The emphatic sensuality of Bernini’s women–sculptures of historical, allegorical, biblical and mythological females–has endured from their 17th-c creation through their reception in the Me Too era. This course explores Bernini’s transformation of insensate stone into seemingly carnal existence and its controversial impact on viewers. We will situate the interplay of touch, desire, erotics, and violence that animates his female bodies in early modern contexts, including notions of gender. Moving into modernity, we will study the imitations his women inspired and the critiques that revisit them from aesthetic, theoretical and feminist lenses.
