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Bacchanal: A Faun Teased by Children, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Italian, Naples 1598–1680 Rome), Marble, Italian, Rome

Viewpoints: Body Language

Body Language features twenty works of sculpture from three departments: European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Medieval Art, and the American Wing.

Hear unique viewpoints from curators, educators, musicians, theater actors and directors, neuroscientists, and a deaf American Sign Language user.

See where the objects are located: download a PDF of the map.

Nur verfügbar in: English

80. Bacchanal: A Faun Teased by Children

Body Language

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Jackie Terrassa: This was a collaboration between two artists working together: a younger Bernini learning from his father, who was also a master. The other thing that's amazing about this sculpture is the artists have punctured the marble to create space in between the forms. How does an artist take a piece of stone and make it feel like it's flying, make it feel like the figures are twisting and throwing each other around? Every single detail of the sculpture has some different treatment in terms of the texture of the marble and how that is finished.

Narrator: You can see this at the back of the sculpture. Look at the baby falling off the panther, especially his arm.

Luke Syson: The texture is actually like that of the tree. It looks almost as if his arm is a little branch growing off it. The sculptors are really thinking about how to give the sense that the act of creating is happening before your eyes.

Narrator: Gian Lorenzo Bernini was the most prominent sculptor of the seventeenth-century Italian Baroque.

Luke Syson: The Baroque artists were very interested in expressive movement, and the way in which transitory emotions can be expressed permanently through movements of the body and so on.

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