A RESILIENT PROFESSION?

lways an admirer of the Renaissance sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini and curious about his practice, I watched with interest recently a video describing just how he produced perhaps his most famous sculpture, , siting it in a particular room in the Villa Borghese in Rome. Watching and listening, I was struck by the essential aspects of Bernini’s practice that still align with work in the creative fields. He knew his material, selecting his marble blocks from the quarry at Carrara. He knew his site, designing the piece precisely in relation to its space, to be experienced as part of a sequence he choreographed. Before sculpting, he drew and drew and drew to the point where, presumably, he “knew” the piece before it was made, not only in his mind but viscerally, in his hands. To him, the piece was already alive and the paper discarded. An artistic master, he knew his medium in all its dimensions, using his superior knowledge, and his capacities