Italian Baroque Sculpture

In 1622 Gianlorenzo Bernini completed a sculpture of Pluto abducting Proserpina that was characterised by Bernini’s son Domenico as a “remarkable contrast between tenderness and cruelty”. The sculpture is made of marble, but a detail reproduced on page 42 of this book shows the fingers of the god of the underworld appearing to sink into the soft flesh of Proserpina’s thigh.

Bruce Boucher has adopted a thematic approach to the sculpture of seventeenth and eighteenth century Italy in this illuminating new survey. There are chapters here on portraiture, fountains, tombs, reliefs and altarpieces, and “Ephemeral Decoration and Small Works of...