Sculpture

“Nike of Samothrace” was sculpted in second century AD during the hellenistic culture. This 8ft high sculpture was found on an island called Samothrace, north of the Aegean, and though beautifully carved, the artist is not known. It was discovered at a sanctuary in a harbor that faced the predominate wind. It was as if the wind was blowing directly on the sculpture itself. The Nike was made to act like a figure head on the prow of a ship, and though it never really was on a ship, it was the bow of a stone ship in a temple like building.

The “Nike of Samothrace” is greatly appreciated because of the strong force of motion, and realistic qualities, as well as its symbolic references to the Greek culture. The Greeks period has come a long way when we look at the way the Archaic/Egyptian period and Hellenistic period carved and shaped people. The Archaic and Egyptians sculpted people and clothes flat and simple. Their bodies did not twist very much and were pretty straight. The clothes on the people were basically just lines, or slits in the stone, and was not really realistic.

Comparing this to the way the Hellenistic period carved their people, they used a lot of motion and movement. There people twisted in different directions as they would in real life, and their clothes were deeply carved and looked very real. The “Nike of Samothrace” was carved out of marble, and accurately shows texture in the wings, and the folds in the cloth. The Greek culture had studied and celebrated the body and they used their knowledge to show expressive forces in their art. They used hammers and chisels to create beautiful, realistic flows on the stone, and made it look like it was actually moving.

The “Nike of Samothrace” is a carving beautiful, voluptuous woman in a flowing dress with two large wings out stretched behind her. This statue had lost her head and arms, but is still recognizable as the Nike of victory. Her body movements and intricate detail of her tunic is very dramatic as she seems to walk gracefully in a storm. The Nike was to be on the prow of a ship in the ocean, and that is strongly seen by the movement of her dress. You can practically see the strong winds whipping around her body as her skirt is blown behind and around her.

The drapery is very graceful and strong as it is pulled in the direction of her body and one can practically see the energy in her movements. Her body is grounded by her legs as she strides forward. Her abdomen twists slightly as if finding balance in the wind, and her wings are aloft behind her as if she just landed in from a fierce headwind. The sheer chiton that she is wearing clings to her body as if it is wet from a hefty sea spray, billowing in the wind. Her body is proportionate, and accurately depicts the perfect body scale of a Greek goddess.

The texture in her wings, and the fabric of her garment are very life-like and pick up light in their deep groves to make it look more dramatic. The artist shows how he is able to carve the female body, portray realistic cloth, and convey victory and power in this statue. It is believable and relatable to the average person because of the stance in the body and the way the a strong wind would really blow around your clothes. The Nike of Victory has been resembled before in Greek art. This goddess represented the victory over war and contests. Therefore, it was shown on Greek coins, temples, and other important objects.

The Nike of Victory is seen again in the carving “Nike Adjusting her Sandal” on the Temple of Athena. This Winged Nike leans down to adjust her sandal as her chiton slid off her shoulder. Similarly to the “Nike of Samothrace”, the “Nike Adjusting her Sandal” has large wings to balance her pose and decorative swirls of heavy pleated fabric that clings to her body. She appears to be delicate and light just as the “Nike of Samothrace”. The Nike of Victory is seen with wings, intricately carved fabric, and with the scale of the “perfect body” it shows divinity and creates something that would be desired.

She also was the messenger that spreads the news of victory, and that is something that Greeks hold in high regards and were always trying to obtain. The dramatic feel to the “Nike of Samothrace” brings out fierce emotions and give the onlooker the sense of accomplishment and encouragement. It conveys many emotions as it stands tall and strong. It’s formate of the “perfect female body” and the precise folds of the cloth in motion, relates almost exactly to the style of the three goddess on the Parthenon frieze.

However, the three goddesses appear to have just woken up from a relaxing sleep. They are calm and quiet and reveal the restful attitude of mellow goddess on Mt. Olympus. When looking at them you feel serene and peaceful, getting the calm feel of life as a god. The “Nike of Samothrace” is obviously very different in that aspect. This goddess is ready to go to war as her stance is fierce and ready for anything. The goddess is responding to energy and natural forces whereas the Parthenon frieze goddesses are tranquil, composed, and o not seem to be worrying about much at all. The Statue of “Laocoon” is a carving of Laocoon and his sons struggling against large sea serpents trying to destroy them. You can clearly see the force of motion being pulled in many different directions. With their legs pushing one way, and their arms pulling another, and then with his head cocked back, you can se the different directions his bare muscles are being strained. This statue is very dynamic and conveys an emotion of urgency and fight, just as the “Nike of Samothrace” does.

The way the Nike’s body twists and is not flat and straight, is the same as the dramatic gesture in “Laocoon”. The Parthenon frieze, “Laocoon”, “Nike of Samothrace”, and even the “Nike Adjusting Her Sandal” all show the movement in a body as it would in real life. The way the fabric falls and the twist in the body make the statues feel and look more real and relatable. At this time in Greek culture respect for the gods was immense. They believed the gods were heroes and took sides to help out; obviously you would want to be in the gods favor.

When carving the “Nike of Samothrace”, the artist made her to show the people that the gods were on their side and that they would have victory over their war and conflicts. The Nike was in the same style as all the Greek goddesses would have been, with the ideal body shape, flowing robs, and for the Nike’s, large wings. She was placed in a temple to show her importance and divinity and to represent the power that Samothrace wanted to convey. She was carved to look like a real goddess, to bring victory over their sea fair, and to relate to the Greek culture just by who she was and who she related too.

Auguste Rodin was a French artist most famous for his sculpting. He was born in 1840 and survived into the Twentieth century, dying in November of 1917.  He possessed and innate ability to sculpt in clay, creating dynamic movement in roughly pock marked human figures with a high degree of realism. His work was not well received initially though he came into vogue rather quickly.

He was schooled in a traditional manner on the Ecole de Beaux Arte in Paris but in his work he was in the vanguard of the movement toward modern sculpture (Wikipedia.org Rodin).  Constantin Brancusi was born in Romania in 1876 and died in 1957. His sculptures were simple, reflecting his background as a stonemason in his native land. Having run away from home at an early age to escape the abuse of his father and brothers, he impressed an employer with his carving ability and the man financed his secondary education at a crafts school where he graduated with honors. He then attended the Bucharest School of Fine Arts (Wikipedia.org Brancusi).

Brancusi made his way to Paris, the center of the world of art at that time, and made the acquaintance of fellow artists and intellectuals (Franck & Liebow). For two years he labored in the workshop of  Antonin Mercie of the Paris Ecole des Beaux Arte. At that point he was invited to work with the master, Auguste Rodin. Brancusi recognized the genius of Rodin but apparently felt smothered by the essence of the great sculptor and left after a few months. He was quoted as saying that, “Nothing can grow under big trees,” (Wikipedia.org Brancusi) Rodin was, at his core, a naturalist, and as consumed with the emotion and character he found in the model as he was in faithfully rendering an exact likeness.

He also, it was said, believed, more so than other sculptors, that a human’s character is revealed in his physical features. His theory was that every portion of the sculpted work had a part to play in communicating the feeling, power and inner strength of the work. The grip of the toes, for instance, in his Thinker, is depicted to show the intensity with which the subject is going about his task. “What makes my Thinker think is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back, and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes” (quoted in Wikipedia.org Rodin)  he said.

While most of Paris’ sculptors were working in clay and having their work cast in bronze, Brancusi most often labored as a carver and utilized the direct method of creating his sculpture. He removed the superfluous material and was left with his creation. In the case of his original The Kiss, (there are several versions), as the old saw goes, he simple cut off everything that did not look like a pair of kissers. Carved in limestone, it measures 23” x 13 ¾ “ x 10 ¾”. It is a highly stylized depiction of a man and woman face to face, their arms entwined, their lips pressed together and their bodies touching.

The work gives the impression that the two are so engrossed and joined in love and sensuality that they have become one. Rodin’s  version of the same subject is likewise carved directly into stone, in this case, marble, though there exist many replicas of the work in bronze, cast from Rodin’s original carving. The original title was Francesca da Rimini and depicted a scene from Dante’s Inferno. It represents an Italian noblewoman who falls in love with her husband’s younger brother. The couple are nude and embracing, with their lips close, each to the other, but not actually touching, so the kiss is not consummated.

Both works by these two contemporary masters, working in the same city, are of the same subject and both are carved directly into stone. Here the similarity between the two ends. Rodin’s powerful style is seen in the work and  there is no question as to what he means to say. The sensuality of the Rodin work is manifest in the texture of the piece and the rendition of muscle and bone. There is a tension in the work that is palpable. Brancusi’s Kiss is simple and direct. It is highly stylized and cubistic in its conception.

There is more than a hint of the primitive in the statue. The two artists chose to handle form in a drastically different manner while addressing the same theme. Rodin’s work and even its original title suggest sensuality, passion and perhaps even outright sin. Brancusi’s Kiss is more suggestive of love than of passion (Art 101). It is static and has no movement to it.  The two humans depicted in Brancusi’s work are bonded as if they are one unit, suggesting a stability and deeper emotional unity than that conveyed by Rodin

The two artists have, as would have likely pleased Robert Frost, taken different roads. It is not certain which of the two men chose the one less traveled but there are differences that make it obvious that they diverge. As to which is the better work, that is not possible to determine, for art, like much of life, is subjective and largely up to individual taste.

But Rodin’s work is more academic and conventional where Brancusi’s work is more primal and addresses a basic emotion in the heart and soul of humanity in perhaps a more direct manner. It is possible to dismiss Brancusi’s work at first glance, saying that a child could have done it, while Rodin’s piece has a realism that would belie such a thought.

There are those critics who suggest that the Emperor is indeed nude and the Brancusi work is a joke foisted on the art public much like the attitude many take toward the works of Picasso. Rodin’s work became acceptable after a period of adjustment and the public began to understand what he meant to convey. Brancusi’s work is similar in that aspect, and more acceptable as the public gets past their original assessment. Still, both pieces are from the hand of a master who has chosen his own method of bringing his vision to the world.

Works Cited

1. Franck, D. and Liebow, C. Bohemian Paris: Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse And the Birth of Modern Art  New York: Grove Press 2001 Wikipedia.org  Auguste Rodin 2007 Retrieved 6-7-07 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Rodin
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantin_Brancusi#_note-brainjuice

The French sculptor created the masterpiece, Burghers of Calais was first displayed in eighteen eighty-nine. It took him five years to complete the bronze statue of the six men who save the city of Calais by offering their lives during the Hundred Year War. Even though the subject of the Burghers of Calais is Medieval in its subject, it is an example of Modernism.

Since a sculpture is three dimensional it is definitely different than other art works yet the elements of Modernism can still be employed. Modernism is an artistic movement where artists deliberately left behind the forms used by artist in the past.

With Burghers of Calais, Rodin expressed the realistic elements of the human body rather than the idealistic ones of the past. Instead of adhering to the ornate items that could distract the viewer form the intended subject, he portrayed the simple, rustic garments warn by the men of that time. He also diverted from the past masters by concentrating on the raw emotion in the expressions of the subjects as they knew they were facing execution. Despair, fear, sadness, and anger are realistic on the faces and in the eyes of the subjects. Displaying the emotions was a departure from the heroic light that subjects had been shown in the past.

Another enormous element of Modernism is that the viewer be allowed to take an active part in the analysis of the art. Rodin did this with Burghers of Calais by having the pedestal removed from the base of the statue. This allowed the viewer to see eye to eye with the subjects. He/she could better feel the emotion that is displayed by each of the men. The viewer could become one with the subject an allow the raw feelings to pervade their beings References Delahunt, M. (1996-2008). Artlex. Retrieved April 9, 2008 from http://www. artlex. com Rodin, A. (1889). Burghers of Calais.

Since balance is a key design principle in art, it is important that the artist achieve it in one of two ways. A piece of art must be either symmetrical or asymmetrical to skeletal achieve balance and not create tension in the work. When a piece of art is symmetrical it is a mirror image. There are an equal number of items of equal size, colors, textures, and etc. Many times this is used in architecture to create a pleasing effect to the eye. Balance can also be attained through asymmetrical design.

Equilibrium is still attainable through this technique. Asymmetrical means that several smaller items are balanced by a larger item, larger and smaller objects are arranged at different lengths away from the center, different textures are used, or brighter or darker colors contrasted by lighter or muted shades. The famous artist Leonardo Da Vinci, who lived in the fifteenth century, used the symmetrical technique in his famous drawing of the Vitruvian Man.

In this drawing, it is mostly a mirrored image of the man and his anatomy. This draws the viewer’s eye to the center of the page. However, there is a tiny portion of the work that is asymmetrical. There is slightly more color on one side that is balanced with both feet turning to the side with less color. Deborah Butterfield, a sculptor from the twentieth century to the present, used the asymmetrical technique for her sculpture of the horse, Verde.

The back portion of the horse is bulky held on two skeletal legs while the front of the horse is opened and curvy with thin strips of metal for the neck and head. It parallels the way that a real horse would look and it is totally balanced. Works Cited Butterfield, D. (c. 1990). Verde. Da Vinci. L. (c. 1485). The Vitruvian Man. Skaalid, B. (1999). Classic Design Theory Principles of Design: Balance. Retrieved April 3, 2008 from http://www. usask. ca/education/coursework/skaalid/theory/cgdt/balance. htm

In any history, and above all in the history of art, there are two main aspects, from which the subject may be considered. The subject may be either studied from the point of view of general tendencies, the development of types and ideas, their national character, and the circumstances that surrounded and fostered their growth; or attention may be given to the achievements of individuals, their personality, and the contributions that they respectively made to the general progress.

It is true that in any comprehensive study the two must be blended, must supplement and confirm each other. Whichever principle is followed to guide the selection and arrangement of the facts, the study cannot follow it to the entire exclusion of the other. Yet the artist is no less dependent upon external circumstances for the occasion and the material of his works.

Had not the predecessors worked through generations of experiment and observation to improve the familiar types, to attain mastery over the stubborn substance of marble and bronze, and to acquire and perfect a skilled technique in the treatment of the nude and of drapery, no sculptor of the fifth century could have conceived or executed the bold yet symmetrical contortions of the Discobolus. Had Myron been born a century earlier, he could no more have produced these works than if he had lived at the present day.

Before the study approaches the work of this individual master, it may be advisable to take a more general survey of the character of Greek sculpture, as contrasted with earlier and later styles. No art, and especially that of sculpture, can make true progress unless it is constantly kept in touch with nature by observation. Here again the social surroundings of the Greek artist gave him an immense advantage over all others. The daily exercises in the palaestra or gymnasium and the frequently recurring athletic festivals gave him constant opportunities for observing the human form both in rest and in action.

This perfection of condition and of all-round muscular development with the help of a well-trained memory is one of the chief attainments of Myron. For the observation of drapery, too, he had constant opportunities in the figures that surrounded him in daily life. There he could see a variety and grace of texture and of folds such as no draping of a model in unfamiliar garments and materials could ever have suggested. It is true that the same opportunities for varied observation did not exist in the case of the nude female figure.

It is perhaps for this very reason that Greek statues of this type, however beautiful in form, rarely if ever impress us with the same breadth and nobility of conception as the corresponding male figures, whether of gods or men. The feeling of the Greeks themselves about the matter is well illustrated by the story of Zeuxis at Croton , how the people of that town, when they commissioned him to paint a picture of Helen, and wished to give him every opportunity for excelling himself in such a subject, allowed him to see a selection of the most beautiful of their maidens just as freely as he could see their brothers exercising in the palaestra.

This is evidently the meaning of the story, though it is misinterpreted by some later authorities in accordance with the eclectic spirit of their own age. Myron was a Greek sculptor. He is supposed to have been a pupil of Ageladas of Argos, but he worked largely in Athens. Sculpting in bronze, he was noted for his animals (of which no examples have survived) and for his athletes in action. His works are known through descriptions by ancient writers, such as Pliny and Pausanias, and two of them by copies, the Discobolus (Gr. discus thrower), the best copy of which is the Lancelotti Discobolus in Rome (Terme Museum), and Athena and Marsyas, of which there are also Roman copies . We know but little about Myron’s life. He was a native of Eleutherae, a town on the frontier of Attica and Boeotia. To judge from the list of his works and the places where they were set up, he must have enjoyed a reputation throughout Hellenic lands. The statues of athletic victors from his hand could be seen at Olympia and at Delphi. However, several of his most famous works were in Athens, and it is probable that his artistic career was mainly associated with that city.

He is recorded, however, to have been a pupil of the Argive sculptor Ageladas, who was for a long time the acknowledged leader of the Peloponnesian School of athletic sculpture; and it is said that his fellow-pupils were Phidias and Polyclitus. The dates of Myron’s artistic career can be fixed with certainty by the Olympiads of the victors whose statues he made; Lycinus won in 448 B. C. , and Timanthes in 456; Ladas probably in 476; but so famous an athlete may have had a statue set up in his honor some years after the event.

The traditional date given by Pliny, which makes Myron a contemporary of Polyclitus, is evidently wrong. His son Lycius was employed on an important public commission, the statues set up by the knights of Athens at the entrance to the Acropolis, about 446 B. C. We must, therefore, assign the artistic activity of Myron himself to the first half of the fifth century. His early manhood must have coincided with the period of the Persian wars. Of the great men of this period, our knowledge, after all, is most unsatisfactory.

Only one of the transitional sculptors who are mentioned by ancient writers, Myron, has a definite personality. He was clearly an artist of decidedly individual tendencies, who can hardly be called typical of any school. Though all of Myron’s works have perished, we have copies of at least two of them, from which we can gain a fairly clear idea of this ancient master. This is the first time that we have had to deal with copies, and it may be worthwhile, therefore, to digress for a moment and consider the nature of the copies on which much of our knowledge of ancient sculpture depends.

In the later days of antiquity, especially after the Roman conquest of Greece, there was evidently an enormous demand for reproductions of the famous works of Greek sculpture, and numerous artists devoted themselves to supplying this demand. Some seem to reproduce their originals with considerable exactness; others are obviously far inferior to them. Often one copy was made from another, and sometimes the copyists did not hesitate to alter the originals in details, so that many of their productions are reflections rather than copies, in any exact sense.

One very common alteration was the addition of a support in the form of a tree-stump or some other object. This was almost always employed when the copyist, as frequently happened, was working out a marble copy of a bronze original. Moreover, mutilated ancient statues, when they were dug out of the ground, were commonly handed over to a marble-worker for “restoration”, that is, for the addition of legs or heads or noses, whatever, in fact, was necessary to make the statue complete.

Thus, we have constantly to keep in mind that in dealing with copies, the problem often is to determine, from several widely divergent and differently restored copies, the general appearance and the details of an ancient statue. This method of procedure is excellently illustrated by the most famous of Myron’s works, the Discobolus, or Discus-thrower. The copies of this, which have been found, vary greatly in details. All are marred by the supporting tree-stump, though this was differently treated by different copyists.

Only one has a head, which has never been broken off and which shows the original position, as it is described by Lucian. One fragmentary copy was completely misunderstood by the sculptor to whom it was handed over and restored as a fleeing Niobid! The Discobolus is justly famous for its splendid suggestion of vigorous manhood, its bold pose, and its perfect balance. If it were not for the formal locks of hair, the rather expressionless face, and some ancient evidence, which fixes the career of Myron in the first half of the fifth century, the statue might well be regarded as a work of the great age of Greek sculpture.

As it is, we must probably assign the original to the years just before 450, and regard the unusual freedom with which it is conceived as proof of the originality of Myron rather than as evidence of a general adoption of such active poses by the men of the transitional time. Such an inference is borne out by some other works of the master, such as his group of Athena and Marsyas, and especially his Ladas, a statue of a runner poised on tiptoe just as he reached the goal, a work of which only literary accounts are preserved.

Moreover, down to the time of Alexander the Great such violent action as is suggested by these works was rarely represented by the Greek sculptors. These particular innovations, therefore, were little imitated by Myron’s immediate successors, but there can be little doubt that much of the progress made during the transitional period was due to his initiative. In compensation for this cooling of ancient enthusiasm, we may perhaps extenuate the one weakness noted by the ancients. He was accounted a master of anatomy and action, but weak in the rendering of the face.

Conceding that the faces are not very expressive, it may be doubted whether this is altogether a weakness. It is questionable whether the athletes whom he represents were very expressive of countenance, and it is altogether certain that their faces were not the subject of chief attention. In still further subordinating facial expression, Myron is but following the great law of concentration, which is recognized in all great art. Probably he could not in any case have been a master of psychic analysis, but it is more than doubtful if his themes would have gained by such mastery.

Other masters of the same theme long betray the same tendency. Myron was the earliest of the great masters of Greek sculpture. That is to say, he was the earliest sculptor whose works appeared, even to critics who were familiar with the whole range of later art, to be admirable alike for the boldness and originality of their design and the skill of their execution, and who was spoken of in the same breath with Polyclitus and Lysippus, with Phidias and Praxiteles. Quintilian himself declares that to find fault with the Discobolus argues a lack of appreciation of art.

The Dorian sculptor Myron specialized in athletes. A marble copy found in Rome demonstrates the way a sculptor may at the same time hold to conventions and reach out toward new forms. The Discus Thrower is really designed to be seen only from the front. Anyone who moves around to the side of this piece can see that it is all on a flat plane. The general line of the figure, which starts with the left foot and runs up through the arms, ending in the discus, suggests somewhat the tension of an opened spring, which will snap shut and propel the wheel into space.

The muscles appear about as natural as those in the contemporary Olympian pediment sculpture, and yet this is a single figure. Up to that time, single figures had always some religious significance and therefore remained columnar or geometric. This one is frankly realistic and may have been made pretty much for its own sake. It was no new departure in art for Myron to represent an athlete practicing the exercise in which he excelled. His great attainment, as exemplified by the Discobolus, was the choice of a subject and a moment that was suitable to representation in sculpture.

He appears to have been the first to realize the principle, never afterwards violated in Greek sculpture of the best period, that a statue or a sculptural group must be complete in itself, must possess a certain unity and concentration, so as to attract and contain the interest of the spectator within the work itself, and not to direct it to other extraneous objects, nor even to allow it to wander away. In the Discobolus, the self-contained completeness in the action finds its expression and counterpart in the lines of the composition itself.

It may be, as Quintilian says, labored and contorted, but the result is not, as might have been expected, restless in effect or tiring to the eye, because every part is in harmony with the whole, and the eye is carried on by an easy and pleasing succession of outlines round the whole contour of the figure . Beside this excellence of artistic composition, the clever choice of the right moment for representation and of an athletic exercise in which such a moment occurs must also be allowed their merit.

The disc or quoit was not aimed at any mark, but merely hurled as far as possible in a given direction, as in the modern competitions of putting the weight or throwing the hammer. Therefore, there was no need for the eye of the competitor to be turned towards a distant goal, but the head could follow the motion of the arm that swung the quoit, the position of the feet sufficing to define the direction of the throw.

A false restoration, which makes the thrower turn his head toward this direction, not only produces a painful and even impossible attitude, but also destroys the harmony of the composition, by breaking in upon the system of concentric curves in which every member of the body follows the swing of the extended arm. Athleticism, however, gave one important thing to the Greeks. It was from the models in the palaestra and the stadium that the sculptors of Greece drew their inspiration.

It was of course an immense benefit to that art to be able to see the stripped body at exercise in the sunlight, and that, coupled with the natural Greek sense of form, is the secret of the unchallenged supremacy of Greek sculpture. Perfect anatomy of the body was achieved even before the face could be properly rendered. The nude male figure was the favorite theme of fifth-century art, and extraordinary perfection was reached by Myron. Myron’s Discobolus is, of course, one of the best known of ancient statues. There are few statues of the fifth century, which thus select an instant out of a series of movements.

In the Discobolus, the clear lines of demarcation are not inconsistent with a correct and skilful modeling of the surface. The effect is perhaps somewhat dry, and suggests the appearance of a man in hard training, and even the tension of muscles that would not be exerted at the moment of action is portrayed. However, what convention is left is so thoroughly harmonized with the results of fresh observation as to give the impression of a living body, and to justify the criticism applied to Myron by ancient critics, that he “almost captured the souls of men and animals in his bronzes” .

The beginning of the seventeenth century was the time when the arguments between naturalism and classicism were to preoccupy much of the Baroque age. Perhaps the most 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 sculpted figure works came to personify the very spirit 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 graceful gesture of Donatello’s bronze speak of the break with the stiffness and grim determinism of the medieval age. Michelangelo’s David is quintessentially heroic, his gigantic body and sensuous musculature the very idiom of human self-confidence in the High Renaissance.

By comparison, Bernini’s sculpture, neither complacent nor particularly grand, takes on combativeness and an offensive posture; here the body appears to attack and defeat. Christopher Baker argues that Bernini revolutionized sculpture by “Contorting facial expressions and bodies, endowing skin and drapery with tactile sensuousness, making hair and features seem 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 provocative engagement of the space amplified the viewer’s relationship to the art.

This was the very essence of the Baroque. Bernini’s technical skill is also worthy of consideration, for here we can see the influence of Caravaggio (Loh). Bernini’s captivating use of light and shade through the technique of undercutting gave his cold marble figure an emotional vitality on a par with the very best chiaroscuro in painting. And to appreciate 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 indeed a feeling shared by sculptors of the day, then perhaps, as Varriano suggests, Bernini’s figures “leapt from their prisons” (73). The emotional gestures and agitated surfaces give one the impression that the figures are indeed flesh and blood. The drama of the scene is caught entirely by the convincing portrayal of movement, produced by a series of deep cuts into the marble surface that catch and reflect light.

These deep spaces of shadow are produced by a technique called “undercutting” – a method of manipulating the descriptive character of light 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 most dramatic of gestures. In Bernini’s remarkable The Ecstasy of St. Teresa (Fig. 2) we are witness to the dramatic potential of such a development.

Noteworthy is the way the draperies of the enraptured saint take on the lightness of cloth and the way scene itself is wrapped within 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, white, green, and black varieties to produce spectacular results. One such example is his execution 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 symbol of death – the skeleton. This is the Baroque sensibility in all its glory. Considering Bernini’s rather formidable skill in engaging space and working materials, it was perhaps inevitable that he would embrace architecture as well. The most notable of his achievements was his design for the piazza of St. Peter’s 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 psychologically heightens the pilgrim’s anticipation of the Church (Marder, 112), appear very much in keeping with his quintessentially Baroque sensibility. Here, space is arranged for what can be described only as kinesthetic ends; Bernini’s deliberate manipulation of the viewer’s sense of rhythm and motion as they progress towards the steps of St. Peter’s 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 that perhaps epitomizes the rise of specifically Baroque architecture. Figure 1 Gianlorenzo Bernini David 1623-24 White marble 170 cm 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 gilded 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 Improved: 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, London 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