Eva Martínez García 2ºA

THE RAPE OF PROSERPINA – BERNINI

Im going to talk a little bit about Bernini. He was one of the greatest artists of the Italian Baroque period. He was famous both for his sculpture and his architecture. Bernini was born in Naples, Italy but  when he was about 7 years old, his father took him to Rome.

There , Bernini knew well  Annibale Carracci who painted scenes on the ceilings of rooms for the pope. The scenes told stories, often Ancient Roman legends. Carracci took Bernini into St. Peter's Basilica. Bernini fell on his knees and decided at that moment that he wanted to make something beautiful and splendid to honour Saint Peter.

By the time he was 20, Bernini was a sculptor, carving statues out of marble. He had learnt a lot, not just how to carve marble, which he learnt from his father, but how to make figures that told stories like Carracci's and Michelangelo's and seemed to be alive, like Caravaggio's.

Bernini´s sculpture :

  Most sculptures of that time were just of one figure. But Bernini had seen Michelangelo's famous sculpture of the "Pieta" which showed the Virgin Mary grieving over the body of her dead son, Jesus. Bernini made figures that were in groups and told stories. The majority of his famous groups comes from Roman Mythology. 

Some of his most famous sculptures where :

-David

-Apollo And Daphne

-Ectasy Of Saint Teresa

-Blessed Ludovica Albertoni

But I am going to tell you the story of The Rape of Proserpina that is one of Bernini’s most famous works

In Greek mythology, Persephone  was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter (goddess of agriculture) . One day while the young maiden was picking flowers, Hades, god of the underworld, kidnapped Persephone and carried her back to the underworld to be his wife.

Demeter begged Zeus to command the release of her daughter, and Persephone was told that she would be released from the underworld, as long as she didn't consume any food while she was there. But when she thought no one was looking, Persephone went into the garden and ate six pomegranate seeds. She was thus doomed to spend six months of the year with Hades, while for the other six months she could return to Earth to see her mother. The myth holds that the months Persephone spends in the underworld leave the earth cold, dark, and wintry, but when she returns, spring and summer accompany her.