Songs in Stone - Part Two

If there is a Yin for every Yang, then for every Leonardo Da Vinci there is a Bernini. He was a man who could not only make stones sing, he made them scream, weep and rage. The story and moment he captured in marble would scorch the psyche of the observer with it's intact emotional range. Here is where mere paintings bite the dust. No kind of technique, no brush stroke, no genius can ever beat the genius of Bernini's story telling in stone. A Raja Ravi Verma fanatic, I humbly bow to Bernini and his old fashioned classical style.


 Far from being a social deviant, he was an artist who was a deeply religious Catholic. That he was grounded so deeply in the light of his faith screams out more than anything when you behold the darkness he communicated through " The Rape of Proserpina ". The old familiar tale of a fair maiden being snatched by a brute echoes through the annals of  history. Be it Sita, Helen of Troy, Draupadi or Proserpina. The theme, so powerfully loaded with base emotions has never exploded through art except with Ravi Verma's " Jatayu Vadham " and and Bernini's " Rape of Proserpina."

With his usual use of colours and bold approach Varma does poignantly display the raw power and lust through his painting. The look of animal-ism on Ravana's  face as he kills the noble bird trying to save  Sita who cowers in the shock, terror and despair of her violating abduction ... No doubt one can feel pity and disgust. But they are also rooted in the discomfort of being faced by so taboo a theme.


Were the story to play itself in front of   us what would we really feel ?

Here is where stones beat canvases and Vatican's puritanical, golden boy slaps you in the face with his exploding  realism. To know how you would really feel stare at his sculpture from all angles. Feel the violation of the girl's delicate, virginal skin with  Pluto's fingers digging deep into them where he is holding her. See her mouth open in a silent scream, eyes dilated in terror and despair and tears, yes tears running down her cheeks in marble, even as Pluto's own face is suffused with the delight of victory. Bernini's chisel turns marble into a fluid,mellifluous garment wherein he weaves,unashamedly, the raven darkness that exists in our human world.

When stones sing.