La Predica della Battista: An Epideictic Image Open Access

Abstract

In 1664 Gian Lorenzo Bernini designed a frontispiece entitled La Predica della Battista for the Jesuit Gian Paolo Oliva’s Prediche dette nel Palazzo Apostolico, a collection of the sermons that Oliva delivered to the pope. Bernini’s engraving of an imaginary page with a scene of John the Baptist preaching to a crowd along a river bank has long been understood by scholars as an allusion to Gian Paolo Oliva’s work as a preacher. In his sermons Oliva used vivid imagery and extended metaphor. This type of oratory, known as epideictic oratory, was used to persuade audiences to live with moral integrity. This paper argues that Bernini’s frontispiece can be further understood as a visual counterpart to the rhetorical devices that Oliva utilized in his sermons. This interpretation is driven by an examination of Bernini’s process of composition. Evidence for his method comes from contemporary accounts of Bernini’s habits of drawing and his surviving preparatory drawings for La Predica della Battista. These drawings exemplify Bernini’s method of composing an image and the rhetorical strategies inherent to his practice. Both Bernini’s habits of drawing and Oliva’s practice of writing were anchored in the rhetorical concept of invenzione, through which ideas are made concrete through the activity of drawing or writing. As a frontispiece, Bernini’s La Predica della Battista is a memorialization of the process of image making that preachers like Oliva viewed as the most effective means of persuading their audience.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….………….1

Preaching in the Papal Court: Docere, Movere, and Delectare……………...……………………4

The Drawings: Invention, Arrangement, and Expression………………………..………………15

The Rhetoric of Image Making………………………………………………..…………………25

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...…………………..33

Illustrations…………………………………………………………………..…………………..34

Works Cited……………..……………………………………………………………………….43

About this Master's Thesis

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Art History
Degree	M.A.
Submission	Master's Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Art History
Keyword	Drawing Early Modern Printmaking Gian Lorenzo Bernini Sermons Frontispieces Francois Spierre Gian Paolo Oliva Epidiectic
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	McPhee, Sarah, Emory University
Committee Members	Melion, Walter, Emory University Varner, Eric, Emory University

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