In other words, for the sake of enlisting the sympathy of those beyond the bounds of the Catholic Church, Loyola was willing to jettison convictions which had been held most strongly in an earlier age. It is all important to realize that these were the very convictions which had militated against a vigorous school of sculpture during the previous papal dominion before the Renaissance. The fresh body of ideals and impulses led to the creation of a new style—the Baroco. Taught by failure, the Jesuit advisers of the Pope now sought the close alliance with the arts exemplified in the sculptures of Bernini.
No more apposite example could be taken than Bernini’s group of “[St. Theresa]” in S. Maria della Vittoria at Rome. It is an example of all that is best and worst, and most characteristic, in the sculpture of the Catholic Reaction. On the one hand, its striving after the expression of passionate emotion tells of the intensity of faith which animated the militant section of the Church at that time. On the other hand, the vividness with which the scene is portrayed tells of the determination to attract attention and compel comprehension, whatever might be the æsthetic sacrifice.
It is almost impossible for a twentieth-century Englishman to describe the “[St. Theresa]” group sympathetically. Bernini shows the saint sinking back in an ecstatic swoon on to a marble cloud behind. On one side an angel is discharging an arrow from the quiver of divine love. Perhaps the real spirit of the sculptured scene can be best realized from one of “The Advices which the Holy Mother Theresa of Jesus gave to her children during her life,” which tells of one of these spiritual trances.
“Once” (says the Saint) “when I was in the hermitage of Nazareth at the convent of St. Joseph in Avila, it being the vigil of Pentecost; and while I was reflecting on the exceeding great favour which our Lord had bestowed upon me on that same day twenty years before, I was seized with an ecstasy, and with strong impetuous and interior movements, which quite suspended all my senses.
“While I was in this wonderful rapture, I heard our Lord speaking.”
It is no exaggeration to say that the true Hellene would have shuddered at the very idea of visualizing such a scene. To have translated it into marble would have seemed to the Hellenic sculptor in the last degree immoral. But it was otherwise with the seventeenth-century Italian. For the sake of the message—for the sake of the spiritual thrill conveyed by such a group as the “[St. Theresa]”—he was willing to dispense with the repose which had been everything to his Hellenic forerunner. The historical critic can only accept the position. To say that Bernini did wrongly, that his influence made for ill, is really beside the point. The times were against him. But we can truly say that, in view of the experience furnished by the Hellenic and Florentine sculptors, an art other than sculpture could have more properly expressed such scenes as the ecstatic transports of Saint Theresa—possibly poetry, possibly music, certainly not sculpture.
Bernini’s reputation, fortunately, does not depend entirely upon works executed as directly under the influence of the Catholic Reaction as the “[Saint Theresa]” of S. Maria della Vittoria. In estimating his genius we are not compelled to rely entirely upon the long series of colossal groups packed with half-draped nudes in wildly fluttering draperies which issued from his studio. His early work, “[Apollo and Daphne],” is an effort of extraordinary ability. The design was wonderfully graceful, and the technical skill with which it was worked out promised more abundant result than Bernini’s life’s work eventually showed. For the rest the admirer of Bernini can point to the magnificent series of fountains which he designed and erected. Of these, the “Fountain of Trevi” stands supreme.
The death of Giovanni Bernini in 1680 marks the end of the last effort to keep Italian sculpture alive. The works of Donatello, of Angelo, of Cellini, of Bologna, live to-day. But vital sculptures embodying national or civic aspirations or the ideals of that truly Italian institution, the Roman Catholic Church, were produced no longer. For more than a century, Italian art effort practically ceased. Foreigners came to the great sources of inspiration in Italy, drank, and returned to carry a measure of the precious fluid to their homes in the North. But the Italian knew that “the outward and the inward man” were not at “one.” He felt that “Beloved Pan” would not bestow that “beauty in the inward soul” which had made Greek sculpture a joy for ever. A single sentence of Mazzini gives the historical explanation:
“The Pope clutches the soul of the Italian nation; Austria the body, whenever it shows signs of life; and on every member of that body is enthroned an absolute prince, viceroy in turn under either of these powers.”