(gentle music) - [Beth] We're in the
Galleria Borghese here in Rome looking at one of several
sculptures that Bernini as a young man in his 20s
made for Cardinal Borghese here in this fabulously beautiful villa and this is the sculpture of David. - [Steven] So the story
comes from the Old Testament and the young man who
will become King David. - [Beth] He's a shepherd
and the Israelites are in battles with the Phillistines. - [Steven] But a giant of a man, Goliath, is so powerful that nobody
wants to meet him directly, but David takes off his
armor and goes to meet him, not even armed with a sword. - [Beth] He gathers some stones
and he goes to face Goliath and it is god on the
side of the Israelites, David has that behind him when
he goes to face and defeat Goliath, which he does with
one stone from the slingshot. - [Steven] Which hits Goliath between the eyes and fells him. David then takes the giant's
sword and severs his head but this is the moment of action itself. When most people think of
the sculpture of David, they think of Michelangelo's
High Renaissance sculpture. - [Beth] And that dates
to the early 1500s, so here we are more than 100
years later and we've moved from the High Renaissance into
the period of the Baroque. - [Steven] Bernini knew
all about Michelangelo's triumphant sculpture,
David, and it informs this, but Bernini is making
this sculpture his own. - [Beth] Well, we're in a very
different moment in history. Michelangelo's sculpture
during the High Renaissance was looking back to Ancient
Greek and Roman art, this interest in classical antiquity, this moment of humanism
in the Renaissance, of idealizing the human body. - [Steven] Creating a
stable columnar figure, making the human body seem
almost like a classical column in its purity, in its elegance. - [Beth] Michelangelo's David
has tension in the muscles and a lot of tension in the
face and a sense of drama in the face as he stares down Goliath, but it's as though that
drama that was just incipient in Michelangelo is really
hear unleashed by Bernini. - [Steven] He's like a spring
that's about to unwind. - [Beth] Michelangelo gives
us the moment before the fight with Goliath and Bernini
is giving us the moment where David is about to
release this slingshot and kill this giant of a man, Goliath. - [Steven] In fact, some people have said that they don't want to stand
in front of the sculpture because it looks like that
slingshot might hit them. Bernini is able to activate
the space around the stone. - [Beth] That's one of the
big differences between the High Renaissance and the Baroque. With Michelangelo's David,
we are very separate, we contemplate his ideal beauty, but here we're emotionally,
bodily involved. - [Steven] Look at the
torsion in David's body, the way he's twisted and he's about to spin that rock and unleash it. - [Beth] The body crosses
itself, which is not something we see in Michelangelo's
David and the body forms this diagonal line that
has so much energy. - [Steven] Look at the knit
brow of his focused attention, look at the way that the
lips are pressed together, making so clear his intense concentration. - [Beth] And you can
feel that he's gathering every ounce of strength that
he has to throw this stone, he's got god behind him, but he's still using all of his strength. I always find myself wanting
to say, "You can feel it," when I describe Baroque art, and I think that's the
whole idea of Baroque art. - [Steven] It is a direct
confrontation with the narrative, it is meant to bring us into
the story, and Bernini does this so well that we
forget that this is stone. - [Beth] So that emotional involvement, that almost bodily
involvement where we almost wanna duck out of the way is
so typical of Baroque art. This moment in the 1600s
when the Catholic Church is using art as a way to affirm and strengthen the faith of believers. - [Steven] That was a major
tenet of the Counter-Reformation of the Council of Trent
that suggested that art was didactic, that art could be a teaching tool to help
deepen one's faith. - [Beth] Teaching is a
funny word because it sounds so distant but the art of the Baroque, it doesn't feel like a
lecture, it feels like we're being brought
in, it feels seductive. - [Steven] Look at the naturalism here, look at his understanding
of the human body, of its musculature, of
the skeletal structure, even in this enormously complex pose. This is an artist who has
taken all of the lessons of the High Renaissance but activated them and turned them to a purpose
that even Michelangelo, I think, could not have predicted. - [Beth] When I look at
Michelangelo's David, I feel as though I'm looking
at a figure that is superhuman, too beautiful to be
someone that you would pass on the street, but Bernini's
David looks like a man, he is depicted naturalistically,
but he's not idealized like a god, that is such a High
Renaissance characteristic. But the naturalism that
you're talking about, we see in Caravaggio,
we see here in Bernini, it's very much a
characteristic of the Baroque. - [Steven] These are artists that bring the Bible into our world. (gentle music)