An Endlessly Variable Style
TLS March 23 2012 from Randall Anderson's review of Franco Mormando's Bernini: His life and his Rome : The explosive exuberance of the Baroque signalled the evolution of Renaissance and Mannerist styles, and through Bernini achieved its greatest heights. For Benedetto Croce, Baroque decadence produced an art of bad taste ( cattivo gusto artistico ), but for Luigi Barzini, Jr it embodied something more liberating: "Baroque is when you can draw a straight line, but you prefer to draw a curve". The "plastic abundance", corporeality and expansive force identified by Wylie Sypher as hallmarks of Baroque style appear in surplus with Bernini, from his ecstatic St. Teresa, afloat on her own garments as much as buoyed by the Holy Spirit, to the yards of fabric, inflated by invisible winds, billowing around his busts of Francesco d'Este and Louis XIV. *** From Commentary "Meaning in the margins: Victoria Lady Welby and significs" by John E. Jose...