Volume 28, Number 14 · September 24, 1981
Ecstasy
By Robert M. Adams
Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts
by Irving Lavin
Oxford University Press, 486, 299 plates, two volumes pp., $89.00 the set
Professor Lavin's large, meticulous, expensive study of Gian Lorenzo Bernini combines to curious effect several different characters. It is a study for specialists, rich in documentation and encyclopedic in its command of the materials; it reposes majestically on stratum after stratum of footnotes, citing materials in at least five languages. Yet the main thesis it advances has been a commonplace of Bernini discussion for at least three centuries. The center of the book's attention is one of Bernini's best known works, the Cornaro chapel of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, with its famous group representing Saint Teresa in ecstasy. Yet the first seventy-four pages of text (out of a total of 145, not counting appendices, checklists, catalogues, and three indexes) are devoted to other, less remarkable chapels and ecclesiastical constructs designed by Bernini.
Review, 1789 words
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