ABSTRACT
Gianlorenzo Bernini’s Cornaro Chapel (1647-52) and S. Andrea al Quirinale (1658-71) present glimpses of heaven through illusionist amalgamations of the three arts (Figures 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3). So consummate and otherworldly are these illusions that to accept the truth of the vision presented can only place in question the objective standing of the architecture from which it is built and the earthly physicality of the materials from which it is made. This essay addresses both issues in two parts: first, how Bernini used marble and stucco to suggest divine immanence within the material realm, presenting the media as both materially present and transcendentally distant; second, how the governing pictoriality of his architecture ensured that vision would always trump building.
