Tuesday, 22 July 2025

{Baroque Sculpture [continued (11)]}[8th May 1991]

[Redbook9:301][19910508:0903k]{Baroque Sculpture [continued (11)]}[8th May 1991]


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Otherwise,* the only explanation for the overrun of ‘dissolute’** or diffuse expressions of art beyond C at the same time as more 'classical' forms (as well as doctrinal commissions) appear may be e.g.


(a) the habit of clinging to established customs – which as the later stages of an artistic cycle might be expected to be superficial anyway, would not be easily distinguishable from these late stages; or


(b) just possibly, the influence of a complete turn-around at C back towards r~, manifesting itself in that total letting-go, self-sacrifice, abnegation of the self-will (even in design), in short, Surrender, which is not (as in the case of the Outer Circle) the end but the beginning of a new turn of *** cycle, the inner circle, of integration.****

#



*[See last previous ts journal entry]


**ref [[Redbook9:300][19910508:0903g]{Baroque Sculpture [continued (7)]}[8th May 1991],] 300


***[sic – ‘the’?]


****At this stage there is an acute danger of so much ‘spread’ that the whole analysis collapses into chaos (as an o[uter] c[ircle] would....)


#[& see next ts journal entry]



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{Baroque Sculpture [continued (10)]}[8th May 1991]

[Redbook9:301][19910508:0903j]{Baroque Sculpture [continued (10)]}[8th May 1991]


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[continued]


I suppose that when considering a 64-year cycle one has to expect rather more chronological over-run* than in longer cycles – especially in sculpture, where commission to completion may be a matter of years for a complex (eg Baroque) work (and even more in the case of architecture[)].**



*[proportionally, presumably]


**[But see next ts journal entry]



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{Baroque Sculpture [continued (9)]}[8th May 1991]

[Redbook9:300][19910508:0903i]{Baroque Sculpture [continued (9)]}[8th May 1991]


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‘The latter half of the [18th] century [ce]* saw the emergence of a much lighter, more theatrical manner** in the works of Agostino Cornacchini and of Pietro Bracci, whose allegorical figure “Ocean” on the Fontana di Trevi by Niccolò Salvi (completed 1762[ce])*** is almost a parody of Bernini's sculpture. Filippo della Valle worked in a classicizing**** style of almost French sensibility, but the majority of Italian sculpture of the mid-18th century [ce]# became increasingly #* picturesque with a strong tendency towards technical virtuosity.’

#**



*64A~1760|G~1776|C1792[ce]

**G~?


***64A~1760


****M~?

#64C1728|M~1744|A~1760[ce]

1760[ce]ff??


#*(my emph[asis])


#** – [From] Encyclopaedia Britannica 27:98-100

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Sunday, 20 July 2025

{Baroque Sculpture [continued (8)]}[8th May 1991]

[Redbook9:300][19910508:0903h]{Baroque Sculpture [continued (8)]}[8th May 1991]


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‘A more or less classical* late Baroque style, best exemplified by the heroic works of Camillo Rusconi in Rome, was dominant in central Italy through the middle of the 18th century.** Rusconi's work had considerable influence outside Italy as well.

***



*M~?

**64C1728|M~1744|A~1760[ce]

2048R~1792[ce]


** – [From] Encyclopaedia Britannica 27:98-100

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{Baroque Sculpture [continued (7)]}[8th May 1991]

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Late Baroque. In late 17th-century* paintings, composition became increasingly decorative**rather than structural, and there was a lessening of design in the individual figures as well. *** This dissolution is also to be found in the figures of the period, such as in the proto-Rococo figures of Filippo Carcani (active 1670-90[ce])**** in Rome, and, to a lesser extent, in those of Filippo Parodi (1630-1707[ce]) in Genoa, Venice, and Naples. Outside Venice and Sicily the true Rococo made little headway in Italy.

#



*64C1664|M~1680|A~1696[ce]


**(my emphasis)


***






****2048GR~1664[ce]

64S~1672|U~1688[ce]


#– [From] Encyclopaedia Britannica 27:98-100

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Saturday, 19 July 2025

{Baroque Sculpture [continued (6)]}[8th May 1991]

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‘Bernini's art was the basis of all Baroque sculpture, but his example was not always followed, and the work of his more restrained contemporaries, such as Alessandro Algardi (relief of “Meeting of Attila and Pope Leo Leo”, (1646-53[ce], St. Peter's, Rome) and the Fleming François Duquesnoy. attracted more approval from theorists of art. The latter’s “St. Susanna” in Sta. Maria di Loreto in Rome, a figure after the antique but enlivened with Berninian textures, was originally made to look towards the observer and, with a gesture, to direct his attention towards the altar.

The distinction between art and life that the Mannerists had cultivated was banished by this active participation of the statue in the viewer's space, another important innovation of Bernini.

*



*[From] Encyclopaedia Britannica 27:98-100

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Friday, 18 July 2025

{Baroque Sculpture [continued (5)]}[8th May 1991]

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‘The tombs of Bernini are magnificent spectacles in which symbolic figures, clothed in sweeping drapes, with rhetorical gesture & expressive features, share in some emotional experience, theatrically depicted. An example is the tomb of Alexander VII in St. Peter's, Rome. The pontiff, set in a great apse, kneels on a high pedestal, about which Charity. Truth, Justice and Wisdom weep disconsolately while Death, a skeleton, raises the great draperies of polychrome and gold that veil a darkened doorway.

Another work, the fountain of the Triton in the Piazza Barberini, Rome, from which all clarity of profile or of shadow, all definiteness of plane, are removed, is also characteristic of Bernini's style, widely imitated throughout Europe.

*



*– [From] Encyclopaedia Britannica 27:98-100

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Thursday, 17 July 2025

{Baroque Sculpture [continued (4)]}[8th May 1991]

[Redbook9:298][19910508:0903d]{Baroque Sculpture [continued (4)]}[8th May 1991]


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‘In the statue of St. Longinus in St. Peter's in Rome, Bernini created the characteristic formula of Baroque sculpture by throwing the draperies into a violent turmoil,* the complicated and broken involutions of which are not rationally explained by the figure's real bodily movement but seem paroxysmally informed by the miracle itself.

The passion with which he continued his sculptured figures, capturing the most transitory states of mind, reached its apogee in the representation of the ecstasy of St. Teresa** in the Cornaro Chapel, Sta. Maria della Vittoria, Rome (1645-52[ce])*** and in the figure of the expiring Ludovica Albertoni (Figure 62)**** in the Altieri Chapel, S. Francesco a Ripa, Rome (c.1674[ce]).# The former is generally considered the masterpiece of Baroque religious sculpture and shows how Bernini could organize the arts of architecture, painting & sculpture in an overwhelming assault on the senses that depicts the resistance of the intellect.#* This ambitious plan was typical of the mature Bernini, whose spiritual and artistic aspirations exceeded the scope of his early secular salon statues.

His later works were largely religious and unprecedentedly vast in scale, as in the dazzling “Cathedra Petri”, which covers the whole end of St. Peter's in Rome with a teeming multitude of figures.

#**



*?cf the Byzantine ‘Agitated’ Style of the 1180’s

ref VIII: [[Redbook8:281][19910221:1142i]{Byzantine Art [continued (6):] Byzantine Agitated Style}[21st February 1991],] 281

(& Romanesque, ref VIII: [[Redbook8:312][19910306:0930s]{Romanesque Art [continued (16)}[6th March 1991],] 312)


**See illus[tration,] E[ncyclopaedia of] V[isual] A[rt]

[A representation of this work must be seen; it is key to this writer’s understanding of the Baroque, as energy breaking#*** out through form]


***64G~1648[ce]


****See illus[tration,] E[ncyclopaedia] B[ritannica] 27:99


#64r~|S~1672[ce]


#*NB G~


#**[From] Encyclopaedia Britannica 27:98-100

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#***[Or sometimes, as this writer initially misremembered it, bursting]


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