In other depictions of this myth, artists paint a weaker heroine. But he moves on without me, and I stand alone a while longer and stare at the goose bumps raised and rippled, carved by a tool onto Proserpine. A thought toward pleasure: to see him kneel and lick Rome’s dust from my bare leg. He leans closer, and a budding warmth in me blossoms. I imagine the stranger grasping me as Pluto grasps Proserpine. The stranger and I take breaths in unison, suspended in anticipation of the other’s gesture. Fine hairs and ridged red flesh rise to bridge the gap between my body and his. Then his arm parts from mine, just barely, and the world expands to that narrow space that separates us, and through that space the possibility of adventure trembles forth. Where we touch becomes a whole sensate world made of heat, weight, a scent like wet leaves. The way marble fingers sink into marble flesh, the eroticism of this aggression - it makes me uneasy, but I don’t look away, and neither does anyone else. He wraps a hard hand around her thigh, and at that point of contact Bernini has made metamorphic rock soft, impossibly. Pluto, god of the Underworld, abducts her, forcing her away from nature and toward the safety of the dark and isolated world he rules.īernini stills, for our consideration, the moment when Pluto sees Proserpine and takes her, holds her roughly. Proserpine, the daughter of the goddess Ceres, is nearby picking flowers. Venus, the goddess of love, tells Cupid to send an arrow through Pluto’s heart, afflicting him instantly with a lovelike madness.
The sculpture depicts a story the Romans adapted from Greek mythology.
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