Nearly 400 years ago, a young Gian Lorenzo Bernini was commissioned by a powerful Cardinal’s family to decorate the first Jesuit church in Rome. Now, Bernini's work—a bust of Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino—has left Rome for the first time for an exhibition at Fairfield University Art Museum in Connecticut.

When you step inside the exhibit—THE HOLY NAME Art of the Gesù: Bernini and his Age—it’s like stepping behind the scenes of the creation of one of the most important monuments in Baroque Rome: the Church of the Gesù. Linda Wolk-Simon, museum director and chief curator, says, “There are five works from the Gesù [and] none of those have come to America.”