Bernini’s Braids and the Intimacies of Stone

Abstract Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini’s terrorised nudes, Proserpina (1621–1622) and Daphne (1623–1625), each have a single ornament: a braid. Emerging from masses of hair, their braids twist and unravel, wind and bind. As seemingly ordinary signifiers of femininity, they have gone unremarked, yet they are hermeneutically dense. In their form, braids evoke the relationship between surface and depth that defines sculptural creation. Their channelled fluidity is a challenge to the firmness of stone, one that evokes early modern ideas of the natural origins of marble and the discourse of the paragone. Teased from women’s hair, braids invoke issues of desire, violence and decorum. Bernini’s braids attest to a sensual understanding of the matter of marble that is frequently elided in favour of a dematerialised or spiritualised vision of the sculptor. This essay examines Bernini’s braids as a performance of mastery over marble that does not lose sight of its significance as stone.