Gianlorenzo Bernini’s Terracotta Modelli and Cultures of Clay in Early Modern Europe

This thesis situates Gianlorenzo Bernini’s terracotta modelli in the context of a broader complication and destabilisation of the understanding of materials. The sculptural medium of clay will be examined as a site of human interaction that reshaped social relations and prompted individuals, both within and outside Bernini’s workshop in Rome, to rethink their engagement with materials. Each of the four chapters in the thesis unravels how the engagement with clay called forth renewed interest in and responses to prevailing ideas on materials, from the natural-philosophical discussions of material transformation to the speculations on the physicality of the soul, and from the academies of Rome and Paris to the clay pits and other sites of extraction.

My study attempts to advance beyond the narrow focus, which is often rehearsed in the scholarship on Bernini, on the personality cult of the artist and, as a result, the reading of the modelli as only preparatory studies that attested to Bernini’s distinctive style and artistic ingenuity. Rather than being merely Bernini’s artistic creation and records of his evolving design ideas that brought the viewer closer to his ‘hand’, the modelli will be considered as products of clay that were defined by a collective culture involving more than Bernini and those immediately associated with the commissions he received. From the extraction of clay to the circulation and collection of the modelli, the role of these terracotta sculptures was continuously contested and reconstructed as individuals sought to come to grips with clay and the unresolved questions surrounding the material, whether in philosophical and theological debates, or broader social and political configurations.