ART.
This remarkable group was executed by Bernini—sometimes called Michael Angelo the second—when he was but eighteen years old, and is now in the Villa Borghese, Rome. Near the close of his long life Bernini declared that he had made little progress after its production.
The flying nymph is seized by the young god and is already being changed into a laurel tree. The upraised hands are terminated by twigs and leaves instead of fingers. The wonderful manner in which the lower limbs are barked about is difficult to describe.
The technical details and mechanical skill of this group excel anything of the kind ever attempted, and the work is such as would beforehand have been pronounced an impossibility.
Proserpine.
“The Maiden.”
“What ails her that she comes not home?
Demeter seeks her far and wide,
And gloomy browed doth ceaseless roam
From many a morn till eventide.
‘My life, immortal though it be,
Is naught!’ she cried, ‘for want of thee,
Persephone, Persephone.’”
—Jean Ingelow.
STORY.
THE ABDUCTION.
“’Tis he! ’tis he! he comes to us
From the depths of Tartarus.
For what of evil doth he roam
From his red and gloomy home?”
—Barry Cornwall.
Pluto, the king of Hades, stole Proserpine from her mother, Ceres, while she was playing in the flowery fields and bore her away to reign with him as his queen in the gloomy regions of the dead. For days the sorrowing mother wandered far and wide searching for her dearly loved child. The earth which had so long obtained her favors was neglected. The cattle died, the seed failed to germinate, there was drought, thistles and brambles were the only growth and famine threatened the people.
One day a water nymph, who heard the lament of Ceres, told her that as she had passed through the lower parts of the earth in her endeavor to escape from a too ardent lover, she had seen Proserpine reigning as the bride of the monarch there.
Ceres hastened to Jupiter and implored him to restore her daughter, promising that when she beheld her again the earth should be restored to fruitfulness, and
“At last Zeus himself
Pitying the evil that was done, sent forth
His messenger beyond the western rim
To fetch me back to earth.”
—Lewis Morris.
But the release of Proserpine was not complete. Jupiter’s law must be obeyed, but Pluto, before he let her go, persuaded her to eat a morsel of pomegranate by which he cast upon her a spell that would oblige her to return to him, for half of the year, while the other half she could spend with her mother. As soon as Proserpine returned to earth Ceres cheerfully and diligently attended to her duties and all was blessed with plenty. But when six months were gone all nature mourned and wept, for Proserpine left the bright world and returned to the darkness of Hades.