Gianlorenzo Bernini

1. Gianlorenzo Bernini Apollo and Daphne

3. Analysis • Apollo and Daphne is a baroque, life-sized marble sculpture by Italian Gian Lorenzo Bernini. • Clearly, the visual aspects of the sculpture are the most striking and obvious. However, this alone is not enough completely “understand” and “appreciate” the work. • At first sight, the sculpture might seem like a man’s display of love for a woman, or a display of lust. • However, that is far from what the sculpture actually stands for. For this piece, the context is particularly important: the sculpture is actually inspired by a story from “Metamorphoses” and depicts, the pursuit of love in vain for Apollo. It also depicts the metamorphosis of daphne into a laurel tree. • All of this clearly cannot be gained from a simple look at the piece but can be gained only by studying the history behind it and its context.

4. Meaning/ interpretation of the work: • The “meaning” of art is probable the most speculated one, simply because it is entirely subjective and in most cases, there is no explicit account of the original artist describing his work. • The culture of the times also has an impact on the “Meaning”. For example, this piece was done during the Hellenistic period as can be seen from the androgynous depiction of Apollo and interlocking components and chiaroscuro.This might seem to be irrelevant to the “meaning”. However, the interlocking components are crucial in creating the impression of a “metamorphosis” taking place. • The intention of the artist is of course instrumental to understanding the piece, only if one wished to interpret it in the way the artist wanted it to. • This is because even if the artist did mean a piece to mean something, it is entirely up to the viewer to see it the way he wishes to see it. The viewer might see beauty in something which even the artist didn’t. remember, “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder”.

5. Value of the Work • In my opinion, there is no universal way to determine the “value” of an object, let alone its monetary value. Such an activity is purely subjective. For e.g. the above piece, in monetary terms would rate at a few million pounds for an art aficionado, but would be meaningless to a person who didn’t understand it or doesn’t appreciate it. • Also, to limit the value of an object to monetary terms alone would also be incorrect. • In my opinion, the only true way of “valuing” the piece of art is through the impact on the person viewing the piece simply because evaluation of a piece of art is subjective. The example mentioned earlier can be used to substantiate the same point. • The properties of the art such as its intricacy, moral content, importance in historical terms etc are relevant only if the viewer considers it relevant, in other words, the value of a piece can be determined by the viewer alone and can never be universal.