'Il Gran Cardinale': Alessandro Farnese, Patron of the Arts. - book reviews

Alessandro demonstrated his support for the Society in other ways, too, as Robertson herself tells us: he chose the Jesuits to inspect his many benefices; he endorsed the order to his suffragan bishop in Monreale; he facilitated the rounding of a Jesuit college at Avignon; responding to Jesuit advisers, he increased his almsgiving by an enormous sum in the 1580s; and finally, he chose to be interred before the high altar of the Gesu. Moreover, diverging from his usual dependence on agents such as Annibal Caro, on whom he relied to supply iconography and supervise execution when commissioning monumental decorative projects, he took personal control over the church's construction, instructing Vignola that "the design shall be such that without exceeding this amount [25,000 scudi], it shall be well proportioned, according to the good rules of architecture. . . . I particularly wish the site of the church to fall . . . with the facade towards the street and the house of the Cesarini. The church is to be covered with a vault, and not otherwise. . . . Provided that you observe these things principally, that is, the cost, the proportion, the site and the vault, I leave the rest to your judgment" (pp. 187-89). In prescribing that the Gesu be vaulted, Alessandro imposed a stylistic feature that the Jesuits initially resisted, but he did so in the conviction that such a ceiling would do nothing to compromise the audibility of their sermons. He ultimately spent 100,000 scudi on the church, having stipulated that no other patron was to be involved.

For their part, the Jesuits under the generalship of Francisco Borgia could accept Alessandro's generosity only under conditions that left their vow of poverty intact. The Constitutions of the order, compiled with the approval of Ignatius and published in 1558, stipulated in part 6, chapter 2, "Of the Things Which Pertain to Poverty, and Which Follow from It":

Although it is praiseworthy to incite men to good and holy works, and especially to such as shall endure forever; yet for greater edification no member of our Society ought nor is allowed to stimulate any one to leave perpetual alms to the Houses or Churches of this Society. . . . But when the Love of God moves them to do so, then they may bestow them. . . . And let none of our Society habituate themselves to the frequent visiting of leading men, except when induced by the holy love of pious works, or when they are united in such intimate friendship in the Lord, that such a duty appears sometimes due to them.(5)

In accordance with this regulation, the Society would have characterized Alessandro's patronage as an act of piety, originating with him, rather than in response to Jesuit solicitation.