https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/ 17th Italy Bernini https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=98956259 98956259 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=99878324 99878324 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=99878325 99878325 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=99878326 99878326 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=99878327 99878327 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=99878328 99878328 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=99878330 99878330 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=99878329 99878329 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=98443465 98443465 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=98444365 98444365 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=98444364 98444364 See my essay on Bernini's Cornaro Chapel for mystical marriage and the feminizing of Catholic piety in the 17th century. https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=66830266 66830266 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=98444366 98444366 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=98443458 98443458 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=98443459 98443459 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=98460380 98460380 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=98460379 98460379 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=98443460 98443460 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=66830268 66830268 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=97529522 97529522 Truth and Faith were executed by Bernini's pupils after his design. https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=100086711 100086711 Truth and Faith were executed by Bernini's pupils after his design. https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=100086712 100086712 seen in the distance from the high altar in S. Francesco a Ripa, Rome https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=141640887 141640887 with St. Clare at left and Ludovica Giving Alms to a Beggar at right S. Francesco a Ripa, Rome See my essay on this work for a discussion of the good death, mystical marriage, flaming hearts, and Catholic emotional piety in the Baroque. https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=141640886 141640886 S. Francesco a Ripa, Rome https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=141640889 141640889 side panel to Bernini's Death of the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni, in S. Francesco a Ripa, Rome https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=141640893 141640893 S. Francesco a Ripa, Rome https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=141640892 141640892 with large gilded, stucco reliefs of flaming hearts at her head and feet https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=141640888 141640888 See my essay on this work for a discussion of the good death, mystical marriage, flaming hearts, and Catholic emotional piety in the Baroque. https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=66830267 66830267 S. Francesco a Ripa, Rome https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=98443464 98443464 another flaming heart - a major theme in Catholic devotions after 1590. https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=141640891 141640891 on the right is a painting of Ludovica Giving Alms to a Beggar. Charity was the most important Catholic "good work" in Counter-Reformation Europe even if Catholics (and Protestants) often viewed the poor with fear and loathing and imprisoned them them in brutal work homes to get them off the street. S. Francesco a Ripa, Rome https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=141640890 141640890 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=98443463 98443463 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=141710569 141710569 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=141813324 141813324 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=98443466 98443466 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=141813323 141813323 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=98443467 98443467 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=141813325 141813325 The spiraling columns in Bernini?s Baldacchino in St. Peters refer architecturally to the famous spiraling columns of the Temple of Jerusalem, a familiar motif in earlier Renaissance depictions of that Jewish structure by Fouquet and Raphael (Peter and Paul Healing at the Golden Gate). This had special significance in the church of St. Peters ever since the Roman emperor, Constantine converted to Christianity, built numerous large churches in Rome and Constantinople, and donated 12 marble, spiraling columns supposedly taken from the Temple of Jerusalem (an impossibility since it had been destroyed centuries earlier). Legend triumphed over historical fact and the columns were symbolically used at the high altar of the Early Christian basilica of Old St. Peters. (They can be seen in Raphael?s Vatican fresco of the Donation of Constantine.) When Pope Julius II tore down that church to build a much larger St. Peters in the early sixteenth century, he and his successors preserved eight of the original twisted columns in the decorations under the four pendentives below Michelangelo?s dome. In part, the use of Jewish spoils and imagery in Christian churches worked to express Christian ideas of triumphant world history with Judaism yielding to a victorious Christianity fulfilling (and replacing) the Old Testament. This was especially appealing in Renaissance and Baroque Rome as popes developed an increasingly triumphal, Roman Catholic piety informed by ancient Roman imperial themes. Implicit in all papal references to Solomon, David, or Moses was the idea of the pope as a new and more powerful, Christian king appointed by God. This is clear enough in the Sistine Chapel, which was constructed in the late Middle Ages using the dimensions of the Temple of Jerusalem (as they were known in literary tradition). This tradition of Jerusalem-Rome also shed slight on Perugino?s famous 1481 fresco in the Sistine Chapel showing Christ giving the keys to Peter, the supposed first pope. Of special interest is the inscription on the two depictions of the Arch of Constantine which flank Perugino?s scene. Replacing the words inscribed on the real arch, they hail Peter as the successor to Solomon for building a greater temple in Rome (i.e. the Sistine Chapel, and, more generally, the Roman church as a whole). That Constantine legitimized Christianity and supposedly brought pieces of the Temple of Jerusalem to build Old St. Peters only made his ties to Solomon all the more rich. With his gigantic bronze canopy of honor erected over the tomb of St. Peter, Bernini surpassed the eight solomonic columns from the Temple of Jerusalem which were displayed all around his massive yet airy structure. Just as Catholicism surpassed and supposedly replaced Judaism, so Michelangelo?s and Bernini?s architecture far surpassed the scale and scope of Old St. Peters. With its architectural references to Jewish and Early Christian history, Bernini's Baldacchino flattered Pope Urban VIII as a Solomonic king presiding over a new Golden Age of Roman Catholic power and universal dominion, stretching across all time and space. The eight solar faces decorating the top corners of Bernini's Baldacchino - seen in the next image on this web site - appear in the personal emblematic imagery of Pope Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini) who was a humanist poet long before he was pope. Like Pope Julius II with Raphael's Apollo on Mt. Parnassus and Paul III with the solar imagery of the Campidoglio, Urban VIII used art to flatter himself in in solar term as a Apollonian prince ruling over a new Golden Age of Catholic peace, prosperity, unity, global harmony, and cultural flourishing and enlightenment. Thanks to the rise of Renaissance humanism, most rulers were praised in these terms after 1500, long before Louis the Sun King plastered similar solar faces over his architectural commissions. Here Bernini's solar faces offer a pagan counterpart to the glowing light which falls from Michelangelo's dome and from the underside of the baldachin itself where the Holy Ghost appears in a blaze of glory. https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=141813322 141813322 The eight solar faces decorating the top corners of Bernini's baldachin appear in the personal emblematic imagery of Pope Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini) who was a humanist poet long before he was pope. Like Pope Julius II with Raphael's Apollo on Mt. Parnassus and Paul III with the solar imagery of the Campidoglio, Urban VIII used art to flatter himself in in solar term as a Apollonian prince ruling over a new Golden Age of Catholic peace, prosperity, unity, global harmony, and cultural flourishing and enlightenment. Thanks to the rise of Renaissance humanism, most rulers were praised in these terms after 1500, long before Louis the Sun King plastered similar solar faces over his architectural commissions. Here Bernini's solar faces offer a pagan counterpart to the glowing light which falls from Michelangelo's dome and from the underside of the baldachin itself where the Holy Ghost appears in a blaze of glory. https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=141813320 141813320 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=141813319 141813319 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=141813321 141813321 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=142102414 142102414 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=142102413 142102413 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=142102411 142102411 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=142102415 142102415 https://socialhistoryofart.webs.com/apps/photos/photo?photoID=142102416 142102416