Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University College London : A - History of Art
The Transformation of the Rio de la Plata and Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers in Rome
Research imperatives and process: By questioning notions of representation San Juan examines how the issue of visibility and invisibility has shaped the history of Bernini's sculpture. The article seeks to counter classificatory forms of identity by bringing into the analysis notions of transformation through which early modern natural philosophy understood change. Thus instead of turning the figure of the Río de la Plata into the African slave, and substitute for the indigenous American, it opens up the constant process of transformation - physical and metaphorical - through which the figure was conceived in the 1651 pamphlets as having travelled not only from Africa to America but also from Africa to Rome.
