Urban VIII Visiting the Gesù during the Centenary of the Jesuit Order

On 2 October 1639 Pope Urban VIII came to the Gesù, the main church of the Jesuits in Rome, to mark the centenary of their order. The celebrations were the wish of his nephew, Cardinal Antonio Barberini, who handed their organisation to Andrea Sacchi, the painter in his service. Sacchi dressed the church in silk hangings and in tapestries from the cardinal's own collection, and this canvas records the scene. At its centre stand the Barberini. The pope is there with his brother Antonio the elder, the two cardinal nephews, Antonio and Francesco, who is presenting the Jesuit general Muzio Vitelleschi, and Prince Taddeo with his son Maffeo. Three painters made the picture. The cardinal's inventory of 1671 gives the perspective to Filippo Gagliardi, the main figures to Sacchi and the rest to the Flemish painter Jan Miel. The two men in black beside Cardinal Antonio are probably Sacchi and Gagliardi themselves. The museum dates the canvas 1641. A payment of November that year is recorded for the painting, and one of April 1642 for a copy Sacchi was having made, which the scholar Ann Sutherland Harris thought is probably this one. In the 19th century the scene was taken for the canonisation of Saint Ignatius, because of the red banner with Ignatius and Francis Xavier that hangs from the dome.