Day 9

Today we visited the Gesu church as well as St. Ignatious. The Gesu church was the first that we visited and was my favorite. It was a 16th century church and features the baroque style. It is a Jesuit church and many other churches are modeled after this church. 

Here is a picture of the Gesu church. 

The church is dedicated to the most holy name of Jesus Christ and in the portion that looks like the sun are the letters IHS. God chose the name Jesus, meaning savior, which is the holiest form of Jesus. The inside of the church is very ornate. It has lots of frescos and gold framework as well as marble walls. There are also statues coming out of the wall called bas relief that are incorporated into the decorations. The decorations try and make the viewer excited about the name of Jesus. 

In the ceiling image there are also the letters IHS in the fresco.

Ceiling of the Gesu church

You probably can't see them because they are painted in light colors, but they are located in the center of the light. It's almost like Jesus is radiating from that point. In the painting, the people who go towards the light are accepting of Jesus and so they go to him. The people who are sheilding their eyes and are turning away or have closed eyes are the damned. Some of them are even falling out of the fresco. In class we watched a movie about Michaelangelo and how when the popes men were prepping for the painting they drilled holes in the ceiling. Today, as I looked up at the ceiling I noticed holes and wondered if they used a similar hanging technique instead of scaffolding. We also learned that a fresco was painted on fresh plaster which is where the name comes from. The color penetrates the plaster and that's how it lasts for a long time. I noticed how the ceiling painting is similar to the last judgement painting in the Sistine chapel because they both have the people who are accepting of Jesus moving towards him while the damned are at the bottom or moving off the painting.

We stopped by the pantheon today and were approached by little Italian children asking us to fill out a survey for them for their English class. The surveys were about Christmas and were really cute. Yesterday I went and saw the colosseum, palatine, forum. It was a long day of walking, but really cool. The colosseum was what I expected, but the forum and the palatine were my favorite parts. 

Colosseum 

Forum

Palatine