According to travellers arriving in Rome from Northern Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, Bernini\u2019s female statues resembled \u201cFlemish nannies\u201d. In fact, they recognized a distinct formal affinity between Rubens and the Italian sculptor. The hands of Pluto sinking into Proserpina\u2019s skin were proof of this \u201cFlemishness\u201d, according to the German writer August Wilhelm von Schlegel.<\/p>\n
In competing with the themes and forms of painting, in adherence to the natural data and in expressiveness, Bernini\u2019s sculpture was accused of having exceeded the proper boundaries of sculpture and become \u201cpainterly\u201d. This expression was elevated at the end of the nineteenth century by the critic Heinrich W\u00f6lfflin to identify an entire category in the history of art.<\/p>\n
In many respects at the very origin of the definition of the Baroque, the true nature of the relationship between Rubens and Bernini continues to elude scholarship. We know that in the 1630s, while living with his second wife Helena Fourment on the estate of Het Steen, near Antwerp, the painter took advantage of the opportunity to learn of developments in Italy, where Bernini had just installed the baldachin in St. Peter\u2019s and become the trusted artist of Urban VIII. For Rubens, interest in sculpture was not simply a question of the ancients, but also involved the study of widely varying types of plastic objects \u2013 modern and ancient, marble and metal, statues and coins.<\/p>\n
It is more difficult to understand how Bernini came to know of Rubens\u2019s innovations in the 1620s, while working on the Borghese groups. In this challenge between the two arts, the Flemish artist must have appeared to Bernini as the champion of an extreme pictorial language, with which to contend \u2013 for his intense study of nature (see his drawings of Lions); for his representation of motion and \u201crearing horses\u201d (in St. George
\nin the Louvre), inspired by da Vinci\u2019s drawings and tackled by Bernini in his late marbles with the Leonardo-like \u201craging brush\u201d attributed to Rubens by Bellori. Finally, the Italian sculptor took a lesson from Rubens\u2019s portraits, in which the subject seems to converse with the viewer, just as would occur in Bernini\u2019s busts, for which the apt expression \u201cspeaking likeness\u201d was coined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to travellers arriving in Rome from Northern Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, Bernini\u2019s female statues resembled \u201cFlemish nannies\u201d. In fact, they recognized a distinct formal affinity between Rubens and the Italian sculptor. The hands of Pluto sinking into Proserpina\u2019s skin were proof of this \u201cFlemishness\u201d, according to the German writer August […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":14538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-approfondimenti"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n