Propaganda And The Jesuit Baroque

In this provocative revisionist work, Evonne Levy brings fresh theoretical perspectives to the study of the "propagandistic" art and architecture of the Jesuit order as exemplified by its late Baroque Roman church interiors. The first extensive analysis of the aims, mechanisms, and effects of Jesuit art and architecture, this original and sophisticated study also evaluates how the term "propaganda" functions in art history, distinguishes it from rhetoric, and proposes a precise use of the term for the visual arts for the first time. Levy begins by looking at Nazi architecture as a gateway to the emotional and ethical issues raised by the term "propaganda." Jesuit art once stirred similar passions, as she shows in a discussion of the controversial nineteenth-century rubric the "Jesuit Style." She then considers three central aspects of Jesuit art as essential components of propaganda: authorship, message, and diffusion. Levy tests her theoretical formulations against a broad range of documents and works of art, including the Chapel of St. Ignatius and other major works in Rome by Andrea Pozzo as well as chapels in Central Europe and Poland. Innovative in bringing a broad range of social and critical theory to bear on Baroque art and architecture in Europe and beyond, Levy’s work highlights the subject-forming capacity of early modern Catholic art and architecture while establishing "propaganda" as a productive term for art history.

"This is a subtle, intelligent, and deeply learned recasting of a whole range of issues central to art history: the place of the Baroque in the construction of modern art histories; the peculiar aesthetics of propaganda as a distinctively institutional mobilizing of images and forms; the role of the Jesuits in constructing (and then deconstructing) the relation of architectural style and ideology. Evonne Levy's careful readings of key monuments in the Catholic Baroque shed light not only on those works, but on the whole evolution of art historical understanding—and misunderstanding—that has made the Baroque so central and problematic for the discipline of art history."—W. J. T. Mitchell, editor of Critical Inquiry and author of Iconology and Picture Theory "One of the most original and provocative books in the field of Baroque studies to emerge in the last twenty years, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque at once presents a wealth of new materials and radically rethinks what has long been known about the Jesuit Order as a patron of the arts. Through the lens of propaganda, Evonne Levy illuminates her subject in an unprecedented way."—Steven F. Ostrow, author of Art and Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Rome

This book presents an archaeological and architectonic study of the 17th century Jesuit constructions in Ethiopia, which played an important role in the missionary activity. Its comprehensive study gathers and preserves the splendor of these endangered ruins for future generations.

In Jesuit Art, Mia Mochizuki considers the artistic production of the pre-suppression Society of Jesus (1540–1773) from a global perspective. Geographic and medial expansion of the standard corpus changes not only the objects under analysis, it also affects the kinds of queries that arise. Mochizuki draws upon masterpieces and material culture from around the world to assess the signature structural innovations pioneered by Jesuits in the history of the image. When the question of a ‘Jesuit style’ is rehabilitated as an inquiry into sources for a spectrum of works, the Society’s investment in the functional potential of illustrated books reveals the traits that would come to define the modern image as internally networked, technologically defined, and innately subjective.

Through its missionary, pedagogical, and scientific accomplishments, the Society of Jesus-known as the Jesuits-became one of the first institutions with a truly "global" reach, in practice and intention. The Oxford Handbook of the Jesuits offers a critical assessment of the Order, helping to chart new directions for research at a time when there is renewed interest in Jesuit studies. In particular, the Handbook examines their resilient dynamism and innovative spirit, grounded in Catholic theology and Christian spirituality, but also profoundly rooted in society and cultural institutions. It also explores Jesuit contributions to education, the arts, politics, and theology, among others. The volume is organized in seven major sections, totaling forty articles, on the Order's foundation and administration, the theological underpinnings of its activities, the Jesuit involvement with secular culture, missiology, the Order's contributions to the arts and sciences, the suppression the Order endured in the 18th century, and finally, the restoration. The volume also looks at the way the Jesuit Order is changing, including becoming more non-European and ethnically diverse, with its members increasingly interested in engaging society in addition to traditional pastoral duties.

In his landmark volume Space, Time and Architecture, Sigfried Giedion paired images of two iconic spirals: Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International and Borromini’s dome for Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza. The values shared between the baroque age and the modern were thus encapsulated on a single page spread. As Giedion put it, writing of Sant’Ivo, Borromini accomplished 'the movement of the whole pattern [...] from the ground to the lantern, without entirely ending even there.' And yet he merely 'groped' towards that which could 'be completely effected' in modern architecture-achieving 'the transition between inner and outer space.' The intellectual debt of modern architecture to modernist historians who were ostensibly preoccupied with the art and architecture of earlier epochs is now widely acknowledged. This volume extends this work by contributing to the dual projects of the intellectual history of modern architecture and the history of architectural historiography. It considers the varied ways that historians of art and architecture have historicized modern architecture through its interaction with the baroque: a term of contested historical and conceptual significance that has often seemed to shadow a greater contest over the historicity of modernism. Presenting research by an international community of scholars, this book explores through a series of cross sections the traffic of ideas between practice and history that has shaped modern architecture and the academic discipline of architectural history across the long twentieth century. The editors use the historiography of the baroque as a lens through which to follow the path of modern ideas that draw authority from history. In doing so, the volume defines a role for the baroque in the history of architectural historiography and in the history of modern architectural culture.

Bringing together contributions from art history, architectural history, historiography and history of law, this volume is the first comprehensive exploration of the manifold meanings of foundation, dedication and consecration rituals and narratives in early modern culture.

The Baroque imagination has its roots in Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises (1547), which defined for the Counter-Reformation era the parameters in which Catholic believers must confront the Enemy and the temporal corruption he embodies in order to enter a state of grace and obtain salvation. Through complex interactions of different imaginative functions, Loyola's text is able to superpose a variety of simultaneous narrative levels. In order to reformulate the «greater narrative» (the Magisterium) of the Roman faith beyond what is revealed in Scripture, the Spiritual Exercises require their exercitant to become an active participant in this narrative through constant visual contact with «orders of corruption», that is, spaces in which virtue can be confronted with physical decay and sin. Through these spaces Counter-Reformation Rome (La Roma Ignaziana) would redefine the economy of salvation and diffuse the visual dynamics of the Spiritual Exercises throughout the Catholic world. In their writings, Spanish Golden Age authors Miguel de Cervantes and Baltasar Gracián use the rising modernity of the novel to transform Loyola's notion of «orders of corruption» by adapting it to the secular world. Their encoded criticism of Loyolan imagination contributed to the epistemological crisis that marks the Baroque age, but also prepared the way for the crucial debates that would take place during the Enlightenment (such as the deconstruction of the Catholic «greater narrative» reflected in Loyola). This book concludes with a discussion of the eventual negation of Loyolan imagination in the novels of the Marquis de Sade, which undermine the Roman faith by parodying the Baroque forms of spiritual visual experience and negate the Loyolan projection into «orders of corruption».