Introduction

Exhibit Introduction

As a renowned sculptor, architect, and painter, Bernini fused all three media in several of his works. Art historian Irving Lavin published the book "Bernini and the Unity of Visual Arts" exploring Bernini's synthesis of the media in depth [1]. Through my project, I will explore works of Bernini's to validate Lavin's widely known thesis. In addition to looking at how Bernini was able to explicitly combine sculpture, architecture, and painting, as he does in the Cornaro Chapel, I will look at individual works that show how Bernini looked beyond any norms and constraints of a medium. For example, through an analysis of his busts, we see how Bernini captured motion in a way that was previously restricted to paintings. This analysis demonstrates Bernini's ability to be agnostic to a medium. Through this analysis of Bernini's more implicit methods of fusing media, I will endorse Lavin's idea of Bernini's "Unity of Visual Arts".

[1] Lavin, Irving. Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1980.