Dr. Rocky Ruggiero

This course will examine the extraordinary career of the artist credited with inventing Baroque sculpture. Bernini’s superb skill at magically transforming stone into what appears to be malleable flesh is nothing less than incredible. Yet, Bernini’s vision went beyond sculpture and into the field of monumental architecture. His inventiveness and skill produced some of the greatest marvels of Baroque Europe. By exploring the career and works of this great artist, we shall come to understand how Gian Lorenzo Bernini invented the art of the sublime.

Course Objectives:
- To bring a historical figure to life through a “hands on” approach to the works produced by the artist throughout the entirety of his career.
- To understand the role that the historical context of Bernini’s life had on his extraordinary artistic production.
- To learn to appreciate the rich and influential aspects of Italian art from the late 16th to the end of the 17th century.
- To develop the fundamental skills of art historical analysis that include formal analysis and iconographic interpretation.
- To develop an ability to interact in a personal and intimate manner with works of art – which in the case of Bernini are some of the most innovative in history – and their surroundings.

Lecture 1 - The Poetry of Sculpture
Bernini’s breathtaking mythological statues of Apollo and Daphne and Pluto and Persephone in the Borghese Gallery are but a few of the sublime statues produced by the famed sculptor while he was still in his early twenties. This lecture will explore Bernini’s new visual language for sculpture which combined Classical form and proportion with the Baroque love for the theatrical.

Lecture 2 – Unifying the Visual Arts
Bernini’s great Baldacchino for the crossing of St. Peter’s Basilica heralded a new type of “sculptural architecture.” As his career progressed, Bernini continued to blur the lines between and ultimately synthesize the traditional visual arts. Works such as the Ecstasy of St. Theresa and the Four Rivers Fountain in Piazza Navona exemplify Bernini’s love of the monumental and theatrical in his new vision of art.

Lecture 3 – A Servant to Pope’s and Kings
The last decades of Bernini’s career saw him working almost exclusively for the Sienese Pope Alexander VII and for a short while, the French KIng Louis XIV. From his majestic architectural projects such as the Scala Regia, St. Peter’s Square and the Jesuit church of Sant’Andrea al Quirinale, to his celebrated bust of the “Sun King”, Bernini cemented his role as the preferred artist of Europe’s ruling elite.

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- Download videos to watch offline
- Available on Apple and Android