CATI DA IESI, Pasquale - b. ~1550 Iesi, d. ~1620 Roma

Italian painter. He was born in Iesi (Jesi) in the province of Ancona, but was active mostly in Rome. He moved from his native city to Rome, where he was known as a follower, if not pupil, of Michelangelo, and later of Federico Zuccaro. Among his works are frescoes in the Remigius chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi, frescoes depicting the life of the titular saint in San Lorenzo in Panisperna, and in walls and vault in the Altemps chapel in Santa Maria in Trastevere. On the wall of the Altemps Chapel to the left of the apse is his large painting depicting the assembled clergy for the Council of Trent (the “Council of the Counter Reformation”), which was kicked off by Farnese Pope Paul III in 1545.

Cati was one of the painters engaged during the papacy of Gregory XIII in painting the ceiling of the Galleria Geografica in the Vatican Palace.. The maps on the wall had been painted by Ignazio Danti, but the ceiling decorations were completed by a team working under Girolamo Muziano that included, among others, Cati,

Giovanni Baglione mentions Pasquale Cati in his biographies.

The Council of Trent

This fresco was painted by Pasquale Cati da Iesi, a pupil of Michelangelo. The represented Council is sometimes called the Tridentine Council, after the Latin name for the city, Tridentum. The coat of arms on the left wall behind the cardinals in red is that of Pius IV, the pope at the time of the closing of the Council.

Long after the closing of the Council of Trent its importance was underscored in a didactic and journalistic fresco painted as part of an otherwise elegant and classicising decorative program for a chapel in Santa Maria in Trastevere for one of Rome’s leading churchmen, Cardinal Marco Sittico Altemps. Participants in the Council session are spread row upon row across the top of the composition, their faces directed forward or turned in profile as if to record as completely and accurately as possible the individual members. At the lower right of this pictorial chronicle of the event, however, allegorical personifications of the virtues crown a figure representing the Roman Church with a papal tiara. A globe at the lower left shows Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia. Thus the Church appears not only victorious, but extending far beyond Europe, where Protestantism had recently made such dramatic inroads.