Indice degli autori

Abstract: The present article focuses on the iconography of the Forty Hours’ Devotion ceremony. While the subject has already been amply studied, especially over the past thirty years, some of its aspects still need further in depth investigation.Following an initial investigation of the religious festivities in seventeenth century Rome, for which no immediate connection with the theological controversies of the time was found, the paper addresses an issue yet not analyzed by scholars: the changes in the iconography of the Forty Hours’ Devotion following 1640, the anniversary of the foundation of the Jesuit Order.The iconography of the ephemeral structures utilized for the event, which initially had its visual fulcrum in the display of the Holy Sacrament set within an apparatus without icons, after 1640 mutated radically, becoming the representation of an historia. The Deus absconditus concept dear to the seventeenth century theological culture may be seen as the factor underlying the initial absence of icons. In the latter instance, the depiction of biblical episodes (with David, Samson, Moses, Solomon as protagonists) may be connected to the transposition of rhetorical concepts to a figurative context, similar to what occurred with the Jesuit art of eloquence at that same time.