DescriptionBaciccio’s Triumph of the Name of Jesus (1676-1679) decorating the nave vault of the Gesù in Rome is a stunning exemplar of illusionistic Baroque ceiling painting. Its composition centers on the blazing letters IHS representing the Name of Jesus in the form of the Jesuit monogram that attracts the Blessed and repels the Damned. Its imagery has been widely accepted as a celebration of the Church Triumphant. My dissertation reexamines the meaning of the Triumph based on textual and visual evidence in conjunction with a consideration of its site in the mother church of the Society of Jesus, which reveals a conscious glorification of the Jesuit founder, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, even though he is not represented in the composition. Through an analysis of devotional and emblematic literature from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, I show that the allegorical and symbolic imagery of the Triumph, with its allusions to Ignatius, would have been understood by devout and erudite audiences at the Gesù. My dissertation further investigates the substitution of Joshua Stopping the Sun projected for the apse with Baciccio’s Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (1680-1683), in light of the original commission, the change in theme, and the relationship to the Triumph of both subjects. This shift in subject has been relegated to a mere passing mention and otherwise overlooked in scholarship on the frescoes. Based on a previously ignored connection between Ignatius and the Old Testament general Joshua, and on consideration of contemporary exigencies faced by the Society, I argue that the Jesuits’ decision to replace the subject of Joshua was to avoid antagonizing the reigning pope Innocent XI. Previously unpublished letters authored by the Jesuit Lazzero Sorba betray the precarious position in which Father General Oliva and the Jesuits found themselves during the reign of Innocent XI and support my claim. Finally, an analysis of the circumstances leading up to this change in subject demonstrates that Baciccio’s frescoes in the Gesù were not conceived as a unified program as has been accepted in scholarship, and they are more accurately characterized as a cycle.