5/25/15

Ekphrasis

As I walk around the Galleria Borghese I stumbled upon a work of art that caught my attention. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. In my eyes it was a true work of art like no other. In the work of art it contained two human like figures and a beast to their side. When you look directly at the sculpture from the front of you the first thing you notice is that one figure is holding up the other. The first figure is very chiseled and you can see that he is using his left leg to support him by the way he clearly is leaning on it. As you look at his legs you can see his muscles flex. As you move up the figure you see some sort of garment bend across his upper left thigh. It is like it gracefully fell upon there. If you look more up you notice that he is holding up a woman. Just by looking upon them you can see that the male is trying to force himself upon her. What is remarkable about that sculpture is that if you look at the hands of the man grabbing the woman it seems as if he is truly grabbing on to real flesh. The artist was able to manipulate the medium into making the figures seem life like as much as possible. They seem to be more like humans pretending to be statues, as if they put pain on themselves and just struck a pose. The expression on their faces tells the whole story. You can see that the woman does not want to have anything to do with him. Her face has a sad expression while at the same time she is trying to push herself away from him. The man on the other hand has an expression of confusion as if he is asking for a reason as to why she does not want to be with him. The way he is grabbing her is clearly a forceful on as you can see his fingers press hard onto her so called flesh. While this is happening there is a three headed beast next to them from behind. Each face has a different expression. The face to the left of the viewer seems to want to ignore what’s happening to the woman as if it does not want anything to do with the situation. The one to the middle is growling to the woman as if it is telling her to do what the man wants. It is this that tells me that the beast is the pet of the man. The last face has an expression of shock. It’s ashamed of the situation. This face seems to go against what its master is doing. When you look at the whole thing at once you can tell that it does not end well for the woman figure unfortunately.

The piece is called the Rape of Proserpina and it is found inside the Galleria Borghese.