Cornaro Chapel

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Cappella Cornaro
Cardinals from the Cornaro family as “spectators” of the Theresian vision

The Cornaro Chapel (1647–1652) is located in the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. It was donated as a burial place by Cardinal Federico Baldissera Bartolomeo Cornaro , a member of the Venetian Cornaro family . The chapel in the left transverse arm of the church is the work of the sculptor and architect Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini .

In this chapel is Bernini's famous sculpture Rapture of Saint Theresa .

Benefactor

The chapel was founded by Federico Cornaro (1579–1653), scion of the powerful Cornaro family, Patriarch of Venice and cardinal . His commission to Bernini came at a time when he came under heavy criticism in Rome, as the towers designed for St. Peter had to be demolished due to the risk of collapse. With his commission, Cornaro gave him the opportunity to prove his quality as an artist and architect by creating a spectacular total work of art.

Architecture and interior design

Bernini completely redesigned the left transept of the church for the Cornaro Chapel. The room is clad with lively flamed and veined marble slabs in the colors amber yellow, ocher, pink to brownish red; friezes and column capitals are splendidly gilded. On the front wall of the mighty is aedicula trained altar with coupled columns which carry a richly structured and decorated entablature gable. The pillars frame Bernini's famous group of sculptures, Theresa floating on a cloud and the angel with the arrow on whom the light pours in golden bundles of rays. On the sides, members of the Cornaro family are depicted as in theater boxes contemplating the scene of St. Theresa.

The three arts are used side by side in the chapel. They represent a bel composto ("beautifully composed") made of sculpture - St. Theresa in the center and the busts of the Cornaro family in their private chapel -, architecture - the balustrade to the church; the precious marble lining of the chapel and the aedicule framing of the group of sculptures - and painting - the ceiling fresco by Guido Ubaldo Abbatini . In some places the border between the arts dissolves when architecture is painted deceptively real or depicted in sculpture.

Light guidance on the group of sculptures

The group of sculptures is effectively illuminated by a sophisticated lighting system. The light falls through a specially built-in light chamber, which is covered by the arch of the aedicula. Filtered through yellow colored glass, which makes the golden bundles of rays shine, the real light is reinterpreted as a supernatural light.

Together with Latin lettering, the sculpture forms a kind of built emblem . In the vault is the verse: Nisi coelum creassem, ob te solam crearem - “If I had not created heaven, I would have created it for your sake alone”. This word from the legend of Theresa saints represents an apotheosis of St. Theresa as the founder of the order of the Discalced Carmelites . It has a model in a word of God about the prophet Elijah in the Jewish Haggadah .

Representation of passion

The central group of figures of the transverberation vision Rapture of Saint Theresa shows how Theresa receives the arrow shot by an angel in her heart. Often criticized as too erotic, Bernini takes the vision representation of St. Theresa literally: It not only represents the content of her vision, but also her feelings. Thus he alienates the inwardness twice and represents the complex psychological expression. He shows her greatest pain and greatest pleasure at the same time, which the saint describes in her life descriptions.

Web links

Commons : Cornaro Chapel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • Rudolf Preimesberger: Bernini's Capella Cornaro: A picture-word synthesis of the seventeenth century? On Irving Lavin's Bernini book . Art History Journal 49 (1986)
  • Felix Thürlemann : Depicted Architecture . In: Francesco Borromini, Opus architectonicum: narrated and represented architecture , edited by Monika Küble and Felix Thürlemann, Sulgen / Zurich 1999

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gauvin Alexandre Bailey: The Jesuit order as patron of the arts and sciences in the Baroque: from Rome into the world. In: Baroque in the Vatican. 2005, p. 409.
  2. ↑ Claudia Lehmann: Un pien teatro di meraviglie , Bern 2010, pp. 88f.
  3. ↑ transverberare , Latin = to pierce

Coordinates: 41 ° 54 ′ 16.9 "  N , 12 ° 29 ′ 39.2"  E