Pierre Le Gros the Younger, Stanislas Kostka on His Deathbed, 1703, upstairs at Bernini’s Sant’Andrea al Quirinale. Frank Dabell appears in this video courtesy of Context Travel.
[0:00] [music]
Prof. Frank Dabbell: [0:04] We go upstairs into the rooms of the novitiate — that is, for the novices who are joining the Jesuit order. Now, in the 1500s, this was a new order of religion founded by Ignatius Loyola, who died in 1556.
[0:19] We’ve stumbled into a room; it’s almost an act of shock, certainly surprise, to see what appears to be a young man on his deathbed. In fact, sometimes in the gloom entering this room, you really think that somebody’s in front of you lying on a couch, a sort of daybed.
[0:34] This is Stanislas Kostka. He’s a young Polish novice of the Jesuit order. He died only aged 18, and he bore his terrible illness with great humility and strength and died with a vision of the Virgin Mary before him. This was made before he was officially declared a saint. This was made in 1703.
[0:55] What we see is a very richly carved and very detailed statue of a young man lying very naturalistically on a bed. Now, everything is color here. It’s all made of stone, but we have Sicilian jasper. We have an ochre-colored marble. We have a deep black stone, marble, for the clothing that he wears because he’s a member-to-be of the Jesuit order, wearing black, and white pillows, and of course the flesh is done in white marble.
[1:22] He’s holding an image of the Virgin and a crucifix, and he would have originally had a halo, which would have picked up that sense of yellow and gold even more. As I said, he’s naturalistic. He’s not lying as if he has died, and we’re watching a lying-in-state here. He is still alive, or he’s in the moment of passing.
[1:45] This was something that fascinated Baroque artists. Bernini, who had died by the time this was done, was one of the pioneers in showing the transition, the “trapasso,” as it was called, from life to death. Those moments that you go from the earthly to the spiritual, from life to death, but death is a comforting, eternal thing to look forward to.
[2:08] This is very intimate. That’s why it has shocked, in a good way, so many visitors who come into this room. It’s a very intimate space. It’s the quiet side of the Baroque. Baroque doesn’t necessarily mean loud. It’s life-size. It’s as if we are attending personally to this young man’s death.
[2:25] This was part of the art of the Jesuit persuasiveness, or the art of persuasion. Through example, through art, again, through readings of course as well, you are brought close to what matters about the passing from life to death. In this case, humility and absolute, unshakable faith.
Dr. Beth Harris: [2:44] The realism of this is just so moving and upsetting in a way. The way that he lifts his arm up to hold this framed image of the Virgin and clasps with his other hand the rosary and the cross, it’s that moment of something happening in front of you. It’s so theatrical.
Prof. Dabbell: [3:03] In front of you, and that we could reach out and touch. I think in the 19th century, there was a railing around it because they didn’t want people touching it. Now it’s a matter of trust. We’re not touching it, but we could. I’m just stretching my arm. I could practically shake his hand.
[3:15] The crucifix is a separate carved object and the rosary is a real rosary. If you look closely, details such as the eyes and the nails of his fingers and toenails are carefully incised. This is a very detailed work of art, while the flow of the drapery and the bed itself is slightly more dramatic and loosely carved.
Dr. Steven Zucker: [3:35] I think that that’s right, this is a work of art that’s meant to be seen up close. I was really struck by the thinness of the cloth as it’s represented of his undershirt, of the collar of that cloth, and just the way in which it’s not different from the collar that I’m wearing. There’s this kind of immediacy.
Prof. Dabbell: [3:53] The pioneer in that sense had also been Bernini.
Dr. Zucker: [3:56] We do feel privileged in that this is a very private moment that we’re given access to.
Prof. Dabbell: [4:01] Yes.
Dr. Zucker: [4:01] It’s so interesting because during this moment, during the Baroque, you have the grandeur, you have the operatic, and then you also have this sweetness and this intimacy and this really sort of internal experience, but it’s not a conflict. It’s a spectrum of experience. A spectrum of emotion.
Prof. Dabbell: [4:18] Exactly. It’s arranged like an ordinary life that can go from quiet to loud and then back to quiet, from intimate to public.
[4:24] [music]
