The Art of Religion: Sforza Pallavicino and Art Theory in Bernini's Rome

Bernini and Pallavicino, the artist and the Jesuit cardinal, are closely related figures at the papal courts of Urban VIII and Alexander VII, at which Bernini was the principal artist. The analysis of Pallavicino's writings offers a new perspective on Bernini's art and artistry and allow us to understand the visual arts in papal Rome as a 'making manifest' of the fundamental truths of faith. Pallavicino's views on art and its effects differ fundamentally from the perspective developed in Bernini's biographies offering a perspective on the tension between artist and patron, work and message. In Pallavicino's writings the visual arts emerge as being intrinsically bound up with the very core of religion involving questions of idolatry, mimesis and illusionism that would prove central to the aesthetic debates of the eighteenth century.

Author: Maarten Delbeke
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 08/20/2012
Pages: 258
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.63d
ISBN: 9780754634850

About the Author
Maarten Delbeke, Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent University, Belgium; Department of Art History, University of Leiden, The Netherlands.