Sculptural masterpieces by Lorenzo Bernini
Like painting, Baroque sculpture was subordinate to the general decorative design of the facades and interiors of buildings. She was distinguished by the emphasized expressiveness of forms, her favorite motifs were the spiral, bent and twisted forms, rounded edges, the possibility of considering them from different points of view. The ideal sculptural images combined the violent dynamics of expressing feelings, reality with fantasy, artificial materials with natural ones. In order to achieve the impression of weightlessness of figures, the sculptors seemed to strive to overcome the weight of marble or bronze.
One of the best masters of Baroque sculpture was Lorenzo Bernini, who managed to make many artistic discoveries in this art form. Defining the main features of the fine art of the Baroque and the sculptural work of Bernini, art critic N. A. Dmitrieva noted:
“It is characteristic that picturesqueness is conceived as the ideal of plastics. It is not painting that seeks to be sculptural, as in the art of the Renaissance, but sculpture wants to be pictorial … It is not surprising to paint air clouds or fluffy fur and light lace, but turning marble into clouds and fur is a triumph of an artist for whom nothing is impossible ” …
Indeed, Lorenzo Bernini knew how to subordinate hard stone to his creative imagination, turning it into an obedient and malleable material. He said:
“… I conquered the difficulty, making marble flexible like wax, and by this I was able to combine sculpture with painting to a certain extent …”
He could grind stone by hand for five to seven hours a day “without a single respite.” Even his young assistants could not stand such stress and dedication in work. Carefully processing white or colored marble and bronze, he achieved amazing lighting effects, imitating the shine and softness of the skin, the texture of the fabric. But the main merit of the sculptor was the masterful reproduction of the subtlest movements of the human soul, in this art he had no equal. In the interiors of cathedrals and chapels, decorating the ensembles of squares, he created compositions unsurpassed in beauty and grace.
The sculptural composition “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa” for the Roman church of Santa Maria della Vittoria became a true masterpiece of Bernini’s sculptural creativity. The composition reveals one of the episodes of the notes of the Spanish nun Teresa, who lived in the 16th century. and later canonized by the church. In her notes, she told how once an angel appeared to her in a dream and pierced her heart with a golden arrow:
“In the hand of the angel, I saw a long golden arrow with a fiery point; it seemed to me that he thrust it several times into my heart … The pain was so strong that I could not resist screaming, but at the same time I experienced such infinite sweetness that … let this pain last forever. ”
Bernini faced a difficult task to depict a supernatural phenomenon, so the sculptural group was conceived as a vision in a dream. The author managed to masterfully convey in marble the highest tension of the heroine’s feelings. The unreality of what is happening is emphasized by beams of rays in the background and swirling clouds on which St. Teresa is reclining, powerlessly throwing her head back. Her eyelids are half-closed, as if she does not see the gentle and smiling angel who appeared before her. Suffering and pleasure are intertwined in her painfully ecstatic appearance. The heroine’s emotions are brought to the extreme, to the point of frenzy, but at the same time, the viewer does not create the impression of unnaturalness in the manifestation of feelings.
The composition is placed in a deep niche framed with colored marble. On the reliefs of the side walls, Bernini captured the customers. The sculptor reinforced the effect of mystical vision with the light falling in the daytime through the yellow glass of the cathedral window. The master hides the fulcrum of the figures from the viewer, he manages to imagine them floating in the clouds.
Looking at this work, it seems that Bernini deliberately does not allow the nature of the stone to manifest here: marble is perceived as devoid of gravity and weight. Solid stone is plastic and pliable, it conveys the airiness of clouds, the velvety softness of the skin, the smoothness of the fabric. In the figures, it is polished with great care: the folds of the robe wriggle violently, merging with the swirling clouds. The folds of the draperies are cut so deeply that this foamed surface destroys the integrity of the volume of the composition. Yes, Bernini defeated marble, he really made it “flexible like wax.”
Among the best creations of Bernini are the fountains with which he decorated Rome. The most famous of them are the Triton Fountain and the Fountain of the Four Rivers – a brilliant combination of expressive baroque plastic with bubbling and foaming water.
