Bernini's Earliest Masterpieces

Bernini's Earliest Masterpieces The Barcaccia, a beautiful water fountain constructed at the base of the Trinita dei Monti in Piaza di Spagna, was Bernini's earliest water fountain. This area is still filled with Roman locals and tourists who like to exchanging gossip or going over the day's news. Bernini would without a doubt have been happy to know that people still flock to what has become one the city's most fashionable areas, that around his amazing water fountain. In around 1630, Pope Urbano VIII helped Bernini start off his professional life with the construction of his first water fountain. People can now see the fountain as a depiction of a great ship slowly sinking into the Mediterranean Sea. The great flooding of the Tevere that covered the whole region with water in the 16th was memorialized by this momentous fountain as recorded by reports dating back to this period. In 1665 Bernini traveled to France, in what was to be his sole lengthy absence from Italy.

Contemporary Statuary in Ancient Greece

Contemporary Statuary in Ancient Greece In the past, most sculptors were compensated by the temples to decorate the involved columns and archways with renderings of the gods, however as the period came to a close it grew to be more accepted for sculptors to present ordinary people as well because many Greeks had begun to think of their institution as superstitious rather than sacred. Rich families would sometimes commission a rendering of their ancestors for their big familial burial tombs; portraiture also became prevalent and would be appropriated by the Romans upon their acquisition of Greek society. A point of artistic development, the use of sculpture and alternate art forms transformed through the Greek Classical period, so it is not entirely accurate to assume that the arts served only one function. Greek sculpture is possibly enticing to us at present as it was an avant-garde experiment in the ancient world, so it doesn't make a difference whether or not its original purpose was religious zeal or artistic pleasure.