Art History student essay on female sitters for Italian Baroque sculptures published in “The Classic”

Art history student Gabriela Diaz-Jones penned an essay that was recently published in The Classic, the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences Writing Intensive Program’s journal of undergraduate writing and research, titled “Baroque Women in Marble as Intimate or Intricate.” Diaz-Jones’s paper explores the objectification of female sitters sculpted in marble during the Italian Baroque era, focusing on two busts, one by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and the other by Alessandro Algardi. Despite the different approaches, both artworks construct idealized versions of women, reflecting the artists’ envisioned roles rather than reality.

In this case, Bernini’s relationship with his subject led to a bust that represents a multiplicity of metamorphoses. Costanza Bonarelli, as Bernini memorialized her, is perpetually moving from silence to speech, acquaintance to lover, from living flesh and flowing hair to marble. He conquered the stillness of stone and shaped it into a stunningly dynamic composition.

-Gabriela Diaz-Jones, “Baroque Women in Marble as Intimate or Intricate: Comparing Bernini’s Portrait of Costanza Bonarelli to Algardi’s Bust of Maria Cerri Capranica”

About the student

Gabriela Diaz-Jones is a fourth-year student of Art History and Spanish at the University of Georgia. She is also a member of the Dodd Ambassadors, an association that supports the interests of students at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. She is interested in every part of the artistic process and has explored it from all angles: as an artist, curator/exhibition organizer, and researcher/historian.