 I'm Linda Wolk-Simon, I'm the director of the Fairfield University Art Museum and the curator of this exhibition on the art of the Jezoo, the mother church of the Jesuits in Rome which is full of treasures, some really glorious masterpieces from the church itself, others lent by very generous American museums and private collectors. The loans from the Jezoo are five very important masterpieces from different moments of the church's history and the history of the Society of Jesus, the Order founded by Ignatius Layla in 1540 and I wanted to focus on this chastisble, a chastisble is an ecclesiastical vestment, it's something worn by the priest during the celebration of the mass and this is a particularly splendid example, this is a piece of embroidered silk done with this incredibly rich tapestry-like series of narrative scenes and flowers and scrolls and angels, very rich, very ornate, done of gold and silver and silk threads. An object like this because it is an object even though it had a liturgical function was really meant to show that the taste, the wealth, the magnificence, the munificence of the patron and the cardinal Alessandro Farnese who was the great patron of the church, he built the Jezoo, he supported the Jesuits, his coat of arms is part of the design so he definitely had a stamp of ownership on this and wanted everybody looking at it to know that it was associated with his magnanimity and it was really meant to just dazzle the worshipers in the church, the effect of this elegant rich surface and everybody at the time would have known this was a hugely expensive kind of estimate to commission, the ordinary person could never have afforded something like this and so this is a demonstration not only of his piety but also of his great, great wealth and magnificence and it's one of the many highlights of the show, it's really a little series of paintings done in thread and it's just a glorious thing to see here in the exhibition