Pieter Huyssens and François d'Aguilon designed the Baroque Jesuit church of Antwerp, built from 1615 to 1621 on the Hendrik Conscienceplein and modeled on the Church of the Gesù in Rome. It was first dedicated to Ignatius Loyola, the first church in the world with that dedication. Jacobus Tirinus oversaw the project and was dismissed in 1625 for exceeding his budget.
Peter Paul Rubens painted two altarpieces in 1617 and 1618 and designed the ceiling paintings, which his pupils, including Anthony van Dyck, mostly executed. Lightning started a fire in 1718 that destroyed the nave vault and those ceiling paintings.
The Jesuits were suppressed in 1773, and the church reopened in 1779 as St. Charles Borromeo. A restoration in the 1980s recovered much of its Baroque splendor.
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