(jaunty piano music)
- [Steven] We're in the
gallery of Borghese in Rome,
looking at an important, very
early sculpture by Bernini.
- [Beth] This is Pluto and Persephone,
this is a bit of a difficult subject.
Pluto, who rules over
Hades, the land of the dead,
is shown here abducting
the beautiful Persephone.
- [Steven] She's the
daughter of Zeus and Demeter.
Demeter is associated with life,
with the growth of fields, with nature.
- [Beth] With crops, with fertility.
- [Steven] And she's devastated
by the loss of her daughter.
- [Beth] But a deal is struck.
Persephone only spends half
the year in the underworld,
and the other half of
the year here on Earth.
- [Steven] A fanciful
explanation for why crops grow
only in the warm months.
Although the sculpture group
is now in the middle of a room,
this sculpture was originally
placed very close to a wall,
and is really meant to
be seen from the front.
- [Beth] I find this to
be a difficult sculpture
when I first look at it,
because my eye goes immediately to Pluto.
And the grin on his face as
he's abducting Persephone
feels very distasteful.
- [Steven] Especially in
contrast to Persephone
who is rendered so beautifully.
And she looks as if she
is truly repulsed by him,
she doesn't want to touch him.
- [Beth] She's using her left
hand to push his forehead away
but she curls her fingers away.
She doesn't want to lay her
entire hand on his body.
Even her toes seem tensed up
as she tries to resist him.
- [Steven] But probably
the most striking aspect
of the sculpture, for me,
is the way Pluto's fingers
press into her thigh.
And the artist demonstrates
the elasticity of flesh
but in hard cold stone.
This is marble.
This is magic.
- [Beth] This is what
Bernini could do best.
He could make marble appear
to be flesh or feathers
or hair, the bark of a tree.
He could transform marble
into almost any material.
- [Steven] This sculpture
began as a block.
And the artist chisels and drills
to remove the unnecessary stone.
But this sculpture is so delicate,
it almost seems as if it's made
the way a bronze sculpture is made.
That is, it was built up in clay or wax,
so delicate and so fine are the details.
- [Beth] That's especially
true with her hair
that flies back.
It is as though he's modeled
that in some soft material.
- [Steven] Or the cloth that almost like
a corkscrew spins behind her.
- [Beth] Here we are in
the sixteenth hundreds.
This is the Baroque era.
The movement that we see here,
this caught moment in time,
is part of what makes
this Baroque in style.
- [Steven] It would be
impossible for these figures
to hold their position for
more than one moment in time.
Look at Pluto.
Both of his legs are flexed.
Those knees are bent.
His body is so unstable.
He must be in motion,
he must be moving forward.
This lacks all of the stability
of the high renaissance.
- [Beth] The composition seems
to be in the shape of an X,
of two intersecting, diagonal lines.
As soon as you have a diagonal,
you have a sense of
movement and instability.
- [Steven] The idea of
movement is even expressed
in the dog that guards Hades, Cerberus.
Whose three heads almost seem
as if they might be one head in motion.
And I love the fact that
Bernini has sculptured
the eye of one of the
dog heads as a spiral.
- [Beth] Speaking of instability,
Pluto's weight is really carried
just on that forward
foot on his left foot,
and the right foot is up
and he's just on the ball of
his foot and three of his toes.
This is incredibly unstable.
- [Steven] He seems to be in
the process of hoisting her up.
- [Beth] And she is in the
process of pushing him away.
We have conflicting desires here.
This is not a movement in unison.
This is a conflict.
But this is also an exercise
in the beauty of the human body,
in the beauty of form.
Bernini was a deeply religious man
in a deeply religious culture.
But this is not in any
way a religious drama.
This is mythology.
This is speaking to the cultured status
of the man who commissioned this.
- [Beth] And the continued importance
of ancient Greek and Roman culture
even here in the Baroque era.
(jaunty piano music)
