(music) Man1: This is the Saint Ignatius Chapel, Saint Ignatius of Loyola
and in his memory, before he'd actually been
proclaimed a saint fully, the church was dedicated
and then when he was beatified and then
canonized in 1622, another entire church was built
with his name, Sant'Ignazio Beth: nearby Man1: This chapel celebrates
his relationship to God. It's an explosion of light,
precious material, gold, lapis lazuli, silver,
bronze and precious marbles. What we see is basically
a painting enshrined in a great tabernacle and the
painting shows St. Ignatius before God himself. He's
kneeling in his black habit before the figure of Christ
and he's holding a banner, bright red banner with
the name of "Jesus" on it, as it were presenting or
supplicating before God to be admitted to Heaven and
the most extraordinary thing about this, is that it's
actually a theatrical mechanism. In very recent years,
this has been restored and is functioning once
again and generally speaking at 5:30 p.m. daily, a
painting at the combination of a 15-20 minute sound and
light show lowers itself. The painting slides down
gradually like a piece of theatrical machinery into
the ground below the altar Beth: Wow. statue of Saint Ignatius.
It's as if to say he has now died and gone to
heaven and above the whole figure, (inaudible 1:40)
surrounded by angels is an image of the Holy Trinity. So this is Baroque scenery,
baroque theatricality at its finest and that
they called it a macchina back in those days, a machine. Man2: The entire tabernacle
is, even on this dim day, is beautifully illuminated. All
of the incredibly reflective qualities of the gold, the
semi-precious stones really reflecting light, but if you
look at the image itself, it's so interesting because
below the main scene you have what's seemed like
the presentation of the four main continents,
Africa of the new world. Man1: The four corners of the
world, as they called them then and in the church of Saint
Ignatius, the church a few blocks from here, we have a similar
though much larger painting on the ceiling in fresco of
that theme of Ignatius' work, the teaching and faith of
the Jesuits extending to the four parts of the known
world, as they called Africa. Beth: Reminds one that's
the era of colonialism and a lot of the money
that's coming to the church Man: Indeed, colonialism
and evangelization. Man: The statue that's
behind is not the original statue, part of it is, but the
great solid, silver and gold parts were melted down when
Napolean invaded Italy, 1798, also to pay for the troops. They also burned a lot of the
tapestries in the Vatican, so they could get the precious
gold and silver thread out of them. Man2: This was then remade
in the early 19th century and it still stands as a
piece of absolutely wonderful precious material. I would
add, that between the gilded, bronze shafts of those
columns are lots of pieces Beth: Hmm ... It's one of the richest
materials that we know. It's still the most
expensive color in painting. Michael Angelo used it for
painting The Last Judgement ground up. It comes from
Afghanistan, but it is also highly expensive. It's three
times the price of gold. Beth: Wow Beth: When the painting comes down and the sculpture is revealed,
there's also musical accompaniement, right? So,
it's a very sensual experience. (music)