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Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Sculptures
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Gian Lorenzo Bernini dominated the Roman art world of the seventeenth century, flourishing under the patronage of its cardinals and popes while ... challenging contemporary artistic traditions. His sculptural and architectural projects reveal an innovative interpretation of subjects, use of forms, and combination of media. Forging a path for future artists, he played an instrumental role in establishing the dramatic and eloquent vocabulary of the Baroque style.
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Apollo and Daphne (1622-25) has been widely admired since Bernini's time; along with the subsequent sculpture of David it represents the introduction of a new sculptural aesthetic. It depicts the most dramatic and dynamic moment in one of Ovid's stories in his Metamorphoses. In the story, Apollo, the god of light, scolded Eros, the god of love, for playing with adult weapons. In retribution, Eros wounded Apollo with a golden arrow that induced him to fall madly in love at the sight of Daphne, a water nymph sworn to perpetual virginity, who, in addition, had been struck by Eros with a lead arrow which immunized her from Apollo's advances. The sculpture depicts the moment when Apollo finally captures Daphne, yet she has implored her father, the river god, to destroy her beauty and repel Apollo's advances by mutating her into a laurel tree. This statue succeeds at various levels: it depicts the event and ... represents an elaborate conceit of sculpture.
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[One] of Bernini's sculptures is known affectionately as Bernini's Chick by the Roman people. It is located in the Piazza della Minerva, right in front of the church Santa Maria sopra Minerva . Pope Alexander VII decided that he wanted an ancient Egyptian obelisk to be erected in the piazza and commissioned Bernini to create a sculpture to support the obelisk. The sculpture of an elephant was finally carried out in 1667 by one of Bernini's students, Ercole Ferrata . One of the most interesting features of this elephant is its smile. To find out why it is smiling, one must head around to the rear end of the animal and one notices that its muscles are tensed and its tail is shifted to the left. Bernini sculpted the animal as if it were in the middle of defecating. The animal's rear is pointed directly at the office of Father Domenico Paglia, a Dominican friar, who was one of the main antagonists of Bernini and his artisan friends, as a final salute and last word.
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Gianlorenzo Bernini, on the other hand, cared a great deal about likeness, to the point where he redefined it as more than appearance. True likeness - the kind he wanted to capture in his sculptures - was the animation of character, expressed in the movements of bodies and faces. Bernini took the stat - the Latin for their usual condition of "standing" - out of statues. His figures break free from the gravity pull of the pedestal to run, twist, whirl, pant, scream, bark or arch themselves in spasms of intense sensation. Bernini could make marble do things it had never done before. His figures charge into hectic action.
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With the addition of this second Bernini sculpture, the AGO will feature a superlative collection of Baroque artworks. When Transformation AGO is complete in 2008, the Gallery will present Peter Paul Rubenss monumental Massacre of the Innocents, c.1611-12, from the Thomson Collection. Rubens is considered the foremost exponent of Flemish Baroque art. Complementing this painting in the AGOs collection is Rubenss turbulent oil sketch The Raising of the Cross, c. 1638, which was purchased by the Gallery in 1928.
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Under the patronage of the Cardinal Borghese, young Bernini rapidly rose to prominence as a sculptor. Among the early works for the cardinal were decorative pieces for the garden such as The Goat Amalthea with the Infant Zeus and a Faun, and several allegorical busts such as the Damned Soul and Blessed Soul. By the age of twenty-two years, he completed the bust of Pope Paul V. Scipione's collection in situ at the Borghese gallery chronicles his secular sculptures, with a series of masterpieces:
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