Nave vault decoration

Domenico Maria Canuti and Enrico Giovanni Haffner painted the ceiling of the church of Santi Domenico e Sisto in Rome, which was ceremoniously unveiled on Saint Dominic’s Day (August 4) in the Holy Year 1675.

The scene St Dominic in Glory was laid out in an essentially symmetrical way. The illusion of an opening is suggested by the increasing amount of light in the upper regions. Dominic stands on a golden disk borne by angels up to heaven, where Christ and the Virgin await him. The quadratura constitutes a striking modification of traditional Bolognese schemata, with the conventionally solid surround reduced to an undulant bordure that lends the ensemble a rhythmic quality, liberating rather than constricting the picture field and anticipating the style of the following century.