Church of Casa Professa

The Church of Casa Professa is part of the largest and most important Jesuit House in Italy, after that of Rome. Today's church is the result of various layers of construction over time since the sixteenth century. on the first existing religious settlement in the area, the ancient Basilian monastery dedicated to Our Lady of the Cave, which remains as evidence of the statue of Our Lady of the Cave with the Child Jesus placed in the niche above the portal of entry to the Church. The first project, realized between 1564 and 1578, foresaw a small church with only one central nave; but in the course of time, as the Order of the Jesuit Fathers enlarged, the structure was enlarged, transforming the single Latin cross hall into a longitudinal plan with three naves and a large presbytery; in 1636 the new construction took the name of Church of Jesus.The interior is covered with an exuberant decoration of mixed and textured marble with inlays and reliefs and imposing marble groups, aimed at celebrating the glory of Jesus and the Madonna in heaven, on earth and in hell. Each space of the structure is covered by a complex iconographic program made with floral, human and animal motifs and other abstract executed by the best Sicilian sculptors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Important artists such as Pietro Novelli, Gaspare Bazzano, Antonio Grano, Camillo Camilliani, Ignazio Marabutti, Filippo Randazzo have contributed to endow this church with extraordinary magnificence. Splendid and unique is the complex iconographic program present in the presbytery, with episodes artfully drawn from the Old and New Testament and the scenario of the Incarnation of the Word, due to the Jesuits themselves who took care of its content in detail.