"Marble painting", history and fortune of the altarpieces in relief in Bernini's Rome is the book by Stefano Pierguidi published by Leo. S. Olschki.
The book reconstructs the critical debate of the seventeenth century on the theme of the altarpiece in relief, with particular reference to the rivalry between Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Alessandro Algardi.
Bernini soon developed an aversion to the genre of relief, referring to Michelangelo's model and following in the footsteps of his father, Pietro, who, while creating the first modern relief altarpiece - the Assumption of the Virgin of Santa Maria Maggiore - in his late maturity he distanced himself from that genre. Gian Lorenzo was educated at a time when the debate on the theme of relief, stimulated precisely by Bernini senior's altarpiece, was highly topical. The uproar aroused by Algardi's Lion and Attila in St. Peter's would have radicalized Gian Lorenzo's position, and some key works by Bernini – from the Santa Teresa in the Cornaro Chapel to the Chair and the Constantine in St. Peter's – were conceived above all in a anti-Algardian. Reconstructing the fortune of the sculpted altarpieces thus means reconstructing the history of personal contrasts between some key personalities of seventeenth-century Rome, having almost as a unit of action the basilica of San Pietro.
