Apparati festivi a Roma nel XVII secolo. Le Quarantore.

The article focuses on the iconography of the Forty Hours'Devotion Ceremony. Following an initial investigation of the religious festivities in 17th century Rome, for which no immediate connection with the teological controversies of the time was found, the paper addresses an issue yet not analized by scholars: the changes in the iconography of the Forty Hours'Devotion following 1640, the anniversary of the foundation of the Jesuit Order. Th 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 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 rethorical concepts to a figurative context, similar to what occurred with Jesuit art of eloquence at that same time.