Page of St Bruno by SLODTZ, Ren-Michel in the Web Gallery of Art, a searchable image collection and database of European paintings and sculptures (1100-1850)

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St Bruno

1744
Marble
Basilica di San Pietro, Rome

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, a cycle of founders of the religious orders was intended to complete the sculptural decoration of the nave of St Peter's. Slodtz's St Bruno belongs to the series.

This statue, technically competent and attractive but stylistically indebted to masters of the previous ear, namely Le Gros and Rusconi, skillfully exploited the pathos of the Carthusian monk's renunciation of a bishop's mitre and crozier. Both gesture and drapery are simplified here even if the introduction of a putto is at variance with the high seriousness of the work as a whole.