A History of Sculpture

by Ernest Henry Short

The fact that the problem was of European rather than national importance, and the memory of the position the Church of Rome had held throughout the middle ages, explains why its regeneration was felt to be a social and political event of the greatest significance. During the first half of the sixteenth century a king like Francis I., and an emperor like Charles V., had reduced the occupant of the Papal chair to the position of little more than a counter in the political game. Now the Roman Church threatened to lead European thought and action as it had during the Crusades.

The seeds of this regeneration were planted in 1542, when Paul III. empowered Caraffa to establish the Inquisition in Rome. At the same time Paul III. sanctioned the Company of Jesus. Caraffa himself became Pope in 1555. His whole policy was inspired by a determination to re-establish the political dominion of the papacy. Caraffa’s successor Pius IV., made an immense step forward when he obtained the sanction of the General Council of the Church to the principle of papal absolutism. A more militant policy was at once possible. Added to this, Pius IV. suggested a return to the older and more subtle forms of political intrigue which the Papacy had used with such effect during the middle ages. The change ushered in an age of emotions. Note the religious origin of the numberless wars which convulsed Western Europe at this time. Is it surprising that the circumstances which brought this great change about added a passion, an imaginative glow, to the art of the later sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries?

For several reasons, the religious enthusiasm which revivified Italian painting and sculpture proved a poor substitute for the civic enthusiasm of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which it replaced. The point we are making now is that for good or ill, the Catholic Reaction added a vitality to art in general, and to sculpture in particular, which had been absent for half a century.

The effects of the Catholic Reaction began to be felt upon Italian art about 1580 a.d. Painting quickly offered its aid in spreading the new ideals. Some time, however, elapsed before a sculptor of sufficient genius arose to express the regenerated enthusiasm for Catholicism by means of the chisel and the marble block. Giovanni Bernini (1598-1680), who was born in the full tide of the Catholic Reaction, made sculpture once more a living, social force. The influence he exercised over his age is comparable with that exercised by Michael Angelo. Bernini was a favourite of Maffeo Barberini (Pope Urban VIII.) and played a great part in the reconstruction of St. Peter’s. He had a large school and with the aid of his assistants produced numberless works. He brought an art which had become alienated from every-day life back to the people.

Bernini’s services to sculpture may be likened to those of Giotto to the sister art. What Giotto did for painting by allying his art with the ideals of the Seer of Assisi, and the Franciscans in the thirteenth century, Bernini did for sculpture by cementing an alliance with the ideals of Ignatius of Loyola and the Order of Jesus. In both cases it is impossible to separate the artist from the general body of thought and emotion which it was his life’s work to express.

Let us look more closely into the ideals which arose with the returning political power of the Church of Rome, and which were destined to find expression in the marbles and bronzes of Bernini.

The necessities imposed upon the men who waged the battle of the Roman church can be gathered from the fourth vow of the Order of Jesus.

“That the members will consecrate their lives to the continual service of Christ and of the Popes, and will fight under the banner of the Cross, and will serve the Lord and the Roman pontiff as God’s vicar upon earth, in such wise that they shall be bound to execute immediately and without hesitation, or excuse, all that the reigning Pope or his successors may enjoin upon them for the profit of souls or for the propagation of the faith, and shall do so in all provinces whithersoever he may send them, among Turks or any other infidels, to furthest Ind, as well as in the region of heretics, schismatics or unbelievers of any kind.”

So far the ideals of the Jesuits were those of the earlier missionary orders of the Roman Church—implicit obedience and whole-hearted devotion. But Ignatius Loyola realized that the times had created a fresh set of circumstances. These circumstances called for a new “regula.” In a letter to Francis Borgia in 1548, the founder of the Jesuit Order wrote—

“It is better to strengthen your stomach and other faculties, than to impair the body and enfeeble the intellect by fasting. God needs both our physical and mental powers for His service; and every drop of blood you shed in flagellation is a loss.”