Chiesa del Gesù

Frascati's Church of the Gesù is a single-nave Baroque church attached to the town's old seminary. It grew from a Jesuit chapel and was consecrated in 1773 by Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal Duke of York. Its interior includes illusionistic frescoes from the school of Andrea Pozzo and a painted dome.

Why it matters

The church reflects the presence of religious orders and clerical education in Frascati, a town shaped by papal Rome's summer residence. The Jesuits arrived in Frascati in 1560 and enlarged a small chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin. In 1773, after the Jesuit suppression and reorganisation of the Tuscolan Seminary, Cardinal Bishop Henry Benedict Stuart consecrated the seminary church under the name it still bears.

What to notice

The facade has two orders of bays inspired by Rome's Church of the Gesù, with statues of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Francis Borgia in niches beside the portal. Its attribution to Pietro da Cortona is traditional rather than documented. The single nave has Baroque frescoes of Saint Ignatius, Saint Sebastian and the Presentation in the Temple, painted by artists of Andrea Pozzo's school. The painted dome on canvas is by Antonio Colli, a pupil of Pozzo. A late-nineteenth-century restoration added a pavement designed by Annibale Angelini and frescoes by Cesare Dies.

Context and history

The Jesuits enlarged a chapel donated by Lucrezia della Rovere, wife of Marcantonio Colonna. For more than a century, the church served the Jesuit college and its students. After the order's suppression, Pope Clement XIV placed the seminary under the authority of Frascati's bishop. From 1770 the Tuscolan Seminary was reorganised in these buildings. The church was already dedicated to Saint Gregory the Great under Clement XIV; in 1773, Cardinal Bishop Henry Benedict Stuart consecrated it as the Gesù. Stuart, brother of Charles Edward Stuart, had entered the diocese in 1761 and served as bishop for more than four decades.