Un teatro pien di meraviglie. Gian Lorenzo Bernini vor dem Hintergrund konzeptistischer Poetik

The dissertation examines three works by the Roman artist Gianlorenzo Bernini each of which is characterized by a particular combination of word and image. These are the Tomb monument for Countess Matilda of Tuscany and the Pillars of the Crossing, both in St. Peters, Rome. The third monument regards the Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria, including Saint Teresa of Avila in the act of transverberation. The very way in which textual elements relate to the sculptured parts reveals a structural reference to emblematic devices. It is assumed that Berninis works can be interpreted as conceptual devices and that they had been coined by the current conceptual emblematic theories. Since the 16th century, devices (imprese) and emblems were discussed in treatises. At that time, their rhetoric was dominated by the courts and the academies. However, it was only in the 17th century that the emblem attained universal importance through emblematic theory, which was divulgated in treatises on rhetoric and in poetics. With Giambattista Marinos poetic language, they attained a new orientation. In Italy, authors like Emanuele Tesauro, Sforza Pallavicino and Matteo Peregrini followed Marino. They coined a new understanding of the term “concetto”. A large part of Matteo Peregrinis and Emanuele Tesauros writings were dedicated to the creation and reading of emblematic devices. Terms like “concetto”, “metafora” (metaphor), “argutia” (acumen), “inganno” or “decezione” (deception) represent central elements of their theory. They strongly argued that the production as well as the reading of emblematic devices must be seen in the context of logic argumentation. For the first time, in this work, highly important and monumental sculptures by Gianlorenzo Berninis are seen in the light of contemporary emblematic devices. In respect to the monuments location, its function and commission, each monument denotes a unique and individual expression of emblematic structure. Berninis works also visualize a diversification of emblematic modes. Central terms of conceptual emblematic theory which are directly connected with crucial visual phenomena in his works are exposed in the first two chapters. In the first chapter, the stress is laid on the three-divided unit of emblems consisting of “inscriptio”, “pictura” and “subscriptio”, whereas the interpretation of St. Peters Pillars in the second chapter exemplify the conceptual terms “concetto” and “metafora”. In the third chapter, dedicated to the Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria, these topics are brought together and thoroughly discussed. In this chapter, a new reading of the sources correlates to an iconographical approach which is defined in the context of intertextual conceptions. In the combination with the thesis central subject of conceptual rhetoric, iconography as interpretative model is newly defined.