The present paper is an analysis of the university lecture of Max Dvořák on the church of Il Gesù in Rome, published posthumously at the end of his two-volume History of Italian Art in the Renaissance Period. It identifies the tradition from which Dvořák’s discussion of meaning in architecture grew out (an understanding of space in sacred architecture and of interpreting of styles in architecture as a materialisation of ideology, typical of historicism). It also brings out the aporias inherently rooted in his notion of Kunstgeschichte als Geistesgeschichte, resulting from his accepting the struggle of materialism with spiritualism as a fundamental philosophical principle governing world-views and finding its realisation in architectural styles.