Bernini and embodied imagination
Bernini’s sculptures transform people’s imagination into concrete marble. Two of his works, David and the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, were based on biblical events. Bernini transformed those biblical stories from language to marble. Bernini’s statues show the characters’ appearances, motions and feelings simultaneously, thus they are more impressive than language. In the other words, Bernini’s marble became a better way to tell these stories. Further analysis about David and the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa will prove this point.
David is a 1.7-meters-high marble statue. Its life size makes it more realistic. Bernini made David between 1623 and 1624 within seven months when he was about 25 years old. Bernini’s David represents the moment when…show more content… According to Baldinucci, a Bernini’s contemporary biographer and historian, Bernini used to mimic his character’s behavioral habits for his sculpture creation. Bernini learned to move like his character first before he made his statue live in the same way. When made David, Baldinucci wrote, Bernini “modeled the beautiful face of this figure after his own countenance”. Baldinucci also wrote that sometimes Cardinal Maffeo Barbernini would hold the mirror for Bernini when he was working, in that way Bernini can look at himself. Bernini seems could experience and express rage easily himself. Bernini had previously used his own face as the model of the Damned Soul, which was a sculpture of a man in extreme fury. After comparing the Damned Soul, Bernini’s self-portrait and the face of David, Baldinucci’s words seem plausible. In addition, Bernini modelled not only his own face, but also his own gestural habit. Bernini probably used the sling to unleash the stone in his studio himself and found someone else to sketch his action as the basis of David. (Avery, Charles. Bernini: Genius of Baroque. Boston : Little, Brown and Co. ,1997.