Word: putty
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...Rome's American Academy, Lavin revealed five new sculptures that he attributed to Bernini: a small boy with dragon, two marble putti in the Barberini chapel in the Church of Sant' Andrea della Valle, plus two portrait busts from Confraternita della Pietá (a 17th century charity hospital demolished in 1937), long forgotten in the cellar of an adjacent church. Each is stamped with the baroque characteristic of the human presence hyperpersonified, with anatomy in strain, gestures exaggerated, details made into drama...
Nothing to Chance. For all his discipline, Poussin was in no sense a stony prude or a bloodless geometrist. He reveled in depicting bacchanalia where swarthy satyrs lurched after alabaster-skinned nymphs, and chubby putti chugged wine as if it were rosy Pablum -all composed as carefully as a ballet. In his Rape of the Sabine Women (see opposite page), swords and outflung arms set up triangles that play a counterpoint against the squarish architecture. Nothing is left to chance, not even the suggestive but studied pas de deux of the Sabine maidens and their Roman abductors...
Junkyard bargains, from limestone putti to dented iron deer, have long been available for those with offbeat tastes. But as architectural monuments are bulldozed into extinction across the land, a new group of collectors is springing up - architectural buffs who first picket to preserve the best of the old, then, if the wreckers move in, haunt the ruins in hopes of rescuing a cornice, a caryatid, a cartouche, an ornamented corbel, or some Tiffany glass...
Historian's Notes. The drawings tell interesting tales of art history. Correggio's Two Putti and two companion studies furnish proof that he was responsible for conceiving the decoration in an arch in Parma's church of St. John the Evangelist. Two Studies of a Man Suspended by his Leg was Andrea del Sarto's preparation for an unappetizing commission: a painting for public display of some traitors who were to be shown, according to custom, hanging by one leg. One feature of the collection is a number of scenery designs done by Inigo Jones; some...
Donatello, the greatest sculptor of the century, introduced the statuette with his small putti in the Baptistery of Siena. From then on, the great studios turned out an army of naked gods, young shepherds, heroes on horseback, satyrs and saints. Many were received with such affection that they acquired a gleaming patina from the caresses of their owners. They were used as decorations for furniture, as inkwells, even as perfume burners to rid the air of the stench of sewage. But mostly they were loved as works of art in themselves...