Leseprobe

96 She seems so discomposed that the angel will probably first have to calm her before being able to deliver his message. In this work as well, Mochi demonstrated his utterly new conception of sculpture and narration. Wittkower wrote that “the Annunciation is like a fanfare raising sculpture from its slumber”, 7 by which he meant that it overcame the sculpture of Mannerism that had become frozen in its traditions. The works in Orvieto were a great success and resulted in Mochi becoming known also in Rome. The Florentine Maffeo Barberini (1568 – 1644), the later Pope Urban VIII, thus gave him the prestigious commission to create one of the four statues for the family’s chapel in Sant’Andrea della Valle. 8 The plan foresaw two shallow, rectangular niches for the statues set into each of the two side walls. The first commissions were awarded to the insignificant Cristoforo Stati (1556 – 1619), who delivered a rather conventional Mary Magdalene in 1612, and to Nicolas Cordier (1557– 1612), who was already very well known in Rome but died before he was able to complete his John the Baptist. It was therefore Pietro Bernini (1562 – 1629), Gian Lorenzo’s father, who executed the statue of the Baptist by 1615. 9 At the beginning of 1610, Francesco Mochi was commissioned with a Saint Martha , and Ambrogio Buonvicino (1552 – 1622) with a Saint John the Evangelist that turned out to be a rather trivial effort. Mochi was the youngest in this circle and initially worked rapidly on his statue until a new commission took him away to Piacenza, where he was to stay until 1629, creating the two superb bronze equestrian statues of Ranuccio and Alessandro Farnese. If these had been installed in Rome, Baroque sculpture would have possibly taken a different course. 10 As it was, however, Mochi spent seventeen years more or less gone from Rome, the artistic hub of that time. Mochi only finished his Martha for the Barberini Chapel (fig. 71) in 1621, after being repeatedly pressed to complete the work. 11 This statue also demonstrates the unbridled talent of the artist who created a figure that threatens to burst out of the space provided by the niche. In contrast to his colleagues, Mochi did not create a traditional seated figure, but showed the saint, who allegedly killed a dragon with holy water, stooping and striding forwards. By completely disregarding its surroundings, the elegant figure creates a subtle tension which serves to heighten its dynamism. 12 This principle reached its peak in Mochi’s main Roman work, the Saint Veronica (fig. 72) for the crossing in Saint Peter’s Basilica. Maffeo Barberini, who had since been elected pope in 1623, obviously did not hold it against Mochi that his Saint Martha had taken so long to complete, and called him back to Rome as soon as the sculptor had finished work on the eques- trian statues in Piacenza, in 1629. 13 It really was high time for Mochi to return to the Eternal City, where Gian Lorenzo Bernini, creator in the meantime of the spectacular Aeneas and Anchises , The Rape of Proserpina , and Apollo and Daphne groups, now dominated the artistic scene in an unprecedented way. By 1629, Bernini was not only the leading sculptor in Rome, he had also been named architect of Saint Peter’s Basilica and devoted all of his attention to decorating its interior. First of all, Bernini tackled the embellishment of the crossing beneath Michelangelo’s gigantic dome and erected his 28-metre-high bronze baldachin (1624 – 1633) for the papal altar above the grave of Saint Peter in its centre (fig. 74). Then he had huge niches inserted into the four massive piers of the cupola, in which colossal statues of saints were to be placed. This operation was not without risks, as it seemed that the necessary enlargements to the alcoves had produced cracks in the dome, for which he was severely criticized. However, Urban VIII always shielded Bernini and nobody was able to do his favourite any harm. 14 Fig. 71 Francesco Mochi, Saint Martha , 1610 – 1621, marble, Cappella Barberini, Sant’Andrea della Valle, Rome