The Themes Of Simon Schama's The Power Of Art

Simon Schama’s, The Power of Art, reflects that contempt and incomprehension are often the only payment that visionary artists ever receive, at least during their lifetimes.
Rather than picking up the most striking or technically pioneering masterpiece, he stresses on the insights and influence of these artists on the societies in which they lived and worked. Their themes, according to Schama, were not matters of aesthetics but rather of salvation, freedom, mortality, transgression, the state of the world, the state of our souls.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, born in 1571, a tortured genius of Baroque Italy. Street brawler, sensualist, escapee from justice, Caravaggio’s qualifications for “transgression” were flawless. On the other hand, so were his visible abilities to portray scenes from Biblical history and the divine mixture of God’s grace through such occasions. These were precious assets worthy of their patronage for the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church and for the Pope.
Schama conveys his story with an almost Boy Scout devotion of interest and desire. The documentary is distributed in three elements;

It was one of Christianity's few mystics. She had visions of Christ and was said to levitate.

This episode displays the details of Bernini's three most important sculptural works that are hardly imaginable in their technical accuracy. His work represented the Baroque style and his sculpture, church interiors and exteriors and town planning could be seen everywhere. He was also a painter, playwright, costume and theatre designer.

Bernini worked under successive Popes; Pope Gregory XV made him a knight and Pope Urban VIII took him as his best friend. He was really admired in his time. His reputation fell further after his bell towers for the Cathedral of St Peter's began to crack in 1641. He redeemed himself and kick started his career yet again with his most famous work, The Ecstasy of St Theresa, in