The Apotheosis of St. Ignatius
The Apotheosis of St. Ignatius
The Apotheosis of St. Ignatius
The Apotheosis of St. Ignatius
The Apotheosis of St. Ignatius (detail)
The Apotheosis of St. Ignatius (detail)

Church of Sant'Ignazio di LoyolaChiesa di Sant'Ignazio di Loyola

1474
Church of Sant'Ignazio di Loyola was built for the Jesuits in 1626–50, projecting the Counter-Reformation ideal of a church designed to teach through spectacle. Dedicated to St Ignatius soon after his 1622 canonization, it turns theology into spatial drama, most famously in Andrea Pozzo’s ceiling fresco The Apotheosis of St Ignatius (1685–94), where perspective dissolves stone into an open sky and the order’s global mission becomes a vision of triumph. It endures as a defining lesson in Baroque illusion and Jesuit ambition.