Art Crushes: Gianlorenzo Bernini

I am an art nerd. I grew up going to museums, volunteering summers as a docent, drawing, and eventually studied art history, which led to several lucky trips abroad. For art lovers, there are moments you always remember, when you see a work that really moves you for the first time. For me, one of these happened in my first art history survey in college. My school, rather than having two surveys covering the entirety of art history, broke it down into several specifications. The first one I took was Renaissance and Baroque. My professor eventually became my advisor, and one day in class she put up a slide that took my breath away: Gianlorenzo Bernini's David.

I was hooked, and feel head over heels for Bernini and his stunning sculptures. I was fortunate enough to travel to Italy for the first time at the end of that semester, and see many of the works that had captivated me in person. I went on to write my thesis on Bernini, and I know now that he was probably a huge asshole. He was the quintessential egotistical genius artist, making friends and enemies throughout his career, experiencing a few stunning low moments, and pulling a few soap opera-worthy escapades (he was a fiery Italian, after all). The only thing more dramatic than Bernini's life was his work itself.

"Habakkuk and the Angel," from the Chigi Chapel in Rome. All photos taken by me.

 Bernini was a Baroque sculptor, and his work fits in with the periods' taste for exciting, emotional imagery. The reformation had happened and Catholic Italy had to revitalize its viewpoint, moving from the stunning and pensive, but in many ways quieter, imagery of the Renaissance to the visceral and accessible Baroque. Suddenly saints and Madonnas looked more like the people on the streets, and more contemporary figures like St. Teresa of Avila were featured to make Catholicism more relevant. Not all of Bernini's work was religious, but he worked for numerous popes and was eventually named as official architect of the Vatican, so he was an integral part of this movement.

"Daniel and the Lion" from the Chigi Chapel. A terrified Daniel prays for salvation; the lion is just visible licking his foot for a taste.

Since Bernini was a sculptor and an architect, his work mostly stays in situ in Italy. Recently, however, the Kimball Art Museum put on an exhibit of his work. While they didn't truck over any of his life-size marbles, they exhibited exciting elements of his artistic process with his clay models, and I got a chance to see a new aspect of his work in person.

Having seen Bernini's sculptures, fountains, and architecture in Rome previously, it was a very different experience seeing these clay models. They read quite differently to me than the marbles, both because of the material and the scale (I was expecting them to be much larger, closer to the size of the finished products). But while different, the clay models are equally beautiful and provided the lucky curators with some fantastic insights into Bernini's working process--these are basically sculpture sketches, and it was fascinating to see which portions Bernini focused on and which he loosely threw in without feeling like a lot of attention was needed at that stage of the process.

My favorite models from the exhibition were the ones for the Four Rivers Fountain. A feat of engineering that still dazzles tourists today, the fountain had four sections representing what were considered the four great rivers of the world (each from a different continent) at the time: the Danube, the Ganges, the Rio de la Plata, and the Nile.

The Four Rivers Fountain. Nearest, the figure representing the Nile sits with covered head, since the headwaters of the Nile had not yet been discovered at the time.

The exhibit featured a model for the lion seen above. This was, I think, my favorite piece at the Kimball; it showed Bernini's process in sculpting the clay, since he had to manipulate it to make it larger for the model (as anyone who has worked in terracotta knows, adding clay can be a painstaking process, since anything with air bubbles in it runs the risk of exploding when fired). It also showed the process for the marble, since Bernini would mark the areas that would be made from separate marble blocks so it was easy to understand how things would fit together later.

Anyone who's ever felt a connection to an artist or a work of art knows how different it is to see that work in person versus on the pages of a book or on a screen; I was so thrilled to live near enough to the Kimball for a change to visit some Berninis in the flesh. The works remain on display at the Kimball until May 5, check it out if you're in the area!