Baroque Sculpture: Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Masterpieces
General Features of Baroque Sculpture
Baroque statues played an important role in architectural decoration, both internal and external. Unlike the axially balanced Renaissance sculptures, they seem to perch on their stone bases, ready to leave at any moment. The faces are suffering, struggling, with tight lips or mouths open in a moan. Muscles are tense, throbbing veins appear under the skin, and even hair and beards, unkempt, capture a mood.
Movement became a real obsession of the Baroque sculptor. They always captured the action through open compositions in which clothing and limbs are projected violently outward. This eliminates symmetry, and instead, skewed lines and foreshortening predominate. Folds, contrasts in light, and multiple viewpoints are abundant.
Everywhere there are angels and archangels, saints and virgins, pagan gods and heroes, bobbing in water sources or looking out from their niches in the walls, if not supporting a beam or standing on the altar. The materials that best express these feelings were white marble and bronze.
Baroque Sculpture in Italy: Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Bernini was to the Baroque what Michelangelo was to the Renaissance. Both his architecture and sculpture are the most accomplished works of Roman art of the 17th century. His sculptures are the most representative of this style. Bernini, almost exclusively the architect and sculptor of the Vatican under Pope Urban VIII, had enormous influence over the 17th and 18th centuries.
His sculptural works are characterized by profound naturalism, the search for textural qualities (almost pictorial) in skin, clothing, and other elements. His compositions utilize a Baroque setting, where movement is prominent, gestures are always excited, and attitudes are theatrical.
Examples of Bernini’s Work:
- The Rape of Proserpine: This sculptural group represents Proserpine being carried off by Pluto. The serpentinata figure composition is reminiscent of Mannerism and allows simultaneous observation of the rapture and Persephone’s plea to her mother to return for six months to Earth. The details are highlighted: Proserpina pushes the god’s head, stretching his skin, and his fingers cruelly tighten on the flesh of the goddess.
- Apollo and Daphne: This sculpture represents the moment when the nymph is metamorphosed into a laurel tree. It results in a dichotomy between movement and stillness on the one hand, and the polished and the rough on the other.
- David: Represented in action, his body twisted and his face extremely expressive, this sculpture continues the evolution of the treatment of this subject from Donatello and Michelangelo to Bernini.
- Chair of Saint Peter: Bernini finished the interior decor of St. Peter’s Basilica with this spectacular chair, located at the bottom of the apse. It is supported by statues of the Fathers of the Catholic Church as a symbol of wisdom and papal authority. The dove symbolizes divine illumination.
- Ecstasy of Santa Teresa: Very showy and theatrical, the heavy body of the saint appears in the clouds, something unusual in sculpture. While stressing the folds and lightness of the shirt, Bernini again offers a momentary image: the moment the angel raises the dart to sink it and instill love for God in Teresa. This sculptural scene is part of a great architectural framework also designed by Bernini.
- Mausoleum of Urban VIII in St. Peter’s in Rome: In his tomb sculptures, Bernini created a type that aims at the exaltation of the deceased, who stands on a podium surrounded by allegorical figures of merits and virtues.
- Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona in Rome: Among Bernini’s urban projects, his fountains stand out. This central fountain consists of an Egyptian obelisk, and on each side are representations of the largest rivers, the work of his pupils.