Blog #5 (Chapter 22) Baroque Art In Italy

Blog #5 Baroque Art in Italy
Monument to Anexander VII (Fabio Chigi April 7, 1655-May 22 1667)
St Peters Basilica
By Gian Lorenzo Bernini
One of the most famous papal monuments in St Peters Basilica was created by Bernini, the same artist/ sculpture/ architect who created the Baldacchino in St Peters and the statue of Ecstasy of St Teresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria. Although this piece was not in our Art History book, it is one that I saw when visiting St Peters. As I was walking around the enormous Basilica, (the largest church in the world that can hold 60,000 people!) I came across this unusual monument. The fact that it even caught my eye is somewhat of a miracle as the Basilica is 730 feet long/ 500 feet wide. It has over 120 different monuments, statues and altar pieces. So when you have walked most of the way down the Basilica from Portico to Apse, and have already seen the Pieta, the Baldacchino, the Altar of the Chair and beautiful Gloria above, it is very easy to get overwhelmed by all of the statues, and works of art. But as I was standing at the edge of the Left Transept, I overheard a tour guide speaking in English about the Monument to Alexander VII. She was pointing out that the sculptural drapery over the doorway, below the statue, was made of Sicilian Jasper and that it was created by breaking up the stone, and ‘gluing” it back onto the form of the drapery to make a beautiful and unique flowing colored marble surface. This tour guide said that nobody knows what kind of epoxy the stonemason used to this day, as it worked so seamlessly and has held up so beautifully (remember- this was in 1673- 336 years ago!) Upon further inspection, I began to see that this monument was unlike the others in the Basilica. Most monuments are fairly straight forward, with a Pope or Saint modeled in profile or head on, looking out at the Basilica with a contemplative, and yet detached look. Alexander is kneeling in prayer. He seems calm and peaceful. But on all four sides of him, below his plinth, are the 4 “virtues” embodied in the female form, of Charity, Truth, Justice and Prudence. The faces of the 4 virtues look to Alexander as to tell him that something distressing has suddenly appeared. The “drapery” below the plinth is actually the cloak of “Death” who is holding up one bony hand to reveal an hour glass, signifying that time has run out. The Skeleton of Death is in gilded bronze and is cloaked in the beautiful red and pink Jasper marble. This sets Death off powerfully against the white marble of the 4 Virtues and the Statue of Alexander. The plinth is in green marble with a black and gold nameplate. The niche that this statue inhabits is covered in gold and colorful marble. It is a very good example of the Baroque style, with its flashy gold embellishments, the honeycomb pattern in the domed roof of the niche that decreases in size to give the illusion of a deeper and taller dome that actually exists, and the theatrical use of the cloak as a curtain that is pulled back to reveal Death just under the surface. The curtain is very artfully draped in a way to work with the fact that a door leading out of the church is just below the high niche. Please take a look at the photos above to see the details (overview of the whole monument and the detail of the Jasper marble with Death below).

Blog #4 (Chapter 19-20 Italy)

Michelangelo, Pieta and David
This week my blog has to focus on sculpture, as I have just completed my first sculpture after 7 months of work. My all time favorite artist in the field of sculpture is Michelangelo, and my favorite 2 sculptures are David and Pieta. Michelangelo completed the Pieta in one year when he was just 25 years old. One year later, he began the commission from the city of Florence for the statue David. This sculpture took him 3 years to complete. When you look closely at these 2 statues you will see something that very few if any artists before were able to capture, the precise musculature of the people being represented. When he was around 17 years old, Michelangelo was permitted to perform autopsies on the corpses at a local church hospital in Florence at night. Here he studied and learned anatomy, and from those studies was able to accurately represent the bone and muscle structure on his subjects in his sculpture and painting. Prior artists often draped their subjects in clothing that hid most of their body, making it easier to represent them without having to accurately represent their bodies. In these earlier works, if the body is shown naked, many would represent the muscles as rounded or soften groups of muscles, devoid of the accompanying tendons and veins. Michelangelo’s statues are so convincing in their representation of the muscle groups that it is as if the statue was really a body covered in white paint! Michelangelo carved the Pieta as a tomb monument for a French cardinal and is installed in the Vatican in Rome. He intended it to be viewed by onlookers up close, so you can stare directly into the sweet face of the Virgin holding her son Jesus. But a mentally disturbed man attacked the statue in 1972, and since then it can only be viewed behind barriers that are about 2l-0-30 feet away from the statue, making it hard to experience the statue as it was intended. The thing I personally find most fascinating about Michelangelo’s style of sculpture is contained in a quote from a sonnet that he wrote, “The greatest artist has no conception which a single block of marble does not potentially contain within its mass, but only a hand obedient to the mind can penetrate to this image” Michelangelo was able to see the Pieta and David contained within the block of marble that he carefully chose from the marble quarry in Carrara, Italy. He then “liberated” the statue from the stone!



This week, I completed my first sculpture. The title of my sculpture is “Flying Mandolin”. I worked for 7 months on creating the mandolin out of steel sheets and wire rods. I learned how to use cutting machines, TIG and MIG welders, and all sorts of files and grinders for finishing work. I then learned how to carve Alabaster, in the old style with hammer and chisels, to create the open mandolin case from which my steel mandolin is flying forth. It took far longer to create than could have imagined, but it was a very rewarding process from start to finish.