Architecture and counter-reformation: the design for Il Gesù Church and its antecedents

• Grant number: 13/19721-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2013
• End date: November 30, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Architecture and Town Planning
• Principal Investigator: Andrea Buchidid Loewen
• Grantee: Marina Luna Castor de Lima
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Whereas in the Middle Age churches were built predominantly in a Latin cross plan, from the Renaissance onwards is found in the main treatises, such as in Leon Battista Alberti's, praise to the perfection of circular plants. It is consent in the historiography that the return to the basilical forms, endorsed by the Council of Trent, which censored the construction of central plan churches, is inaugurated with the construction of Il Gesù in Rome. This scientific initiation project proposes to diminish this myth and investigate the principles that steered the construction of Latin Cross plant churches during the decades preceding Vignola's project to the mother church of the Jesuits. My interest in this topic occurred during my participation as a special student in the discipline "AUH 131 - Architecture of the Renaissance - Italy, Portugal, and Spain", taught by Prof. Dr. Andrea Buchidid Loewen at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo. The final work I presented in the discipline was about a topic related to this proposal, and due to the good performance I had, I was invited by the professor to attend to study meetings, in which I established greater contact with the bibliography. (AU)