frescoes
at the far end, the name of Jesus in a starburst
made of gilded bronze.
Both of them relate very closely to something
that already existed in Rome
in the earlier Baroque period, and that is
Bernini's great apse decoration in Saint Peter's
where you have a similar burst of light,
coming in that case from the Holy Spirit,
the dove is a piece of stained glass there ...
Beth: Where the wall dissolves.
Frank: Where the wall dissolves.
This is going from the earthly to the heavenly,
from the secular from us standing here
to the sacred ... Of course from matter to spirit.
But it's made of raw matter.
It's made of stucco.
Some of it is very cheap material.
It's just painted stucco, but it's theatre.
That is what we do.
Even when we go to the theatre and the movies,
we explode out of our terrestrial being temporarily.
Beth: We suspend our ...
Frank: We suspend and we move into that other realm.
This is indebted hugely to Bernini.
Steven: There's this really beautiful,
sort of coming together of architectural space,
of painting, of sculpture, of stained glass,
of gilding of color, just all these elements that
become a beautifully synthesized hole, as you said,
which then suspends our belief.
Frank: Here what we have is not just
a sky that goes to infinity with clouds and
an ultimate glow, a spiritual glow,
of course it's not just the sun up there,
but it's heaven;
but the borders are ambiguous.
During Renaissance art, and certainly Medieval art,
this ambiguity was just out of the question.
Nobody would say, "Should we shade it this way or that?"
Everything had to be clear.
By this point in the history of art,
people knew what they were looking at I think,
in a more simple way and it was fine
to make things ambiguous.
We don't know whether we're looking at
shading up there or a painting or shape.
We don't know for a moment,
I've seen many people stop here and
wonder whether those cherubs and angels
are made of solid material or painted.
In fact, the fresco extends on wooden and other boards.
It's like stage machinery, stage sets,
out of that central space and actually
partly covering the vaulting of the ceiling.
On top of that, a glaze ...
And in fresco we would just call it a wash,
of darker paint extends actually onto the architecture
and creates the illusion that we're seeing
the shadows from those clouds.
Beth: I think about that joining of
the spiritual realm and the earthly realm
that happens in the Baroque so often.
Frank: This is the church triumphant.
The name of Jesus is the one thing that we must follow,
but if you are blind to it, if you reject it,
if you refuse it, being a different religion,
of course this gets very political,
or just ignorance or obtuseness,
you are the rejected and you're even the damned.
You are those figures who are falling
out of that sky into shade, into shadowed
areas up there already and ultimately
falling down to earth and below that, into hell.
Triumphalism is the theme here.
It's not just in the 1600s, but it was
established before that because
the Protestant reformation, which grew through
the 1520s and 30s, is now over 100 years old
and we have major wars of religion in Europe.
There are hundreds of thousands of Christians
that kill the other hundreds of thousands.
This was a very dramatic moment in European history.
Beth: It's very hard to imagine that moment in
European history, that moment of, you must take sides
and that need to be so certain of your faith
in a way and I feel that here.
I feel that kind of tower of certainty.
Steven: We're in the heart of Rome and
this is the place ...
Frank: I think it's not difficult to politicize, in fact,
we would say for some people of faith today,
the art exactly mirrors what they believe;
this certainty, the structure, the discipline of it
and death, the afterlife.
That ultimate aspiration that everyone has to
go to somewhat peaceful, secure and
everlasting is expressed here with absolute certainty.
We're seeing this as a question of light and dark,
as tourists or as pilgrims,
but just visually we forget the element of
pure sensuousness that comes from music,
from the smells; incense, fresh-cut flowers,
and all of those elements put together with
Steven: With the architecture ...
Frank: ... And the art in the architecture.
Steven: Actually the point you're making about
the ritual of the mass is critical because it's
those smells, it's the color,
it's all of that sensuality, but it's also
the fervor of those around you.
It's the intensity ...
Frank: It then becomes emotional and
there we have that old formula about
Baroque art appealing to the emotions
rather than to the intellect.
Beth: I think about it as appealing to the body.
Frank: But this is the guts because ...
Frank: When we come in here, when those lights
are suddenly put on, even that grabs us.
Christianity is a mystery cult and
that is something that is incomprehensible literally,
and it can only be received through spirituality, and, we would say, through emotion -- through poetry
all the things that are not purely rational
but this is a really theatrical blend
and it's a very, very powerful one.
(music) (Jazz piano)