The beginning of the seventeenth century

The beginning of the ordinal century was the time when the arguments between naturalism and classicism were to preoccupy much of the baroque age. Perhaps the well-nigh successful integration of these ideas came in the work of the sculptor-architect Gianlorenzo Bernini. No other artist during the Baroque era so completely dominated his discipline as did this virtuoso, whose mold insert works came to personify the very essence of the Counter-Reformation. Born in Naples, from an early age he possessed tremendous technical skill in modeling.His David (Fig. 1), of 1623-24, sculpted between ages of twenty-five and twenty-six, evokes comparison with the Davids of Donatello and Michelangelo. each work encapsulates the ideal and aspirations of its days. The sinuous body and supple gesture of Donatellos bronze speak of the run a route with the stiffness and grim determinism of the medieval age. Michelangelos David is quintessenti aloney heroic, his commodious body and sensuous muscu lature the very phrase of human self-confidence in the High Renaissance.By comparison, Berninis sculpture, neither complacent nor particularly grand, takes on militancy and an offensive posture here the body appears to approaching and defeat. Christopher Baker argues that Bernini revolutionized sculpture by Contorting facial expressions and bodies, endowing unclothe and drapery with tactile sensuousness, making hair and features recover to move, and differentiating textures for colorist effects (21) Indeed, the agitation of the area around the figure was in fact very new to sculpture, and its inflammatory engagement of the space amplified the viewers kinship to the art.This was the very essence of the Baroque. Berninis technical skill is also worthy of consideration, for here we can see the influence of Caravaggio (Loh). Berninis captivating routine of liberal and shade through the proficiency of undercutting gave his cold stain figure an emotional vitality on a par with t he very best chiaroscuro in painting. And to pry fully such an advance in sculpture, it is necessary to consider in greater depth stone carving as it was practiced in the seventeenth century.Michelangelo likened carving to liberating a figure from its stone captivity. If this was whencece a feeling shared by sculptors of the day, then peradventure, as Varriano suggests, Berninis figures leapt from their prisons (73). The emotional gestures and agitated surfaces concur one the impression that the figures are indeed frame and blood. The drama of the scene is caught entirely by the convert portrayal of faeces, shitd by a series of intricate cuts into the marble surface that catch and reflect accrue.These copious spaces of shadow are produced by a technique called undercutting a method of manipulating the descriptive character of send on stone. Undercutting is a technique of creating deep cuts in stone which produce shadow (Rothschild, 72) the result suggests movement and dynamism, as the surface is transformed by light and shade capable of expressing the near hammy of gestures. In Berninis remarkable The Ecstasy of St. Teresa (Fig. 2) we are see to the dramatic potential of such a development.Noteworthy is the way the draperies of the enraptured saint take on the luminance of cloth and the way scene itself is wrapped at bottom a turmoil of lines created through the intensive use of shadow. Bernini was also well aware of coloristic possibilities afforded by marble and used striking variation of the pink, albumen, green, and black varieties to produce spectacular results. One such example is his death penalty of the tomb of Alexander VII (Fig.3) of 1671-8, where traditional white marble figures are juxtaposed against colored marble drapery, striking black pedestals and the every present symbolisation of death the skeleton. This is the Baroque sensibility in all its glory. Considering Berninis rather formidable skill in engaging space and wo rking materials, it was perhaps needful that he would embrace architecture as well. The most notable of his achievements was his design for the piazza of St. Peters in Rome. Relying on many of the techniques and innovations of Renaissance architects, Bernini nevertheless allowed his engaging sense of novelty to guide him.As a result, the unorthodox combination of Doric and Ionic orders and the dramatic sweep of the colonnade, which psycho transparently heightens the pilgrims anticipation of the church service (Marder, 112), appear very much in memory with his quintessentially Baroque sensibility. Here, space is arranged for what can be described only as kinesthetic ends Berninis deliberate manipulation of the viewers sense of rhythm and motion as they progress towards the travel of St. Peters is thus a logical extension of his sculptural strategy space as a psychological tool.It is this notable departure in the construction of space from the relative stasis of Renaissance tha t perhaps epitomizes the rise of specifically Baroque architecture. Figure 1 Gianlorenzo Bernini David 1623-24 White marble 170 cm genus Galleria Borghese, Rome Figure 2 Gianlorenzo Bernini Ecstasy of St. Teresa, 1642-52 marble Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome Figure 3 Gianlorenzo Bernini Tomb of Pope Alexander (Chigi) VII 1671-78 Marble and embellish bronze, over life-size Basilica di San Pietro, Vatican Bibliography Baker, Christopher.Absolutism and the Scientific Revolution, 1600-1720 A Biographical Dictionary. Westport, CT Greenwood Press, 2002 Loh, Maria H. New and meliorate Repetition as Originality in Italian Baroque Practice and Theory. The Art Bulletin. 86. 3. (2004) 477+ Marder, T. A. Bernini and the Art of Architecture. New York, capital of the United Kingdom and Paris Abbeville Press, 1998. Rothschild, Lincoln. Sculpture through the Ages. New York Whittlesey House, 1942 Varriano, John. Italian Baroque and Rococo Architecture. New York Oxford University Press, 1986