Propuesta para la solución Descripción del hardware

We may start our discussion of the Apollo and Daphne with a poem which, pub-

lished only relatively recently, has received but little attention within the litera-

ture on Bernini’s ‘fortuna poetica’.4 _{Written by Antonio Bruni, a poet that had}

been associated with the court of Scipione Borghese at the time that Bernini started working on the first of his big sculpture groups commissioned by the Cardinal, the Aeneas and Anchises, it is of particular relevance for our under-

standing of the reception of Bernini’s work.5

Praise the beautiful Daphne, sculpted so alive

2 _{Baldinucci/Samek Ludovici 1948, p. 79: ‘subito ch’ella fu fatta veder finita, se ne sparse un tal} grido, che tutta Roma concorse a vederla per un miracolo, ed il giovinetto artefice stesso […] nel camminar ch’e’ faceva per la città, tirava dopo di sé gli occhi di tutte le persone, le quali il guardavano e ad altri additavano per un prodigio…’

3 _{For a brief overview of the different opinions on the work see Bolland 2000, p. 309.} 4 _{Bellini 2003, pp. 408-409, dicusses it only briefly. For the reception of Bernini’s art in poetry}

see Ferrari 2004, pp. 59-63; Herklotz 2004; Montanari 2003, pp. 177-198; Montanari 1999; Ferrari 1999, pp. 595-615; Montanari 1998, pp. 127-164; Schütze 1994, pp. 213-287.

5 _{Flemming 1996, p. 192 and p. 182, n.18, mentions a manuscript work by Bruni titled ‘La} Porpora del gran Cardinale Scipione Borghese’ dated 1618, which can be found in the Vati- can Archive, ASV, F.B. IV, 139 and is mentioned in the Indice dei manoscriti dell’Ecc.mo sig.e Cardinale Scipione Borghese, BAV, Chigi R.II.61, f. 570v as ‘La Porpora, panegirico del Bruni’. The final payment for the Aeneas and Anchises dates from 14 October 1619, suggesting that Bernini started on the work in 1618. The small bust of Pope Paul V also in the Villa Borghese is usually dated around the same year. Cf. Wittkower 1955, cat. 6 and 8.

by he who gives also to marble, both sense and life: Only you can praise her,

you, who, Thracian singer, Theban swan seems with your odes:

Behold, sovereign sculptor,

for, new Amphion, newborn Orpheus, with your song to the trophy

you withdraw trees and stones, now transforming her from one form into the other,

and prove her courteous to your lyre,

now in plant you change [her], and now in stone.6

The poem reads like a closed circle: the artist brings the lifeless marble to life, only to see it change back to lifeless material in the last verse of the poem: ‘now

in plant [pianta] you change [her], and now in stone’. The circular element ex-

plored by Bruni brings to mind some of the works of Giovan Battista Marino.7

In particular we may think of a madrigal such as his Cantatrice crudele (‘Cruel

singer’), published in the 1602 Rime. Here the poet presents the reader with a

further unidentified female singer who, with her song, renders alive trees and stones and seduces them to fall in love with her, only to show herself ‘to prayers a tree stump, to tears a stone’.8 _{A theme like this appears perfect to}

praise the Apollo and Daphne, which, as also the subject dictates, is indebted to

the sensitivity for metamorphosis we find in Marino and the marinisti. Bruni’s

poem is not conceived of as a simple praise of the artist though. While it is definitely the artist, Bernini, who gives the marble ‘and sense and life’, the ‘you’

in the fourth verse (‘Only you can praise her…’) seems to refer to someone else,

a poet, who with his poetry, his song, brings about the final metamorphosis.9

6 _{Bruni 1633, vol. 1 (‘La venere terrena’), p. 34 (‘Per una statua di Dafne, ch’è nella Villa} dell’Eminentiss. Sig. Cardinal Borghese.’): ‘Loda la bella Dafne | così al vivo scolpita | da chi porge anco à’ marmi e senso, e vita: | Sol tu lodarla puoi, | tu, che Tracio Cantor, Cigno Te- bano | sembri con i carmi tuoi | Ecco Scultor sovrano, | perche, novo Anfion, novello Or- feo, | del tuo canto al trofeo | tu tragga arbori, e sassi, hor la trasforma | d’una in un’altra forma, | e la mostra cortese à la tua cetra, | hor’ in pianta conversa, et hora in pietra.’ Trans. adopted from Bellini 2006, p. 283. See also Bellini 2006, pp. 281-283; Bellini 2003, pp. 408- 409 and Bellini 2002, p. 94, n. 162. The poem is also referred to in Unglaub 2006, p. 248, n. 58.

7 _{For Bruni’s indebtedness to the work of Marino see Croce 1965, pp. 22-76.}

8 _{Marino/Martini 1995, p. 57, originally in Marino 1602, vol. 2, p. 15: ‘ai preghi un tronco, ai} pianti un sasso’; see also Martini’s discussion of this poem and one with a similar theme on pp. 119-121.

9 _{While Bellini 2002, p. 94, n. 162, still holds that it is ‘more probable’ that Bruni does not refer} to Bernini here, in Bellini 2003, p. 409, he argues that the praise of being a ‘new Amphion,

Who can this poet be? Surely it is not the sculptor himself. Bernini’s tool is the chisel, not the word. Agostino Mascardi, a literary figure and historian closely connected with the court of Urban VIII, writes in 1627 that ‘Bernini […] albeit in his youth, knows to give sense of life to stone with his chisel, better than the fabulous Amphion did with his song.’10 _{Yet, the sculptor is no Or-}

pheus, no ‘Thracian singer’.11 _{The imperative ‘praise’ with which Bruni starts}

his first verse is only picked up again after the sculptor has been mentioned with the more distant ‘he who…’ [chi]: ‘only you can praise her’. It is the same ‘you’ that is repeated in verses 5, 6, 9, 10, and 12, either as a personal or a pos- sessive pronoun. Whereas the sculptor, Bernini, gives life to the marble, it is the poet who proves it ‘courteous’ to his lyre; where the artist gives life, the poet gives life a direction. ‘Behold’ [ecco], writes Bruni: the poet is confronted with the power of his own words, for he is indeed the ‘sovereign sculptor’ in the seventh verse. He takes over where the chisel’s work ends, showing the work as it truly can, or even should be. Already in 1613, Borghese court poet Scipione Francucci had praised the power of the poet over that of the artist; only Apollo,

the poet, can ‘bring alive the works of the chisel…’12 _{Now, we may ask, was a}

specific poet intended in Bruni’s poem? As will be further explored below, there are arguments to believe that this was indeed the case, namely: Maffeo Barberini, the poet pope Urban VIII. What is more, with this identification we may attribute a more profound significance to Bruni’s poem. That is, not only can we read it as praise for the sculptor, but also as readily engaging with the

more specific discussion that developed around the Apollo and Daphne as well as

thematizing the poet’s efforts to come to terms with the sculpture’s physical impact.