Download Bernini note abour sculpture

Bernini related sculpture to the blind man’s touch in a disquisition
to the Venetian ambassador on the 6th of October 1665: ‘Then he
explained to the ambassador the difference between sculpture and
painting…sculpture is a truth; a blind man could realize that, but
painting is a lie and a falsehood; one is the work of the devil, the
other of the almighty, Who was Himself a sculptor, having made man
from clay, not in a moment like a painter, but rather after the manner
of sculptors.’ This remark is recorded in a diary kept by Paul
Fréart de Chantelou, one of the maîtres-d’hôtel at the court of
the young Louis XIV, who was Bernini’s guide and companion in
France. See Chantelou, Diary of the Cavaliere Bernini’s Visit to
France, trans. Margery Corbett (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1985), 258-9.