Art-Bernini-Anaeas, Anchisis & Ascanias TB

Please drop this item in rural or Premium Member Only caches.  Do not drop it in an urban cache or leave it behind at a caching event.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; this prevents the chain and tag tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take this travel bug anywhere you wish.  No permission needed to leave the U.S.

This is one of a series of travel bugs made to recognize art seen and admired by the bug owner.  A digital copy of this work was downloaded from the internet. The copy was reduced in size and proportions cropped to accommodate the laminating materials available to the owner.  Regrettably these processes diminish the effort of the artist.  One truly must see the original in person to fully appreciate the work.  The text below is a mixture of my own observations and material gleaned from the internet (mostly Wikipedia and Web Gallery).

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) was an Italian artist who was perhaps the greatest sculptor of the 17th century.  He was a painter and an architect as well.  He created the Baroque style of sculpture and developed it to such an extent that other artists are of only minor importance in a discussion of that genre.  Bernini's career began under his father, Pietro Bernini, a Florentine sculptor of some talent who ultimately moved to Rome.  The younger Bernini was so talented he earned the praise of the painter Annibale Carracci and the patronage of Pope Paul V.   He was strongly influenced by his close study of the antique Greek and Roman marbles in the Vatican.  He carved for Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, who was later Pope Urban VIII and Bernini's greatest patron. Bernini's early works also attracted the attention of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, a member of the reigning papal family.  Under his patronage, Bernini carved his first important life-size sculptural groups, Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius Fleeing Troy (1619; Pluto and Proserpina (1621-22) and Apollo and Daphne (1622-24).  All three are in the Borghese Gallery in Rome and I have made travel bugs to honor each of them.

The group sculpture Aeneas and Anchises represents Aeneas fleeing from the burning city of Troy bearing his elderly father Anchises on his shoulders, and his son Ascanius carrying the sacred fire of the hearth, while Anchises holds the 'penates' or family household gods. The twenty-one-year old Lorenzo Bernini, still influenced by his father Pietro's late sixteenth-century tower-shaped compositions, executed this group between 1618 and 1620, but many experts believe that this is mainly his father's work.