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DOI Artikel:Kaczmarzyk, Dariusz: "Niobe" by Bernini and the ancient Niobe from Nieborów
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18861#0061
and famous Gian Lorenzo Bernini11. Admiration which the sculpture arose could have served
as an encouragement to make a repetition of Prozerpina's head. There could be another reason
for that, too, namely — during the work over this group, a vision of a new piece of sculpture
with a pronounced dramatic aspect was born in Bernini's mind — a group of Apollo and Daphne.
He could have wished to preserve in his atelier this representation of the head of a woraan
whose despair and scream were so perfectly and vividly grasped, and he commissioned to execute
a replica before delivering the grcup of Pluto and Prozerpina to the founder to the Palazzo
Borghese in Rome. Of course, for that reason he could have also confined himself to a cast or
a terracotta replica.
The Apollo and Daphne group, 243 cm high, was executed in the years 1622-1624, for
the same sponsor, and is now as wcll in the present Borghese Gallery12. In the head of Daphne
Bernini expressed even more daringly and powerfully the despair of a screaming woman. A
similar problem of expression was undertaken by Bernini many years later to show another,
this time mystical, subjcct matter, in the Ecstasy of the Saint Teresa, in the church of S. Maria
delia Vittoria in Rome, completed in 165213, and then, about the end of his creative work —
11. Wittkower, op. cii. p. 179; C. Brandi, L'attivila giovanile di Gianlorcnzo Bernini, Roma, 1969, p. 45.
12. Wittkower, op. cii. p. 183-184, no 18, fig. 14 and 19; Martinelli op. cii., p. 60, fig. 60.
13. Wittkower, op. cii., p. 207-208, no 48, fig. 67-71; Martinelli, op. cii., p. 67, fig. 67 —in the same publication there is given
the height ca 350 cm.
6. G. L. Bernini, The Ecstasy of the Saint Teresa, a fragment (after Wittkower)
53
as an encouragement to make a repetition of Prozerpina's head. There could be another reason
for that, too, namely — during the work over this group, a vision of a new piece of sculpture
with a pronounced dramatic aspect was born in Bernini's mind — a group of Apollo and Daphne.
He could have wished to preserve in his atelier this representation of the head of a woraan
whose despair and scream were so perfectly and vividly grasped, and he commissioned to execute
a replica before delivering the grcup of Pluto and Prozerpina to the founder to the Palazzo
Borghese in Rome. Of course, for that reason he could have also confined himself to a cast or
a terracotta replica.
The Apollo and Daphne group, 243 cm high, was executed in the years 1622-1624, for
the same sponsor, and is now as wcll in the present Borghese Gallery12. In the head of Daphne
Bernini expressed even more daringly and powerfully the despair of a screaming woman. A
similar problem of expression was undertaken by Bernini many years later to show another,
this time mystical, subjcct matter, in the Ecstasy of the Saint Teresa, in the church of S. Maria
delia Vittoria in Rome, completed in 165213, and then, about the end of his creative work —
11. Wittkower, op. cii. p. 179; C. Brandi, L'attivila giovanile di Gianlorcnzo Bernini, Roma, 1969, p. 45.
12. Wittkower, op. cii. p. 183-184, no 18, fig. 14 and 19; Martinelli op. cii., p. 60, fig. 60.
13. Wittkower, op. cii., p. 207-208, no 48, fig. 67-71; Martinelli, op. cii., p. 67, fig. 67 —in the same publication there is given
the height ca 350 cm.
6. G. L. Bernini, The Ecstasy of the Saint Teresa, a fragment (after Wittkower)
53