Choir vault and apse decoration

The picture shows the choir vault and apse with illusionistic architecture and scenes from the life of the Virgin (Annunciation, Assumption).

The most important setting for the fictive dissolution of ceilings and walls with painting intended to evoke and illustrate heavenly sphere was the church, with its choir tribunes, inner fa�ades, vaults and cupolas. The new type of the hall church evolved following the prototype of the Il Gesù in Rome, and offered fresco painters an ideal space to work in. The vaulted, single-aisle nave flanked by chapels, transepts flooded by light from the centre cupola, and a spacious choir made possible a sophisticated structuring of the pictorial program in conformity with the architecture.

The painterly redecoration of the church of Santissima Annunziata del Vastato in Genoa following its modernization in the style of the Counter-Reformation began around 1625 with the vaults of the aisles. The painting of the choir by Giulio Benso began in 1635, and there are staged the most important events of the life of the Virgin as a theatrical spectacle. The Annunciation to the Virgin, central to the church’s iconography, takes place in the vault, shifted to heavenly spheres with the help of quadratura. The drama of the Annunciation - Mary receives the angel’s message in an airy loggia, while God floats down in glory above her - is then outdone by the ecstasy of the choir calotte’s Assumption.

This theatrical staging is considered one of the most successful combinations, with respect to foreshortening of quadratura and figural painting with the actual architecture.