GIOVE e SATIRO -- e la capra AMALTEA -- Bernini -

Speranza

This is Bernini's earliest surviving 'gruppo statuario': the small group of the infant GIOVE and a little SATIRO being nursed by the "CAPRA AMATLEA" -- dating from about 1615. Remarkably accomplished for a boy of sixteen.

It is characteristic of Bernini's beginnings that until FAIRLY RECENTLY this grup was regarded as "antique", not only because of the classical (Graeco-Roman) subject-matter, illustrating a passage in Virgil's GEORGICS, but above all because the uncompromising realistic treatment of the surface is akin to Hellenistic works.