03 — ARTWORK
The Assumption
- MEDIUM
- Marble
- TYPE
- Religious
PALETTE
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CURRENT LOCATION · Santa Maria Maggiore
- FILE
- 725 × 1084 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
This reliefA sculptural work in which all or part projects from the flat surface. There are three basic forms: low relief (bas-relief, basso rilievo), in which figures project less than half their depth from the background; medium relief (mezzo-rilievo), in which figures are seen half round; and high relief (alto rilievo), in which figures are almost detached from their background. was commissioned for the sacristya side room of a church where a priest puts on his vestments and where the sacred vessels and vestments are kept. of the Santa Maria Maggiore. Inspired by contemporary paintings of the subject (particularly by Ludovico Carracci), Pietro Bernini's relief illustrates his virtuoso marbleloosely applied to any hard limestone that can be sawn into thin slabs and will take a good polish so that it is suitable for decorative work; more strictly, it refers to metamorphosed limestones whose structure has been recrystallized by heat or pressure. Marbles are widely disseminated and occur in a great variety of colours and patterns, but certain types have been particularly prized by sculptors. The most famous of Greek white marbles in the ancient world was the close-grained Pentelic, which was quarried at Mount Pentelicon in Attica. The Elgin Marbles are carved in Pentelic. Widely used also were the somewhat coarser-grained translucent white marbles from the Aegean islands of Paros and Naxos. Parian marble was used for the celebrated Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The pure white Carrara marble, quarried at Massa, Carrara, and Pietra Santa in Tuscany from the 3rd century BC, is the most famous of all sculptors' stones. It was used for the Apollo Belvedere, and was much favoured in the Renaissance, particularly by Michelangelo, who often visited the quarries to select material for his work. Neoclassical sculptors also favoured Carrara marble because of its ability to take a smooth, sleek surface, but it can look rather 'dead' compared with some of the finest Greek marbles.-carving ability and his exploitation of pictorial affects, more skills that he passed on to his son, the young Gianlorenzo. At the same time the relief is rooted in an approach to relief sculpture which differs little from the famous scenes of the life of the Virgin by the fourteenth-century Florentine sculpture Andrea Orcagna.
We find in this composition the sharp linear drapery style and the extreme tenseness of the figures that characterize Pietro's art, never entirely freed from the Mannerist limitations of his training. The work, however, is one of the earliest examples of the pictorial relief altarpieces that were to be popular during the 17th century.
OTHER WORKS BY PIETRO BERNINI
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-r3d76f34972a500,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {The Assumption by BERNINI, Pietro},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-13},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/bernini-pietro-rcb4f61f2146531/the-assumption-r3d76f34972a500},
urldate = {2026-09-13},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-13. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.