Bernini, Gaulli, and the Frescoes of the Gesè

Abstract

The frescoes that Giovanni Battista Gaulli painted during the years 1672 to 1685 in the Gesù in Rome are widely known. Great crowds attended their unveiling and in subsequent centuries they have been published regularly in periodicals, surveys of the Baroque, and virtually every guide of Rome. The fresco of the Triumph of the Name of Jesus on the nave vault (Figs. 1 and 2) is generally accepted as one of the major monuments in the history of ceiling painting. But strangely enough, Gaulli remains a minor artist. Of the large body of his surviving work, virtually nothing outside the Gesù is known to the general public. There is little mystery, however, as to why one remembers the Triumph of the Name of Jesus. Its composition is daring and imaginative.