Triumph of the Name of Jesus

Gaulli, known as Baciccio, unveiled this on the nave ceiling of the Gesù in Rome on Christmas Eve of 1679, after working at it through the 1670s. The Gesù was the mother church of the Jesuits, and the subject is the holy name of Jesus itself, a blaze of light at the centre from which crowds of the blessed rise up while the damned tumble out past the frame. He won the commission on the word of the aging Bernini, the great sculptor and showman of Baroque Rome, and it shows in the way the painted figures spill over onto real gilded stucco until you can no longer tell where the picture ends and the architecture begins.