Just a few words about my favorite sculptor - possibly my favorite artist.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, folks. Now I know you've all heard that name before, somewhere in the sleepy haze of boredom that was Art History class; and perhaps in your apathetic leafings through the textbook, at 3 AM on a Monday, while cramming for the final exam, you happened upon something like this:
Did you stop to look at it? Did you stop to consider that this could possibly be carved out of solid rock? Did you thrill at the fact that, yes, not only was Daphne morphing into a tree, but that there were individual leaves shooting out of her hands - also solid rock? And that hair...!
No. You didn't. You let the pages slip through your unfeeling fingers, and let your head fall into the book with a thud. When you awoke, the page was shiny with drool.
Shame on you.
But seriously, folks - in the profusion of Renaissance artists (and boring treatises on said artists), Bernini often gets lost in the mix. Or when he is pointed out, it's usually by the bearded, balding, bespectacled bore at the front of the lecture hall, who then proceeds to analyze the Maestro's body of work as if it is...well, an actual body. Interspersed within this autopsy report are the pompous gassings of one who has visited Florence for a weekend and actually (gasp!) seen the sculptures for himself, no doubt dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, his plus-sized wife hanging at his side with an uncertain expression on her face, a purse full of snacks, and a Euro Disney World visor on her head.
Through all of this description, of course, you are asleep. And on that Sunday before the exam, you will at some point scribble down something like, "Baroque, Counter-Reformation: Bernini's sculptures for Vatican." And that will be that.
In that case, here is a quick (and very simplistic) refresher course - starting with some history:
The sixteenth century, Western Europe. The Cardinals, Bishops, and the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church convened the Council of Trent, in order to figure out What To Do About This Darn Reformation. Western Europe is going through a cataclysm of ideology. The Roman Catholic Church, once the most powerful of the only two Christianities in the world (the other being the Orthodox Church in the east), now found its body and its temporal territories divided between several Protestant sects. With whole northern kingdoms becoming officially Lutheran (though they didn't call it that at the time), the Roman Church was bleeding members at a catastrophic rate.
Council of Trent
The Council's problem was that the Reformers' appeal to the intellect (not to mention the individual) left the RCC with little to go on. Now, THE RULES, which had been relied upon so long in mass religion, were no longer sufficient. The Council determined, as one of their Counter-Reformatory initiatives, that they needed something better, perhaps a new artform, perhaps a way to communicate religion on a whole new level. They needed something more - a "Thou Shalt" for all their "Thou Shalt Nots".
Enter the Baroque artists.
Peter Paul Rubens - the Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, folks. Now I know you've all heard that name before, somewhere in the sleepy haze of boredom that was Art History class; and perhaps in your apathetic leafings through the textbook, at 3 AM on a Monday, while cramming for the final exam, you happened upon something like this:
Did you stop to look at it? Did you stop to consider that this could possibly be carved out of solid rock? Did you thrill at the fact that, yes, not only was Daphne morphing into a tree, but that there were individual leaves shooting out of her hands - also solid rock? And that hair...!No. You didn't. You let the pages slip through your unfeeling fingers, and let your head fall into the book with a thud. When you awoke, the page was shiny with drool.
Shame on you.
But seriously, folks - in the profusion of Renaissance artists (and boring treatises on said artists), Bernini often gets lost in the mix. Or when he is pointed out, it's usually by the bearded, balding, bespectacled bore at the front of the lecture hall, who then proceeds to analyze the Maestro's body of work as if it is...well, an actual body. Interspersed within this autopsy report are the pompous gassings of one who has visited Florence for a weekend and actually (gasp!) seen the sculptures for himself, no doubt dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, his plus-sized wife hanging at his side with an uncertain expression on her face, a purse full of snacks, and a Euro Disney World visor on her head.
Through all of this description, of course, you are asleep. And on that Sunday before the exam, you will at some point scribble down something like, "Baroque, Counter-Reformation: Bernini's sculptures for Vatican." And that will be that.
In that case, here is a quick (and very simplistic) refresher course - starting with some history:
The sixteenth century, Western Europe. The Cardinals, Bishops, and the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church convened the Council of Trent, in order to figure out What To Do About This Darn Reformation. Western Europe is going through a cataclysm of ideology. The Roman Catholic Church, once the most powerful of the only two Christianities in the world (the other being the Orthodox Church in the east), now found its body and its temporal territories divided between several Protestant sects. With whole northern kingdoms becoming officially Lutheran (though they didn't call it that at the time), the Roman Church was bleeding members at a catastrophic rate.
Council of TrentThe Council's problem was that the Reformers' appeal to the intellect (not to mention the individual) left the RCC with little to go on. Now, THE RULES, which had been relied upon so long in mass religion, were no longer sufficient. The Council determined, as one of their Counter-Reformatory initiatives, that they needed something better, perhaps a new artform, perhaps a way to communicate religion on a whole new level. They needed something more - a "Thou Shalt" for all their "Thou Shalt Nots".
Enter the Baroque artists.
Peter Paul Rubens - the Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus
Yes, I know this is a rather interesting choice, but I think it just about sums up Baroque art: hugely dramatic, romanticized, mythic, and just a little bit risque. Maybe even a lot risque. It can be assumed the RCC was leaning more upon the first three qualities, and less upon the fourth - although I think they were willing to take what they could get.
Bernini burst in upon this scene like a male Athena bursting from the head of Zeus - fully formed, and ready to kick some ass. His first patron was Cardinal Scipio Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V. During this period he made several of his most famous sculptures: David, Aeneas with Anchises and Ascanius, Apollo and Daphne, and the Rape of Proserpina.
David
That's Persephone (Proserpina), daughter of the goddess Ceres (or Demeter?), being dragged down into Hades by Pluto. (Or is she being dragged down into Hades by Hades? I can't for the life of me keep these names straight...) Now, looking at this picture - not the best picture - you may say, "So what. Another sculpture. Lotsa people did sculptures just like this one."
Look again, at this detail of Pluto's hands:
See how the fingers press into the marble flesh?
Yeah. Enough said.
This next one is perhaps Bernini's most famous sculpture: the Ecstasy of St. Teresa, completed under Innocent X for the Cornaro Chapel of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome:
The swirling robes alone make the piece; but then there's the fact that, not only is this a sculpture in marble, but a sculpture in light, too: sunlight comes down through the skylight above, changing the pattern of reflections and shadows across the piece with every hour. One can almost hear a choir of angels booming out from above.
Now, Bernini was a devout man - he followed the ascetic disciplines of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and attended Mass twice a week. He was also a consumate artist, even pompous at times (he got in trouble at King Louis XIV's court for extolling Italian art over French). But his most surprising characteristic was his cheekiness. Take a look at this sculpture for a moment - the elephant upholding the obelisk in St. Peter's square:
Note that the elephant is smiling.
Why is the elephant smiling?
If you draw a line directly behind the elephant, you will find its rear end is pointed directly at the office of Bernini's main opponent in the Vatican, one Father Domenico Paglia. For years Father Domenico had hounded Bernini and his colleages, raising a ruckus whenever Bernini landed a commission. It got so bad that, at one point, Bernini's bell towers for St. Peter's were torn down - officially because of poor construction and structural damage. If not for the timely succession of a new, more sympathetic Pope, Bernini would quickly have passed into obscurity.
Well, Bernini says. No hard feelings. In fact, here's an elephant for your piazza, with a great big obelisk on top. Never mind that its tail is curled up, its haunches squatting slightly, and it's looking over its shoulder as if to draw a bead on your bedroom window...
In effect, the chortling heffalump is taking a shit in his general direction.
Enough said.
Bernini burst in upon this scene like a male Athena bursting from the head of Zeus - fully formed, and ready to kick some ass. His first patron was Cardinal Scipio Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V. During this period he made several of his most famous sculptures: David, Aeneas with Anchises and Ascanius, Apollo and Daphne, and the Rape of Proserpina.
David
Now some commentary:
Holy shit.
Suddenly, after two previous Davids (Michelangelo's and Donatello's) just standing there, buck-naked, out of the blue comes this dynamic sculpture. He's winding up, getting ready to pop Goliath with a stone; he's David, the shepherd, the warrior, preparing to save the Israelites from the Philistines. This is the epitome of Baroque art (of all Western art, if you ask me): dynamic, dramatic, realistic, drawing the viewer into the action and - more than that - forcing the viewer to mentally complete the action.
Here's another one:
Abduction of Persephone (Proserpina)
Holy shit.
Suddenly, after two previous Davids (Michelangelo's and Donatello's) just standing there, buck-naked, out of the blue comes this dynamic sculpture. He's winding up, getting ready to pop Goliath with a stone; he's David, the shepherd, the warrior, preparing to save the Israelites from the Philistines. This is the epitome of Baroque art (of all Western art, if you ask me): dynamic, dramatic, realistic, drawing the viewer into the action and - more than that - forcing the viewer to mentally complete the action.
Here's another one:
Abduction of Persephone (Proserpina)
That's Persephone (Proserpina), daughter of the goddess Ceres (or Demeter?), being dragged down into Hades by Pluto. (Or is she being dragged down into Hades by Hades? I can't for the life of me keep these names straight...) Now, looking at this picture - not the best picture - you may say, "So what. Another sculpture. Lotsa people did sculptures just like this one."
Look again, at this detail of Pluto's hands:
See how the fingers press into the marble flesh?
Yeah. Enough said.
This next one is perhaps Bernini's most famous sculpture: the Ecstasy of St. Teresa, completed under Innocent X for the Cornaro Chapel of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome:
The swirling robes alone make the piece; but then there's the fact that, not only is this a sculpture in marble, but a sculpture in light, too: sunlight comes down through the skylight above, changing the pattern of reflections and shadows across the piece with every hour. One can almost hear a choir of angels booming out from above.
Now, Bernini was a devout man - he followed the ascetic disciplines of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and attended Mass twice a week. He was also a consumate artist, even pompous at times (he got in trouble at King Louis XIV's court for extolling Italian art over French). But his most surprising characteristic was his cheekiness. Take a look at this sculpture for a moment - the elephant upholding the obelisk in St. Peter's square:
Note that the elephant is smiling.
Why is the elephant smiling?
If you draw a line directly behind the elephant, you will find its rear end is pointed directly at the office of Bernini's main opponent in the Vatican, one Father Domenico Paglia. For years Father Domenico had hounded Bernini and his colleages, raising a ruckus whenever Bernini landed a commission. It got so bad that, at one point, Bernini's bell towers for St. Peter's were torn down - officially because of poor construction and structural damage. If not for the timely succession of a new, more sympathetic Pope, Bernini would quickly have passed into obscurity.
Well, Bernini says. No hard feelings. In fact, here's an elephant for your piazza, with a great big obelisk on top. Never mind that its tail is curled up, its haunches squatting slightly, and it's looking over its shoulder as if to draw a bead on your bedroom window...
In effect, the chortling heffalump is taking a shit in his general direction.
Enough said.
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