Bernini's Fountains: an Illustration of How This Art-Form Can Be Said to Symbolize the Emotional Stability of Its Creator—The Seventeenth Century Genius
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BERNINI'S FOUNTAINS: AN ILLUSTRATION OF HOW THIS ART-FORM CAN BE SAID TO SYMBOLIZE THE EMOTIONAL STABILITY OF ITS CREATOR—THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY GENIUS by JANE MAYNARD MATHER B.A., McGill University, 1952 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of Fine Arts We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA September, 1967 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and Study. 1 further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by h.i>s representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada ABSTRACT The oft cited man on the street has never heard of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, although this great artist was perhaps the genius of the seventeenth century. Such ignorance, it is my contention in this thesis, arises from the myth that links creativity with illness, genius with insanity. The same man on the street often knows of other artists not so much, unfortunately, from their work, as from the much publicized idiosyncrasies of their personalities. Bernini, as I have endeavoured to show in this paper, was a man of outstanding stability, vitality, dis• cipline—and a man entirely committed to, and involved in, the time in which he lived. Symbolic of this balance and involvement, it is also my contention, are Bernini's Fountains in Rome. It is generally acknowledged that Bernini brought to this art-form new unity and life, and I have endeavoured here to show how this achievement in the art-form is, more than any other of his well-known accomplishments in Sculpture, Architecture, etc., closely connected to, if not completely.a projection of, the emotional stability of its creator. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTION • 1 II. EMOTIONAL CLIMATE—BERNINI AND HIS TIME ... 6 III. THE PLACE OF FOUNTAINS IN THE EMOTIONAL BACK• GROUND AND THEIR PARTICULAR RELEVANCE TO TOWN PLANNING AND THE THEATRE 28 IV. THE FOUNTAINS 42 The Water Supply • 42 Eighteen Fountains by Bernini—descriptions and comments 58 Conclusion 114 V. CONCLUSION 118 BIBLIOGRAPHY 121 ILLUSTRATIONS 13 0 BERNINI'S FOUNTAINS: AN ILLUSTRATION OF HOW THIS ART-FORM CAN BE SAID TO SYMBOLIZE THE EMOTIONAL STABILITY OF ITS CREATOR—THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY GENIUS Beethoven, the creator of some of the greatest music ever written, in addition to becoming deaf at an early age (and partially perhaps because of this) was tortured through• out his adult life by irritability, jealousy, suspicion, violent anger and loneliness. Van Gogh, convinced that he had become an insupportable burden to others, committed suicide at the age of thirty-seven. Modigliani, whose paint• ings now hang in museums of first quality and the best pri• vate collections throughout the world, took to hashish and alcohol to which he became addicted before he died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-six. (At dawn the follow• ing day, Jeanne Hebuterne, his mistress and the mother of their child, jumped to her death from the window of their fifth floor apartment.) In our own times, it is now known, that in spite of considerable success and recognition (even adulation), that Ernest Hemingway shot himself. All of these artists, in fact, received varying degrees of recognition during their own lifetimes, and yet theirs, and scores of other similar stories prevail among the accounts of the lives of creative men. Whether these stories with their tragic endings tell of poverty, lack of 2 recognition, illness, or other difficulties in the artist's external circumstances, or whether they tell of searing inner conflict and loneliness, of an inability to have close relationships with others—they have given rise to the widely held belief that to be an artist one must, in modern terminology, be neurotic (or even psychotic), or at least to have suffered some sort of serious deprivation. It is, as Kubie puts it, "the old observation which links genius with insanity, creativity with illness.""*" (Those who hold this belief will even go so far as to dismiss the quite inescapable phenomenon of the creative man, whether artist or scientist, who has not suffered any of these things, by saying that the quality of his work is second-rate.) The insane-or-ill-genius idea, however, is a point of view that has in this century been frequently reexamined, and as a result of such scrutiny, become less and less widely held—particularly among those in medicine and the social sciences. Nor do I take that point of view here. This thesis is, in fact, intended to be an illustration of the reverse of this point of view; notably, that the true man of genius is a man capable of unusual self-discipline, a man of vitality, of great stability and inner resources —in short, a person of superior emotional and mental "^Lawrence S. Kubie, M.D. , Neurotic Distortion of the Creative Process, Porter Lectures, Series 22 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 195&), p. 1. 3 2 health. I put forward as the prototype of such a man— Glan Lorenzo Bernini, 1593-1680. In choosing to develop this thesis, I am perhaps The reader may be struck here by a number of thoughts; first, to what heights might Beethoven, Modigliani etc., have soared had they not been ill and beset by dif• ficulties? Secondly, because of the undeniable masterpieces left us by these artists—the "ill-genius" myth must, it seems, contain a "grain of truth," and thirdly, would not such a thesis then imply its converse, that to become creative is to cure? Without being flippant, one can answer the last question by saying that Modigliani did not paint his way out of the self-neglect and abuse that led to his death, nor Hemingway write himself away from the lure of the shot-gun. The second has always had considerable support, from such extremes as, Dryden: "Great wits are sure to madness near allied,/and thin partitions do their bounds divide," to Kubie "... these intertwined yet mortal enemies, the creative and the neurotic processes, are uni• versal; because both arise in early childhood, not out of exceptional circumstances but out of simple and ubiquitous human experiences." One of the purposes of Kubie*s book, in fact, is to show just that. But one of his other pur• poses (and it is of course impossible here to follow the whole course of his argument) is to show that the person who can successfully free himself from the neurotic pro• cesses within him is leaving the way open for the creative processes to develop to their fullest potential. In fact, from the writings of Kubie and many others, it is now gen• erally known and accepted that it is the neurotic elements in an individual that project the sterotyped and the banal, while it takes the healthy element to produce something creative, original and unique. Other writers (among them Ojemann in a lecture entitled "Are Creativity and Mental Health Compatible?") perhaps placate the die-hards of the "ill-genius" theory further by qualifying the sort of de• privation and hardship the latter are talking about. Substituting the word "problem" for the word "deprivation" they make it clear that there are those problems which an individual can solve by calling upon his own resources— often ones that he and others did not know he possessed, and there are other problems—impossible problems—which simply lie beyond the solving power of a given individual. An answer to the first of these questions is still purely speculative, but would probably emerge from the other two. 4 treading on uncertain ground as I have no specialized know• ledge of psychology, but I have done so for two reasons: first, because it seems to me to be impossible to give any serious thought to the life and work of Bernini without being struck by this theory, and secondly, because the con• cept of a world in which the latent creativity in all people is developed to its utmost is such an exciting one, that it might be considered incumbent upon any student who has come to this realization to proselytize and to do what he can to destroy the belief in the neurotic genius. It is beyond my abilities and the scope of this paper to delve into the dynamics of mental health. (Nor do I intend to define the terms used in this paragraph as I am not attaching to them meanings other than those generally understood.) But some description of the ground against which the individual is placed—the accepted conditions that shape a human being—is necessary. I therefore intend to discuss in this paper about Bernini some of the aspects that are usually scrutinized when considering the stability of an individual. Notably: i. the prevailing Zeitgeist. and how Bernini fitted into itj ii. the particular culture in which Bernini lived and its attitude towards him and his workj iii. his own beginnings and family background. 5 Of the enormous body of work created by Bernini during his long life, I have chosen to discuss his Fountains; of all the other areas of his achievement I consider them to be the creations most truly symbolic of their creator—the stable man of genius.