Carraci and the Devout Style in Emilia

Ackerman, Jonas. "The Gesu in light of contemporary church design." This short essay by Jonas Ackerman traces the history of the Church of the Gesu in Rome, a structure which is widely considered to represent one of the most significant architectural achievements of the Renaissance. Ackerman examines why the specifics of its construction reflect Church ideology of the era. Ackerman sees the church design and ideology as something uniquely springing out of the ideals of the Counter-Reformation.

During the Counter-Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church was forced to respond to intense criticism by Protestants of its ostentatious displays of wealth. "The reaction to Rome to the Protestant Revolution and the sack of the city was to initiate a radical reform of the liturgy, the clergy, and the monastic orders" (Ackerman 372). During the early phases of the Counter-Reformation, the layouts of Roman Catholic churches tended to take on a rather plain and boxy shape. However, gradually, over time, a more mature style flourished.

Buildings grew more ornate once again, but there was a significant departure from the previous style. The Counter-Reformation also stimulated changes in worship that required a corresponding alteration in church style. There was a need for more frequent Masses and thus an open nave and more effective acoustics for preaching. Ackerman thus sees church design as something which arises out of social need and historical pressures, not something which is solely generated in the mind of an individual architect.

He also traces the history of the plans for the structure of the church and examines various controversies surrounding the work, such as the question as to whether there is an innately 'Jesuit' quality design: "in short, the characteristic Jesuit church should be on a square accessible to the populace," have no side aisles, and have quarters for private meetings (Ackerman 381). For Ackerman, shifts in ideology create changes in function and changes in function create subsequent changes in architecture. Dempsy, Charles.

"The Carracci and the Devout Style in Emilia." This essay by Charles Dempsy discusses the controversy over shifts in the style of depicting the divine during the Counter-Reformation period. Tensions emerged between those who believed that the purpose of art was to inspire devotion vs. those who stressed the need to render life more perfectly. The great biographer Giorgio Vasari, author of the Lives of the Artists, strongly supported artists who embraced a more modernist style.

"No clearer statement could be wished of the position of an embattled humanist art, with its goal of manifesting an ideal of truth in the forms of an absolutely perfect beauty, set against that of a reformist art, with its goal of touching the earthly passions of the spectator, and thereby invoking a natural yet typical devotional effect that identifies human passion with the divine" (Dempsy 391). There was a fissure between exponents of the devout style and those, like Vasari, who stated that true devotion was associated with artistic perfection.

Exponents of the Counter-Reformation as a whole were very critical of the 'devout' style which they regarded as.