CHAPTER XI
ITALIAN SCULPTURE FROM 1527 to 1650 a.d.
CELLINI, GIOVANNI BOLOGNA, AND BERNINI
The aftermath of Italian sculpture is indissolubly connected with two craftsmen of genius and an historical movement of the first order. The men, Benvenuto Cellini and Giovanni Bologna, stand for all that is best in Italian sculpture during the middle of the sixteenth century. The movement—the Catholic Reaction—dominated the following seventy-five years. Dating the periods a little more precisely, the genesis of the earlier may be associated with the Sack of Rome in 1527 a.d. The beginning of the second period may be roughly fixed by the Pontificacy of Gregory XIII., let us say the year 1580 a.d. It reached a climax with the advent of Bernini, the exponent par excellence of the Baroco style, whether in architecture or sculpture.
To bring to birth a Michael Angelo and to nurture his titanic genius was the supreme effort of the Italian Renaissance in the cause of the plastic arts. That is why post-Angelesque sculpture must be associated with the rather depressing image of “the second harvest.” Compared with the productions of the time of Donatello or the fifty years during which the influence of Michael Angelo was all-potent, the Italian sculpture of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries shows a marked declension. The enthusiasm which had brought the genius of Donatello and Michael Angelo to fruition was waning. Art was no longer imbued with the old intensity of purpose and fervour of imagination.
For this very reason the century which followed the Sack of Rome is of far less importance in the history of sculpture than that which preceded it. But, as many of the phenomena of health are only clear in the light of experience gathered from disease, the circumstances which gave rise to the post-Angelesque sculpture of Italy possess a unique interest. Against the background of comparative failure, the essentials necessary to the production of vital sculpture stand out in the clearest outline.
Starting from the premises that such an art as sculpture expresses the deepest conviction of the people in which it arises, we are led at once from the works to the social circumstances in which the emotions arose. The briefest study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy, shows that all the factors which had lifted sculpture to the summit operated no longer. The free burghers who had built and decorated the Church of Or San Michele or commissioned the Baptistery Gates had been forced to acknowledge the tyranny of a selfish nobility. A source of inspiration like Lorenzo de Medici was replaced by the crew of degenerates who represented the House of Medici in the sixteenth century. In the Roman Catholic Church, too, the Reformation called forth sterner qualities and less sunny energies. The Papacy was forced to relinquish the ideals of Julius II. and Leo X., at any rate for a time. Above all, intellectual life was entirely divorced from national feeling. Politics—“the art of leading the majority, not where they wish, but where they ought to go”—interested the individual, not, as in the earlier age, the mass of the people.
We have then at our hand the key to the problem. A picture of Italy between 1527 and 1580 will give us the source of the characteristics of the art of Cellini and Giovanni Bologna. A sketch of the political and social consequences of the Catholic Reaction will explain the popularity of Bernini, the typical sculptor of our second period.
First, the politics of sixteenth-century Italy. The outstanding feature of political life at this time was its utter instability. With the solitary exception of Venice, every principality and city was in a condition of constant ferment. State after state ceased to possess the essential elements of political stability. They had been ruined, for the most part, by the attempt to combine freedom within the city walls with dominion beyond. During the first quarter of the sixteenth century, the success attending the methods of Cæsar Borgia had suggested that a combination of moral agility and political knavery might produce the needful balance of power. The advent of the French, the Germans, and later of the Spaniards, destroyed even this semblance of political stability. Italian liberty became a thing of the past. The old absorbing interest in politics vanished, and with it the clarity of thought and logicality of form which public political discussion does so much to foster. In such a country art exists. It does not live. As Mazzini said two hundred years later: