Gabrielle Baxter

  The Rape of Proserpina by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1622 I want to first point out that the Latin translation of the word rape means seized or carried off and does not refer to sexual violence in terms of this work of art.  The above is a marble sculpture by the artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Bernini began the sculpture in 1621 and completed it in 1622.  The story behing the sculpture is the abduction of Proserpina, the daughter of Jupiter and Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture. Proserpina was attacked by Pluto, the god of the dead, and dragged into the underworld. When Ceres realized that Pluto had abducted Proserpine, she became angry and caused the earth to dry up, and the harvests to fail. Jupiter saw from the heavens that the earth was barren and dead. He decided to intervene, and eventually a deal was made where Proserpine would spend half of the year with her mother and half of the year in the underworld with Pluto. Unlike sculptures done during the Italian Renaissance, that ap