I “teatri sacri” di Andrea Pozzo per i Gesuiti: storia e ricostruzione digitale della chiesa di Sant’Ignazio a Mazara

Abstract

The contribution, a combination of history and representation, analyses and proposes a hypothesis of virtual reconstruction of the design of the church of Sant’Ignazio that Andrea Pozzo drew up in the early eighteenth century for the Jesuits of Mazara. The exceptional nature of the edifice in the Sicily of the time lies in its transverse oval hall with a columned “serliana” ambulatory and a circular presbytery covered by a structure with scenic features traceable to Pozzo’s experiments in quadratura. The church no longer has its roof, which collapsed in the 1930s, of which there is insufficient historical iconography. The images shot with the aid of a drone and the extant fragments facilitated the reconstruction by laser scanner and the comparison with famous models from outside Sicily, the Roman cultural milieu Pozzo was well acquainted with, and the design influences that can be found in the work of sicilian architect Giovanni Amico that Pozzo knew through his architectural works and the theoretical schemes described in his treatise. Pozzo’s coeval unfinished designs for rotundas with roofs generating luminist and perceptual effects belong to a series of works that promoted in provincial venues new forms of scenic approach to the sacred space that were consistent with the liturgy and the doctrinal goals of the Society of Jesus, beginning with the observation of the apse conceived as a eucharistic theatre pervaded with light in the church of Sant’Andrea al Quirinale in Rome. Studying the Jesuit church in Mazara therefore means evaluating the only built evidence of Pozzo’s research and confirming the landmark role that Jesuit typological choices played in the religious architecture of the time.