Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque

Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque. By Evonne Levy. (Berkeley: University of California Press. 2004. Pp. x, 353. $55.00.)

The word "propaganda" summons up such a negative resonance that it could well turn a reader away from this book. That would be a mistake, for it is a learned and imaginative work.The author brings critical theory, sociological insight, cultural history, a discerning eye, and the nuances that only wide and deep knowledge of actual works of art can provide.

An introduction and a concluding "postscript from Berlin" on Nazi architecture serve as the bookends of the study. Nazi architecture produces a troubling "affect," as propaganda. Jesuit architecture and art on the other hand no longer do so, since they have been neutralized as the "political heat," especially of the nineteenth century, on the Society of Jesus has vanished. But are art and propaganda two distinct and unrelated possibilities, two mutually exclusive categories? How did...