Angelic Devotion: Embodying Belief with Bernini&#x27;s Angels on the Ponte Sant&#x27;Angelo

Whitford, Kelly

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Overview

Year:: 2018
Contributor:: Whitford, Kelly (creator); Lincoln, Evelyn (Advisor); Castiglione, Caroline (Reader); Bass, Laura (Reader); Brown University. Department of History of Art and Architecture (sponsor)
Genre:: theses
Subject:: Opera; Catholic Church; History of Art; Sculpture; Baroque; Bernini, Gian Lorenzo, 1598-1680; Italy--Rome; Performance theory; Ritual; Pilgrims and pilgrimages; City planning; Ponte Sant'Angelo; Castel Sant'Angelo; Tordinona; Public Executions; Angels; Guardian angels; Angels in art; Cult of Angels; Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano; Arciconfraternita della Misericordia (Rome, Italy); Processions, Religious
Extent:: 18, 351 p.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.26300/4ge4-1816

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Description

Abstract:: In 1667, Gian Lorenzo Bernini—the most celebrated Italian artist of his day—received a papal commission to design ten marble angels carrying the relics of the Passion for the Ponte Sant’Angelo at the heart of Rome. As the vital bridge linking the city center and the Vatican, the Ponte Sant’Angelo funneled eager pilgrims, anxious diplomats, and enterprising street hawkers towards St. Peter’s Basilica, while also serving as a setting for civic and religious processions, spectacular fireworks displays, and public executions. While previous scholarship on the sculpture program has focused primarily on artist workshop practices, my study offers a new interpretation of Bernini’s angels by concentrating on how they physically and spiritually affected those pilgrims, travelers, and Romans who traversed the Ponte Sant’Angelo. I analyze how the group of marble angels at this active urban nexus of theology, spectacle, commerce, and judgment engaged those crossing the bridge by directly addressing their bodies—shaping their movement through this space, evoking imaginings of physical pain, and appealing to their sense of touch. While the intended audiences of the Church’s programs of sacred art were wide and far-reaching, written records capture only a handful of responses to Bernini’s sculptures on the bridge. These reactions represent a very narrow audience of educated male viewers. To recapture the spatial, material, and sensorial experience of the Ponte Sant’Angelo not recorded in written sources, I bring together theories of ritual and performance and archival research. By employing this interdisciplinary approach, I reconstruct the persuasive effects of Bernini’s angels on a much broader audience of seventeenth-century beholders, thereby expanding our understanding of the encounter between artwork and audience in the early modern era.
Notes:: Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2018

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Rights: In Copyright
Restrictions on Use: Collection is open for research.

Citation

Whitford, Kelly, "Angelic Devotion: Embodying Belief with Bernini's Angels on the Ponte Sant'Angelo" (2018). History of Art and Architecture Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://doi.org/10.26300/4ge4-1816

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History of Art and Architecture Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the History of Art and Architecture department.
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Angelic Devotion: Embodying Belief with Bernini's Angels on the Ponte Sant'Angelo