Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s First Masterpiece-The Rape of Proserpina

The sculpture that brings stone to life

The Rape of Proserpina (1622) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Marble. Galleria Borghese, Rome.

The story of Proserpine — or Proserpina in Latin — is told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Proserpine is the daughter of the corn-goddess Ceres, who whilst out gathering flowers in the Vale of Nysa was seen by the powerful god Pluto, King of the Underworld.

According to Ovid, Pluto was struck by an arrow from Cupid and was suddenly enraptured by Proserpine. He gathered her up and swept her away on his chariot, taking her down to the Underworld and forcing her to become his bride.

This sculpture, carved in marble by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini was finished in 1622, and captures the tension-filled moment of Proserpine’s abduction.

With their twisted poses, the two figures come alive through Bernini’s captivating attention to detail. It is all the more remarkable when one thinks that Bernini’s was just 23 years old when he made this sculpture.

How Bernini became an artist

Bernini’s own journey began in Naples, where he was born in 1598. Son of the sculptor Pietro Bernini, the young artist was quickly recognised for his creative abilities, even attracting the attention of Pope Paul V, who is recorded as saying, “This child will be the Michelangelo of his age”.

When the family moved to Rome after Bernini’s father received a notable papal commission, Bernini began a personal study of antique Greek and Roman marbles at the Vatican.

His first patron came in the form of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, a member of the reigning papal family and a leading patron of the arts of the early 17th century. Under his sponsorship, Bernini carved his first important life-size sculptural groups, which included The Rape of Proserpina.

The drama

The first thing to notice is how Proserpine appears to clamber upwards as she attempts to wriggle free of Pluto’s grasp. As each figure strains in opposite directions, the effect acts as a brilliant device for suggesting where Pluto is actually dragging her to: downward into the Underworld.

Detail of ‘The Rape of Proserpina’ (1622) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Marble. Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Despite Bernini’s young age, the work displays an incredible awareness of the surface textures of skin and hair. Look at the section where the fingers of Pluto’s hand grip Proserpine’s leg, for instance. See how his hand wraps around and compresses the skin, holding the thigh and kneading the flesh like fingers into dough.

The fingers of the other hand press and sink in a similar way around Proserpine’s torso, almost enveloping the fingernails in the folds of her skin.

The carving is so artful that it almost conceals the very materials of its making. In these sections, it becomes close to impossible to see the underlying stone material. Bernini has managed to portray fingers, muscle, tendons, veins and flesh through peerless handling of marble.

The cumulative effect of these details, which recur throughout the sculpture, from Pluto’s muscular legs to Proserpine’s straining neck, is to supply a palpable sense of drama. Bernini’s technical versatility in manipulating marble meant that he could imbue the cold stone with a level of energy hardly seen before in Italian sculpture.

Bernini’s inspiration

Bernini’s work was not without precedents. The Rape of Proserpina was most likely influenced by another sculptor by the name of Giambologna, a Flemish sculptor who based himself in Italy.

Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine Women, which stands in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence, is designed with a reminiscent upward movement and also provides a model for the way the Roman’s hand sinks into the hip of the Sabine woman (see below right).

Front (left) and rear (right) of ‘Rape of the Sabine Women’ (1581–83) by Giambologna. Marble. Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence.

Made in around 1581–83, Giambologna’s works exemplifies the emerging interest in sinuous lines, graceful curves and exaggerated poses that would come to characterise the late Mannerist and early Baroque periods.

Responses to The Rape of Proserpina

One of Bernini’s strengths as a sculptor was his ability to inject great drama into his work. His treatment of the story of Proserpine and Pluto is charged with vivid passages of spectacle, not least in the three-headed dog Cerberus which guards the entrance to the Underworld.

As we look at the sculpture, one has the sense that Proserpine’s feet are flinching before the open mouth of the growling hound — almost as if it’s happening right before our eyes. The violence of the abduction becomes evermore apparent the more closely the viewer looks.

In this regard, nothing is spared in Bernini’s sculpture. Proserpine’s intrepid fight against Pluto’s grip is bound to be futile.

At this point, we may want to ask: how do we respond when we look upon this subject of forceful abduction?

I think one response is to treat the sculpture as if it were a piece of theatre: that is, as a depiction of a dramatic scene. And just as we might applaud the performances of the actors and actresses in a play, so we can respond to this sculpture as an achievement of artistic dexterity.

In fact, Bernini was a man with a strong interest in the theatre: through his career he wrote, directed and acted in plays for which he designed stage sets and theatrical machinery.

Looked at in this way, the 225cm tall piece carved from Carrara marble is the epitome of hair-raising action. Bernini has captured texture, emotion and movement in a solid piece of stone.

For the remainder of his life he worked in Rome, becoming one of the great sculptors and architects of his time — and rivalling Michelangelo in his eminence. Later artists would draw much inspiration from Bernini, including the Victorian sculptor Lord Frederic Leighton.

Recent Restoration

How Oil Paints Work: Art Fundamentals

A technical revolution in the history of art

Detail of ‘Portrait of a Carthusian’ (1446) by Petrus Christus. Oil on wood. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Images source The Met (open access)

The invention of oil painting was an enormous turning point in the story of Western art. It enabled artists to represent the world around them with a level of detail never seen before. And because of the ability of oil paints to be layered in semi-transparent glazes, works of art became luminous in their depth and resonance of colour.

The important thing to remember about oil painting is that it really refers to the “medium” of the paint rather than to any special aspect of the pigments used to make the colours.

The “medium” is the liquid substance that holds the pigment and dilutes it. Before they are mixed with a medium, a paint pigment is usually in the form of a finely ground powder. Traditional sources of pigment were various: for instance, the colour known as ultramarine (a vivid blue) came from the ground-up rock lapis lazuli, whereas the colour vermilion (brilliant red) was originally made from the powdered mineral cinnabar.

Cinnabar mineral and the powered form of vermilion. Images sources Wikimedia Commons & Wikimedia Commons

More unusually, the colour Indian yellow was once produced by collecting the urine of cattle that had been fed only mango leaves. In more recent times, natural pigments have given way to synthetically derived colours, but the principle remains the same.

From egg to oil as the carrier medium

Before the adoption of oil as the medium, artists used other liquids to play the role. Tempera was popular, where an emulsion of egg yolk and water was used to make the pigment usable as paint. Tempera was capable of producing very fine paintings, often onto wood, but had the drawback of drying quickly and with a matte, opaque finish.

When oil painting arrived, artists made immediate use of its slow drying nature, which meant they could work more patiently over the finer details of their work. They also utilised the fact that oil paint can be thinned and then applied in semi-transparent layers, otherwise known as “glazes”.

With glazes, paint can be built up with one colour overlaying another. When light penetrates the paint layers, it reflects back the full spectrum of layered paint, giving a more resonant and luminous feel.

For a long time, it was thought that oil painting was invented in Northern Europe in the 15th century, by the painter Jan van Eyck in particular. But in fact oil painting had been in use in Middle Eastern countries like Afghanistan since at least 650AD, and in Europe since the Middle Ages.

Still, it was Jan van Eyck and his contemporaries from the Netherlands who, in the 1400s, took oil painting to new heights. Take a painting like Portrait of a Carthusian by Petrus Christus, painted in 1446. Christus was based in Bruges in present-day Belgium, and was active between 1444 and 1476 — the year he is thought to have died.

Portrait of a Carthusian (1446) by Petrus Christus. Oil on wood. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Images source The Met (open access)

The extraordinary naturalistic detail of paintings like Portrait of a Carthusian was a profound innovation in European art.

To underline the realistic possibilities of his oil paints, Christus added a telling detail to his portrait. Look towards the bottom edge of the painting and notice a small fly perched on what appears to be the picture frame. This lower ledge, along with the inscription, is all painted invention.

From pigs’ bladders to tubes

Early artists mixed their own pigments with heat-bodied (gently-heated) linseed oil, derived from crushed flax seeds, sometimes adding beeswax to prevent the paint from darkening as it dried. They worked through a patient process of grinding the powdered pigments into the oil to achieve a smooth, honey-like consistency.

Monte Pincio, Rome (c.1840) by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Oil on canvas. Art Institute Chicago. Image source Art Institute Chicago (open access)

Up until the mid-1800s artists would typically transport their mixed paint in a pig’s bladder. Such was the case with the French painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, who adopted an effective practice of travelling and painting outdoors during the summer months, making studies and sketches directly from nature.

Yet this was not an easy situation. Bladders didn’t travel well and frequently burst open. And to get at the paint, Corot would have to prick the bladder with a pin, after which the hole was difficult to completely plug.

In 1841, the portrait painter John Goffe Rand invented the metallic paint tube. Soon enough, manufacturers of oil paints began to offer paint in tubes with screw caps to preserve the paint.

This simple development allowed artists to more easily carry their paints with them, opening up the possibilities of painting on location for many more artists. The artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir is quoted as saying: “Without paint in tubes there would have been… nothing of what the journalists were later to call Impressionists.”

Moreover, with paint in a more accessible form, artists began to enjoy a greater flexibility of brush marks, from thick impasto (thickly textured paint) to finer details. This dexterity of oil paint has left a permanent mark on the course of Western painting.

Vincent van Gogh’s thick brushstroke “impasto” technique. *Wheat Field with Cypresses (1889). Oil on canvas.* Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image source Wikimedia Commons

Artists as wide-ranging as Vincent van Gogh and Willem de Kooning, utilising the versatility of modern tube-based paints, learned to use paint expressionistically. Their paintings forged an imprint of the very moment of creation, and with it, an indelible record of the artist’s response to the world.

How Fresco Painting Works: Art Fundamentals

A difficult technique with unique artistic results

Detail from ‘Creation of Adam’ (c.1512) by Michelangelo. Fresco. Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museums, Vatican City.

When Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he not only held his posture of standing with his head craned backwards, with his arm raised for hours at a time, but he also had to work in the technically challenging medium of fresco.

Fresco painting has two supreme qualities: the first is that it involves applying paint onto freshly laid plaster, meaning it is apt for large murals that cover entire walls — or in the case of The Sistine Chapel, an entire ceiling too.

Annunciation (1440–42) by Fra Angelico. Fresco. Museum of San Marco, Florence.

The second quality of fresco is that it must be made with confidence and speed, since there is little room for error and incomplete sections usually have to be re-plastered and painted again. This aspect means that fresco paintings often have a vivid and monumental feel, where finer details must be simplified in favour of prominent and clear-sighted designs.

One of my personal favourite series of fresco paintings is at the monastery of San Marco in Florence, where the artist Fra Angelico decorated the monk’s living quarters with scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary and Christ. These paintings are fine examples of the power of fresco: uncluttered, compelling and immediate.

The reason for speed is because with fresco painting the pigment is applied to fresh plaster whilst it is still damp. The word fresco is Italian for “fresh”. The artist must therefore work quickly to complete the apportioned section of plaster before it dries. The pigments, which are made by grinding dry-powder colour in pure water, are painted whilst the plaster dries to become a permanent part of the wall.

*Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (*1424) by Masaccio. Fresco. Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence.

In order to achieve this, the artist must plan out the stages of the painting carefully, dividing the image into appropriate sections.

If you look at the image shown here, of The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden by Masaccio, you can see how the wider work would have been split into days.

With each day, a thin layer of wet plaster called the intonaco (Italian for ‘plaster’) is applied to the area to be painted. The artist must work within the plaster’s curing time — a day’s work, or a giornata in Italian.

If you look closely, you can see the dividing lines between each section of giornata. A correctly prepared intonaco will hold its moisture for many hours, perhaps as much as nine or ten, giving the artist time to complete a single section in a day.

The fresco mural technique has its origins in antiquity, going back at least as far as the Minoan civilization, as seen at Knossos on Crete. It was also widely used by the ancient Romans as decoration for important rooms.

Over time, two alternative fresco techniques emerged. Up until the age of the Renaissance, the secco method tended to be more prominent. In this method, the paint is applied onto plaster that is already dry. Essentially, this is painting directly onto wall. Usually the pigment is mixed with a binding medium — either egg white or lime —to act as the glue. It is an easier method but has the drawback that the pigments are not completely absorbed by the plaster and may flake in time.

Cross-section of late-medieval fresco painting. Image by author.

The second method is known in Italian as buon fresco or “true fresco” and results in a more durable finish. Many of the outstanding fresco works of the Renaissance were made using this technique.

In this method, a coat of rough plaster (arriccio) is applied to a stone or brick wall. Once dried, the artist makes a preliminary drawing onto the wall. This initial drawing is reinforced with red paint (sinopia) to give a more finished quality to the sketch.

The purpose of the sinopia underpainting is to flesh out the planned image before the final coat of plaster is applied. It makes it easier to plan for the various days to come, and also allows the commissioning patron a chance to see the work and give their approval.

A ‘sinopie’ for a fresco by Buonamico Buffalmacco (1290–1341). Museum of Sinopie, Pisa.

Finally, a smooth coat (intonaco) of plaster is applied to as much of the wall as will be painted in that session — at which point the artist gets to work.

Since the wetness of the plaster naturally changes over the course of the day, the artist must dilute their paint with water to keep the same tone across the giornata. Once dried, no more buon fresco can be painted on that area. If mistakes have been made, it is not unusual for the whole section of plaster to be removed and then repainted the following day. The alternative is to add finer details using the secco method.

Fresco paintings have a particular look and feel. As the wall dries and sets, the pigment particles become bound or cemented with the plaster. The surface texture is dry and opaque, giving rise to an appealing chalky feel, since the paint is an integral part of the wall surface.

When put to best use, the fresco effect can be lively and expressive, with bold designs and well-defined figures. When a fresco occupies an entire wall space or sometimes the whole interior of a building — as in the decorations for the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua by Giotto — then the results can be spectacular.

Scrovegni Chapel (1304–06) by Giotto. Fresco. Padua, Italy.

Ann Treboux