Except on one occasion, when it traveled briefly to an adjacent building, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s bust of the 16th century Italian Jesuit priest Roberto Bellarmino has for nearly 400 years sat aloft and out of sight in a niche, well above the high altar in the Church of the Gesu, in Rome. But for the coming three months, the bust will be brought down from its alcove and flown far away from its historic home to Fairfield, where it will serve as the centerpiece at Fairfield University Art Museum’s “Art of the Gesu: Bernini and his Age.”

It’s never, ever left Rome. It will never, ever leave again. And people for three months here will have an occasion to come look it in the eye and stand a foot away from this great early masterpiece by one of the greatest artists in the history of time,” the Art Museum’s Director and Chief Curator Linda Wolk-Simon, said on Monday, hours before the bust and other works from the exhibition, which opens Feb. 2, were to arrive.