Marvels in Marble
Gian Lorenzo Bernini is among the greatest sculptors of the Baroque with a talent for storytelling in stone…
From childhood, Gian Lorenzo Bernini was trained by his sculptor father Pietro who, in 1606, accepted a prestigious Papal commission to provide marble relief statuary for the Cappella Paolina, Santa Maria Maggiore. The large Bernini family then moved to Rome where Gian Lorenzo’s ‘precocious talent’ was noticed by Scipione Borghese, the influential Cardinal and art aficionado who would become the artist’s patron.
To begin with, Gian Lorenzo collaborated on commissions with Pietro as a formidably talented duo, though it was the son who began to innovate their style by introducing such theatrical narrative. He didn’t want to merely represent stock characters but instead tell their stories by selecting the climatic moments of interactions when psychological states were in extremis. By the time he reached his mid-twenties Gian Lorenzo Bernini had a reputation as the spiritual successor to Michelangelo and his first ‘solo’ triumph is believed to be Apollo and Daphne, which he completed in 1625 for Borghese.
A moment of movement and transition captured in a dynamic statue of white Carrara marble that seems to be swirling, rustling and lifting into space as Daphne metamorphoses into a tree…
