The complex relationship between the Jesuits and the visual arts has occupied scholars of the early modern period over many years, and still has the capacity to raise difficult issues. The current volume is the catalogue of an exhibition at Fairfield University Art Museum featuring Bernini's youthful bust of Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino (cat. no. 20 and essay by Xavier F. Salomon). This is the only surviving part of the cardinal's tomb, erected at the expense of Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, in the apse of the Jesuits’ mother church in Rome, the Gesù. The rest of the exhibition consisted of drawings, prints, oil bozzetti, medals, and statuettes, mostly from North American collections. The Jesuits’ earlier encounters with the arts are explored, but the primary emphasis is on the decoration of the Gesù in the long seventeenth century, and the ubiquitous shadow of Bernini: while the Bellarmino tomb was the only work that he himself made for the church, his presence was felt later in the century through his close connection to the general of the order, Gian Paolo Oliva, and through his support of the painter Giovanni Battista Gaulli (il Baciccio), who was responsible for the glorious decorations of the nave, dome, and apse. Although the prime focus of the book is on the Gesù, there are inevitably discussions of the Jesuits’ other Roman foundations—Sant'Ignazio and the Collegio Romano, as well as their novitiate, crowned by Bernini's spectacular Sant'Andrea al Quirinale. Particular attention is given to the ways in which the order sought to establish an iconography for their newly created saints during the Seicento. These were Ignatius, their founder; Francis Xavier; Francis Borgia; and the boy saints Aloysius Gonzaga and Stanislaus Kostka.

The catalogue is dwarfed by the numerous essays charting the mixed fortunes of the Jesuits up to their suppression, in 1773. While their first patron, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, exercised a benevolent dictatorship over the architecture and the most important ceremonial areas—the tribune, the high altar, and the dome underneath which the cardinal intended to be buried—the Jesuits were evidently left free to decorate the nave chapels in a bewildering variety of styles, a theme that is usefully explored in essays by Linda Wolk-Simon and Gauvin Alexander Bailey. The fraught relationship with Farnese's heirs continued throughout the seventeenth century, as the Jesuits struggled with the issues of how to decorate their embarrassingly bare nave ceiling and apse. Compared with other new churches, such as the Oratorians’ Chiesa Nuova and the Theatines’ Sant'Andrea della Valle, the Gesù looked quite Spartan. The Jesuits were also struggling to establish cults for their new saints, who apparently lacked the charisma of someone like the Oratorians’ founder, Filippo Neri, as Evonne Levy makes clear. The Jesuits, led by Oliva, had to deal with indifference from Cardinal Alessandro's descendant, Ranuccio II Farnese, Duke of Parma, who still owned the patronage rights over the most prestigious parts of the church. Oliva's role is discussed by Franco Mormando, as well as the various iconographies proposed, once Gaulli was engaged. A fascinating proposal to depict Joshua stopping the sun and moon in the apse, to be painted by the battle painter Jacques Courtois, is considered by Louise Rice. Eventually, the Jesuits settled on the theme of the Adoration of the Lamb, a more conventional subject that forms the culmination of Gaulli's fresco decorations (essays by Christopher M. S. John and Betsy Rosasco). The Jesuits evidently developed a taste for the theatrical, which extended into the spectacular Quarant'Ore (Forty hours) ceremonies, in which Bernini's presence is once again predominant. Equally noteworthy are the astonishing perspectives of the Jesuit painter Andrea Pozzo, who also designed the monument to Aloysius Gonzaga (essays by Andrew Horn).

This volume is lavishly illustrated, particularly in its illustrations of Gaulli's ceiling decorations. A minor quibble would be to wish that the proofreader had been paying more attention. That aside, the book is a significant contribution to studies of the Jesuits and the visual arts, and is most welcome.