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The Egyptian obelisk comes from the nearby vedgetable garden of the Dominican convent,
where it was discovered during the 16th century. In fact the convent and the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva stands directly on the
buildings connected to the grand Isaeum of Campus
Martius, and the Saepta Iulia, a great piazza where public voting took place
during Republican times, and which during Imperial times had become a simple monumental
square. Bernini was
 immediately put
in charge with designing an imanginative setting for the obelisk which the powerful
Barberini family wanted to place in their gardens on the slopes of the Quirinal. However,
the Dominicans refused to give it up, and ensured the obelisk remained in Campus Martius,
to decorate the piazza in front of their church. Therefore Bernini
abandoned the idea of creating a giant to hold the great obelisk in its arms, and designed
an elephant which would bear the obelisk on its back. As the Latin inscription on the base
says, the whole composition is supposed to symbolize the fact that a stalwart Christian
faith must sustain knowledge. An important member of the Order called Giuseppe Paglia,
criticized the project, saying that the weight of the Obelisk would have been to heavy for
its hollow base (the elephant's back) and that therefore the monument would soon collapse.
Bernini was therefore obliged not to carve away the stone
under the elephant's belly, and to camouflage this area with a long saddlecloth. Finally,
th sculpture was carried out by a pupil of Bernini,
Ercole Ferrata in 1667 - with some uncertainty about the exact anatomy of the elephant's
feet and trunk.
One should notice that Bernini had already faced the same
type of objection regarding the obelisk which today crowns the Fountain
of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona. The
Romans call the elephant "il Pulcino" (the chick).
Accessibility
The piazza is normally accessible. There are steps leading up to the façade of the church
of Santa Maria della Minerva.
in the photo: the Obelisk in the centre of piazza |
