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Bernini, GL 2

Gian Lorenzo (or Gianlorenzo) Bernini (UK: /bɛərˈniːni/, US: /bərˈ-/, Italian: [ˈdʒan loˈrɛntso berˈniːni]; Italian Giovanni Lorenzo; 7 December 1598 – 28 November 1680) was an Italian sculptor and architect. While a major figure in the world of architecture, he was more prominently the leading sculptor of his age, credited with creating the Baroque style of sculpture. As one scholar has commented, "What Shakespeare is to drama, Bernini may be to sculpture: the first pan-European sculptor whose name is instantaneously identifiable with a particular manner and vision, and whose influence was inordinately powerful ..."[1] In addition, he was a painter (mostly small canvases in oil) and a man of the theater: he wrote, directed and acted in plays (mostly Carnival satires), for which he designed stage sets and theatrical machinery. He produced designs as well for a wide variety of decorative art objects including lamps, tables, mirrors, and even coaches.

As an architect and city planner, he designed secular buildings, churches, chapels, and public squares, as well as massive works combining both architecture and sculpture, especially elaborate public fountains and funerary monuments and a whole series of temporary structures (in stucco and wood) for funerals and festivals. His broad technical versatility, boundless compositional inventiveness and sheer skill in manipulating marble ensured that he would be considered a worthy successor of Michelangelo, far outshining other sculptors of his generation. His talent extended beyond the confines of sculpture to a consideration of the setting in which it would be situated; his ability to synthesize sculpture, painting, and architecture into a coherent conceptual and visual whole has been termed by the late art historian Irving Lavin the "unity of the visual arts".[2]

Biography

Portrait of Pietro Bernini, father of Gian Lorenzo

Youth

Bernini was born on 7 December 1598 in Naples to Angelica Galante, a Neapolitan, and Mannerist sculptor Pietro Bernini, originally from Florence. He was the sixth of their thirteen children.[3] Gian Lorenzo Bernini was "recognized as a prodigy when he was only eight years old, [and] he was consistently encouraged by his father, Pietro. His precocity earned him the admiration and favor of powerful patrons who hailed him as 'the Michelangelo of his century'”.[4] More specifically, it was Pope Paul V, who after first attesting to the boy Bernini's talent, famously remarked, 'This child will be the Michelangelo of his age,' later repeating that prophecy to Cardinal Maffeo Barberini (the future Pope Urban VIII), as Domenico Bernini reports in his biography of his father.[5] In 1606 his father received a papal commission (to contribute a marble relief in the Cappella Paolina of Santa Maria Maggiore) and so moved from Naples to Rome, taking his entire family with him and continuing in earnest the training of his son Gian Lorenzo.

Several extant works, dating circa 1615–1620, are by general scholarly consensus, collaborative efforts by both father and son: they include the Faun Teased by Putti (c. 1615, Metropolitan Museum, NYC), Boy with a Dragon (c. 1616–17, Getty Museum, Los Angeles), the Aldobrandini Four Seasons (c. 1620, private collection), and the recently discovered Bust of the Savior (1615–16, New York, private collection).[6] Sometime after the arrival of the Bernini family in Rome, word about the great talent of the boy Gian Lorenzo spread throughout the city and he soon caught the attention of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew to the reigning pope, Paul V, who spoke of the boy genius to his uncle. Bernini was therefore presented before Pope Paul V, curious to see if the stories about Gian Lorenzo's talent were true. The boy improvised a sketch of Saint Paul for the marveling pope, and this was the beginning of the pope's attention on this young talent.[7]

Once he was brought to Rome, he rarely left its walls, except (much against his will) for a five-month stay in Paris in the service of King Louis XIV and brief trips to nearby towns (including Civitavecchia, Tivoli and Castelgandolfo), mostly for work-related reasons. Rome was Bernini's city: "You are made for Rome," said Pope Urban VIII to him, "and Rome for you."[8] It was in this world of 17th-century Rome and the international religious-political power which resided there that Bernini created his greatest works. Bernini's works are therefore often characterized as perfect expressions of the spirit of the assertive, triumphal but self-defensive Counter Reformation Catholic Church. Certainly Bernini was a man of his times and deeply religious (at least later in life),[9] but he and his artistic production should not be reduced simply to instruments of the papacy and its political-doctrinal programs, an impression that is at times communicated by the works of the three most eminent Bernini scholars of the previous generation, Rudolf Wittkower, Howard Hibbard, and Irving Lavin.[10] As Tomaso Montanari's recent revisionist monograph, La libertà di Bernini (Turin: Einaudi, 2016) argues and Franco Mormando's anti-hagiographic biography, Bernini: His Life and His Rome (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), illustrates, Bernini and his artistic vision maintained a certain degree of freedom from the mindset and mores of Counter-Reformation Roman Catholicism.

Partnership with Scipione Borghese

Under the patronage of the extravagantly wealthy and most powerful Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the young Bernini rapidly rose to prominence as a sculptor.[11] Among his early works for the cardinal were decorative pieces for the garden of the Villa Borghese, such as The Goat Amalthea with the Infant Jupiter and a Faun. This marble sculpture (executed sometime before 1615) is generally considered by scholars to be the earliest work executed entirely by Bernini himself.[12] Among Bernini's earliest documented work is his collaboration on his father's commission of February 1618 from Cardinal Maffeo Barberini to create four marble putti for the Barberini family chapel in the church of Sant'Andrea della Valle, the contract stipulating that his son Gian Lorenzo would assist in the execution of the statues.[13] Also dating to 1618 is a letter by Maffeo Barberini in Rome to his brother Carlo in Florence, which mentions that he (Maffeo) was thinking of asking the young Gian Lorenzo to finish one of the statues left incomplete by Michelangelo, then in possession of Michelangelo's grandnephew which Maffeo was hoping to purchase, a remarkable attestation of the great skill that the young Bernini was already believed to possess.[14]

Although the Michelangelo statue-completion commission came to naught, the young Bernini was shortly thereafter (in 1619) commissioned to repair and complete a famous work of antiquity, the Sleeping Hermaphroditus owned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese (Galleria Borghese, Rome) and later (circa 1622) restored the so-called Ludovisi Ares (Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome).[15]...

Papal artist: the pontificate of Urban VIII

Baldacchino in St. Peter's Basilica

In 1621 Pope Paul V Borghese was succeeded on the throne of St. Peter by another admiring friend of Bernini's, Cardinal Alessandro Ludovisi, who became Pope Gregory XV: although his reign was very short (he died in 1623), Pope Gregory commissioned portraits of himself (both in marble and bronze) by Bernini. The pontiff also bestowed upon Bernini the honorific rank of 'Cavaliere,' the title with which for the rest of his life the artist was habitually referred. In 1623 came the ascent to the papal throne of his aforementioned friend and former tutor, Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, as Pope Urban VIII, and henceforth (until Urban's death in 1644) Bernini enjoyed near monopolistic patronage from the Barberini pope and family. The new Pope Urban is reported to have remarked, "It is a great fortune for you, O Cavaliere, to see Cardinal Maffeo Barberini made pope, but our fortune is even greater to have Cavalier Bernini alive in our pontificate."[24] Although he did not fare as well during the reign (1644–55) of Innocent X, under Innocent's successor, Alexander VII (reigned 1655–67), Bernini once again gained pre-eminent artistic domination and continued in the successive pontificate to be held in high regard by Clement IX during his short reign (1667–69).

Under Urban VIII's patronage, Bernini's horizons rapidly and widely broadened: he was not just producing sculpture for private residences, but playing the most significant artistic (and engineering) role on the city stage, as sculptor, architect, and urban planner.[25] His official appointments also testify to this—"curator of the papal art collection, director of the papal foundry at Castel Sant'Angelo, commissioner of the fountains of Piazza Navona".[26] Such positions gave Bernini the opportunity to demonstrate his versatile skills throughout the city. To great protest from older, experienced master architects, he, with virtually no architectural training to his name, was appointed Chief Architect of St Peter's in 1629, upon the death of Carlo Maderno. From then on, Bernini's work and artistic vision would be placed at the symbolic heart of Rome.

Bernini's artistic pre-eminence under Urban VIII and Alexander VII meant he was able to secure the most important commissions in the Rome of his day, namely, the various massive embellishment projects of the newly finished St. Peter's Basilica, completed under Pope Paul V with the addition of Maderno's nave and facade and finally re-consecrated by Pope Urban VIII on 18 November 1626, after 100 years of planning and building. Within the basilica he was responsible for the Baldacchino, the decoration of the four piers under the cupola, the Cathedra Petri or Chair of St. Peter in the apse, the Tomb of Countess Matilda of Tuscany, the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in the right nave, and the decoration (floor, walls and arches) of the new nave. The St Peter's Baldacchino immediately became the visual centerpiece of the new St. Peter's. Designed as a massive spiraling gilded bronze canopy over the tomb of St Peter, Bernini's four-pillared creation reached nearly 30 m (98 ft) from the ground and cost around 200,000 Roman scudi (about 8 million US dollars in the currency of the early 21st century).[27] "Quite simply", writes one art historian, "nothing like it had ever been seen before".[28] Soon after the St Peter's Baldacchino, Bernini undertook the whole-scale embellishment of the four massive piers at crossing of the basilica (i.e., the structures supporting the cupola) including, most notably, four colossal, theatrically dramatic statues, among them, the majestic St. Longinus executed by Bernini himself (the other three are by other contemporary sculptors François Duquesnoy, Francesco Mochi, and Bernini's disciple, Andrea Bolgi).

In the basilica, Bernini also began work on the tomb for Urban VIII, completed only after Urban's death in 1644, one in a long, distinguished series of tombs and funerary monuments for which Bernini is famous and a traditional genre upon which his influence left an enduring mark, often copied by subsequent artists. Indeed, Bernini's final and most original tomb monument, the Tomb of Pope Alexander VII, in St. Peter's Basilica, represents, according to Erwin Panofsky, the very pinnacle of European funerary art, whose creative inventiveness subsequent artists could not hope to surpass.[29] Begun and largely completed during Alexander VII's reign, Bernini's design of St. Peter's Square in front of the Basilica is one of his most innovative and successful architectural designs, which transformed a formerly irregular, inchoate open space into an aesthetically unified, emotionally thrilling, and logistically efficient (for carriages and crowds), completely in harmony with the pre-existing buildings and adding to the majesty of the basilica.

Bust of Armand, Cardinal de Richelieu (1640–1641)

Despite this busy engagement with large works of public architecture, Bernini was still able to devote himself to his sculpture, especially portraits in marble, but also large statues such as the life-size Saint Bibiana (1624, Church of Santa Bibiana, Rome). Bernini's portraits show his ever increasing ability to capture the utterly distinctive personal characteristics of his sitters, as well as his ability to achieve in cold white marble almost painterly-like effects that render with convincing realism the various surfaces involved: human flesh, hair, fabric of varying type, metal, etc.

These portraits included a number of busts of Urban VIII himself, the family bust of Francesco Barberini and most notably, the Two Busts of Scipione Borghese—the second of which had been rapidly created by Bernini once a flaw had been found in the marble of the first.[30] The transitory nature of the expression on Scipione's face is often noted by art historians, iconic of the Baroque concern for representing fleeting movement in static artworks. To Rudolf Wittkower the "beholder feels that in the twinkle of an eye not only might the expression and attitude change but also the folds of the casually arranged mantle".[30]

Other marble portraits in this period include that of Costanza Bonarelli unusual in its more personal, intimate nature. (At the time of the sculpting of the portrait, Bernini was having an affair with Costanza, wife of one of his assistants, sculptor, Matteo.) Indeed, it would appear to be the first marble portrait of a non-aristocratic woman by a major artist in European history.[31]

Beginning in the late 1630s, now known in Europe as one of the most accomplished portraitists in marble, Bernini also began to receive royal commissions from outside Rome, for subjects such as Cardinal Richelieu of France, Francesco I d'Este the powerful Duke of Modena, Charles I of England and his wife, Queen Henrietta Maria. The bust of Charles I was produced in Rome from a triple portrait (oil on canvas) executed by Van Dyck, that survives today in the British Royal Collection. The bust of Charles was lost in the Whitehall Palace fire of 1698 (though its design is known through contemporary copies and drawings) and that of Henrietta Maria was not undertaken due to the outbreak of the English Civil War.[32]

Temporary eclipse and resurgence under Innocent X

Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, 1651

In 1644, with the death of Pope Urban with whom Bernini had been so intimately connected and the ascent to power of the fierce Barberini-enemy Pope Innocent X Pamphilj, Bernini's career suffered a major, unprecedented eclipse, which was to last four years. This had not only to do with Innocent's anti-Barberini politics but also to Bernini's role in the disastrous project of the new bell towers for St. Peter's basilica, designed and supervised entirely by Bernini. The infamous bell tower affair was to be the biggest failure of his career, both professionally and financially. In 1636, eager to finally finish the exterior of St. Peter's, Pope Urban had ordered Bernini to design and build the two, long-intended bell towers for its facade: the foundations of the two towers had already been designed and constructed (namely, the last bays at either extremity of the facade) by Carlo Maderno (architect of the nave and the façade) decades earlier.

Once the first tower was finished in 1641, cracks began to appear in the façade but, curiously enough, work nonetheless continued on the second tower and the first storey was completed. Despite the presence of the cracks, work only stopped in July 1642 once the papal treasury had been exhausted by the disastrous Wars of Castro. Knowing that Bernini could no longer depend on the protection of a favorable pope, his enemies (especially Francesco Borromini) raised a great alarm over the cracks, predicting a disaster for the whole basilica and placing the blame entirely on Bernini. The subsequent investigations, in fact, revealed the cause of the cracks as Maderno's defective foundations and not Bernini's elaborate design, an exoneration later confirmed by the meticulous investigation conducted in 1680 under Pope Innocent XI.[33]

Truth Unveiled by Time, Galleria Borghese, Rome, 1645–1652

Nonetheless, Bernini's opponents in Rome succeeded in seriously damaging the reputation of Urban's artist and in persuading Pope Innocent to order (in February 1646) the complete demolition of both towers, to Bernini's great humiliation and indeed financial detriment (in the form of a substantial fine for the failure of the work). After this, one of the rare failures of his career, Bernini retreated into himself: according to his son, Domenico. his subsequent unfinished statue of 1647, Truth Unveiled by Time, was intended to be his self-consoling commentary on this affair, expressing his faith that eventually Time would reveal the actual Truth behind the story and exonerate him fully, as indeed did occur....

Embellishment of Rome under Alexander VII

Upon his accession to the Chair of St Peter, Pope Alexander VII Chigi (1655–1667) began to implement his extremely ambitious plan to transform Rome into a magnificent world capital by means of systematic, bold (and costly) urban planning. In so doing, he brought to fruition the long, slow recreation of the urban glory of Rome—the "renovatio Romae"—that had begun in the fifteenth century under the Renaissance popes. Over the course of his pontificate Alexander commissioned many large-scale architectural changes in the city—indeed, some of the most significant ones in the city's recent history and for years to come—choosing Bernini as his principal collaborator (though other architects, especially Pietro da Cortona, were also involved). Thus did commence another extraordinarily prolific and successful chapter in Bernini's career.

Bernini's major commissions during this period include St. Peter's Square. In a previously broad, irregular, and completely unstructured space, he created two massive semi-circular colonnades, each row of which was formed of four white columns. This resulted in an oval shape that formed an inclusive arena within which any gathering of citizens, pilgrims and visitors could witness the appearance of the pope—either as he appeared on the loggia on the façade of St Peter's or on balconies on the neighboring Vatican palaces. Often likened to two arms reaching out from the church to embrace the waiting crowd, Bernini's creation extended the symbolic greatness of the Vatican area, creating an "exhilarating expanse" that was, architecturally, an "unequivocal success".[41]

...

Disciples, collaborators, and rivals

Among the many sculptors who worked under his supervision (even though most were accomplished masters in their own right) were Luigi Bernini, Stefano Speranza, Giuliano Finelli, Andrea Bolgi, Giacomo Antonio Fancelli, Lazzaro Morelli, Francesco Baratta, Ercole Ferrata, the Frenchman Niccolò Sale, Giovanni Antonio Mari, Antonio Raggi, and François Duquesnoy. But his most trusted right-hand man in sculpture was Giulio Cartari, while in architecture it was Mattia de Rossi, both of whom traveled to Paris with Bernini to assist him in his work there for King Louis XIV. Other architect disciples include Giovanni Battista Contini and Carlo Fontana while Swedish architect, Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, who visited Rome twice after Bernini's death, was also much influenced by him.

Among his rivals in architecture were, above all, Francesco Borromini and Pietro da Cortona. Early in their careers they had all worked at the same time at the Palazzo Barberini, initially under Carlo Maderno and, following his death, under Bernini. Later on, however, they were in competition for commissions, and fierce rivalries developed, particularly between Bernini and Borromini.[75] In sculpture, Bernini competed with Alessandro Algardi and François Duquesnoy, but they both died decades earlier than Bernini (respectively in 1654 and 1643), leaving Bernini effectively with no sculptor of his same exalted status in Rome. Francesco Mochi can also be included among Bernini's significant rivals, though he was not as accomplished in his art as Bernini, Algardi or Duquesnoy.

There was also a succession of painters (the so-called 'pittori berniniani') who, working under the master's close guidance and at times according to his designs, produced canvases and frescos that were integral components of Bernini's larger multi-media works such as churches and chapels: Carlo Pellegrini, Guido Ubaldo Abbatini, Frenchman Guillaume Courtois (Guglielmo Cortese, known as 'Il Borgognone'), Ludovico Gimignani, and Giovanni Battista Gaulli (who, thanks to Bernini, was granted the prized commission to fresco the vault of the Jesuit mother Church of the Gesù by Bernini's friend, Jesuit Superior General, Giovanni Paolo Oliva).

As far as Caravaggio is concerned, in all the voluminous Bernini sources, his name appears only once: this occurs in the Chantelou Diary in which the French diarist claims that Bernini agreed with his disparaging remark about Caravaggio (specifically his Fortune Teller that had just arrived from Italy as a Pamphilj gift to King Louis XIV). Yet, how much Bernini really scorned Caravaggio's art is a matter of debate whereas arguments have been made in favor of a strong influence of Caravaggio on Bernini. Bernini would of course have heard much about Caravaggio and seen many of his works not only because in Rome at the time such contact was impossible to avoid, but also because during his own lifetime Caravaggio had come to the favorable attention of Bernini's own early patrons, both the Borghese and the Barberini. Indeed, much like Caravaggio, Bernini often devised strikingly bold compositions, akin to theatrical tableaux that arrest the scene at its dramatic key moment (such as in his Ecstasy of Saint Teresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria). And again much like Caravaggio, he made full and skillful use of theatrical lighting as an important aesthetic and metaphorical device in his religious settings, often employing hidden light sources that could intensify the focus of religious worship or enhance the dramatic moment of a sculptural narrative.[76]...

Legacy

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lire_50000_%28Bernini%29.JPG)

Bernini as depicted on the Banca d'Italia 50,000 lire banknote in the 1980s and 90s.

As one Bernini scholar has summarized, "Perhaps the most important result of all of the [Bernini] studies and research of these past few decades has been to restore to Bernini his status as the great, principal protagonist of Baroque art, the one who was able to create undisputed masterpieces, to interpret in an original and genial fashion the new spiritual sensibilities of the age, to give the city of Rome an entirely new face, and to unify the [artistic] language of the times."[81] Few artists have had as decisive an influence on the physical appearance and emotional tenor of a city as Bernini had on Rome.

Maintaining a controlling influence over all aspects of his many and large commissions and over those who aided him in executing them, he was able to carry out his unique and harmoniously uniform vision over decades of work with his long and productive life[82] Although by the end of Bernini's life there was in motion a decided reaction against his brand of flamboyant Baroque, the fact is that sculptors and architects continued to study his works and be influenced by them for several more decades (Nicola Salvi's later Trevi Fountain [inaugurated in 1735] is a prime example of the enduring post-mortem influence of Bernini on the city's landscape).[83]

In the eighteenth century Bernini and virtually all Baroque artists fell from favor in the neoclassical criticism of the Baroque, that criticism aimed above all at the latter's supposedly extravagant (and thus illegitimate) departures from the pristine, sober models of Greek and Roman antiquity. It is only from the late nineteenth century that art historical scholarship, in seeking a more objective understanding of artistic output within the specific cultural context in which it was produced, without the a priori prejudices of neoclassicism, began to recognize Bernini's achievements and slowly began restore his artistic reputation. However, the reaction against Bernini and the too-sensual (and therefore "decadent"), too emotionally charged Baroque in the larger culture (especially in non-Catholic countries of northern Europe, and particularly in Victorian England) remained in effect until well into the twentieth century (most notable are the public disparagement of Bernini by Francesco Milizia, Joshua Reynolds, and Jacob Burkhardt).

Among the influential 18th- and 19th-century figures who despised Bernini's art was also and most prominently Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68), considered by many the father of the modern discipline of art history. For the neo-classicist Winkelmann, the one true, laudable "high style" of art was characterized by noble simplicity joined with quiet grandeur that eschewed any exuberance of emotion, whether positive or negative, as exemplified by ancient Greek sculpture. The Baroque Bernini, instead, represented the opposite of this ideal and, moreover, according to Winkelmann, had been “utterly corrupted...by a vulgar flattery of the coarse and uncultivated, in attempting to render everything more intelligible to them.”[84]

Another major condemning voice is that of Colen Campbell (1676-1729), who on the very first page of his monumental and influential Vitruvius Britannicus (London, 1715, Introduction, vol. 1, p. 1) singles out Bernini and Borromini as examples of the utter degradation of post-Palladian architecture in Italy: "With (the great Palladio) the great Manner and exquisite Taste of Building is lost; for the Italians can no more now relish the Antique Simplicity, but are entirely employed in capricious Ornaments, which must at last end in the Gothick. For Proof of this Assertion, I appeal to the Productions of the last Century: How affected and licentious are the Works of Bernini and Fontana? How wildly Extravagant are the Designs of Boromini, who has endeavoured to debauch Mankind with his odd and chimerical Beauties…?" Accordingly, most of the popular eighteenth- and nineteenth-century tourist's guides to Rome all but ignore Bernini and his work, or treat it with disdain, as in the case of the best-selling Walks in Rome (22 editions between 1871 and 1925) by Augustus J.C. Hare, who describes the angels on the Ponte Sant'Angelo as 'Bernini's Breezy Maniacs.'

But now in the twenty-first century, Bernini and his Baroque have now been enthusiastically restored to favor, both critical and popular. Since the anniversary year of his birth in 1998, there have been numerous Bernini exhibitions throughout the world, especially Europe and North America, on all aspects of his work, expanding our knowledge of his work and its influence. In the late twentieth century, Bernini was commemorated on the front of the Bank of Italy's 50,000 lire banknote in the 1980s and 90s (before Italy switched to the euro) with the back showing his equestrian statue of Constantine.

Another outstanding sign of Bernini's enduring reputation came in the decision by architect I.M. Pei to insert a faithful copy in lead of his King Louis XIV Equestrian statue as the sole ornamental element in his massive modernist redesign of the entrance plaza to the Louvre Museum, completed to great acclaim in 1989, and featuring the giant Louvre Pyramid in glass. In 2000 best-selling novelist, Dan Brown, made Bernini and several of his Roman works, the centerpiece of his political thriller, Angels & Demons, while British novelist Iain Pears made a missing Bernini bust the centerpiece of his best-selling murder mystery, The Bernini Bust (2003).[85] There is even a crater near the south pole of Mercury named after Bernini (in 1976).[86]

Selected works

Main article: List of works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini...

Name: Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Nickname/Alias: Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini

Achievements: Most important sculptor of the seventeenth century and a major influence on Baroque art and architecture.

Born: December 7, 1598; Naples, Italy

Died: November 28, 1680; Rome, Italy (Aged 81)

Field & Discipline: Art;  Sculptor; Architect; Painter

Language: Italian

Father: Pietro Bernini

Mother; Angelica Galante

Siblings: Brother: Luigi

Spouse: Caterina Tezio

Children: 4 sons: Pietro Filippo; Paolo, Francesco; Domenico; 2 daughters: Agnese Celeste; Angelica Cecilia

Education: Trained as a sculptor in his father's studio

Major Works:

“Ecstasy of St. Teresa” (Cornaro Chapel)

“Apollo and Daphne” Piazza S. Pietro (Vatican)

Life & Times:

Bernini's father was a sculptor, and Gianlorenzo trained in the family studio from a very young age, collaborating on works with Pietro even as a boy.  He first gained fame as a child prodigy;  at age ten he demonstrated his virtuosity by drawing on command for Pope Paul V and sculpting the “Goat Amalthea with the Infant Jupiter” for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the Pope's nephew.  Bernini's earliest pieces show the influence of  both [influenced by] Michelangelo*'s works and his own study of classical sculpture.

While Bernini was in his early twenties, Cardinal Borghese, his first important patron, commissioned a series of over-life-size marble statues for his new villa in Rome.  The result was a series of virtuoso sculptures, “Aeneas,” “Anchises and Ascanius Leaving Troy,” the “Rape of Proserpina,” “David,” and “Apollo and Daphne.”  The Borghese marbles were Bernini's answer to the naturalism of contemporary painters such as Caravaggio.  His goal was to make sculpture as free, flexible, and expressive as painting.

He succeeded spectacularly; the sculptures are breathtakingly lifelike, from the play of muscles under skin to the tears coursing down Proserpina's cheeks and the anguished motion of Daphne's body as her skin turns to bark and leaves sprout from her fingertips. 

Bernini's most distinguished and politically significant commissions at this time were his portrait busts.

His half-length bust for the tomb of [sculpted bust of] Bellarmine* was one of the most important works in this genre during the early 1620s. In 1623 Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, Bernini's second major patron, was elected Pope.  Barberini, now Urban VIII, gave Bernini an important and unprecedented position, making him the virtual "art director" of Rome and the Vatican and encouraging him to pursue architectural projects.

Thanks to this opportunity, Bernini's ideas would have a profound impact on both art and architecture and make him the central figure in the development of Italian Baroque style.  Bernini played a major role in decorating the interior of St. Peter's.  His first and most well-known work in this regard was the “Baldacchino.”  This immense structure, situated above St. Peter's grave and beneath Michelangelo's dome, occupied Bernini and his assistants (including his technical adviser [worked with] Francesco Borromini*) for more than ten years.

Bernini's other contributions to the interior of St. Peter's include the extraordinary funerary monument for Urban VIII.  His architectural career also flourished under Urban VIII's patronage.  When [succeeded] Carlo Maderno* died in 1629, Bernini was appointed architect to the fabric of St. Peter's, a position that would eventually lead him to both humiliation and success.

Not all of Bernini's works were for the Papacy, however.  In 1636 he was commissioned to make a bust of [sculpted bust of] Charles I* of England.  Three portraits of the king by [used work of] Van Dyck* were sent to Rome so that Bernini could carve the likeness of a man he had never met.  He also created pieces for Queen [patron was] Christina of Sweden*, who visited him at his studio during her stay in Rome.  She was a great admirer of his work, and after his death she commissioned Filippo Baldinucci to write his biography.

Bernini kept himself busy with painting and drawing, employing a number of assistants who worked from his designs and painting more than 150 pictures himself, most of which are now lost.  His self-portraits and religious paintings show the influence of Caravaggio and [influenced by] Velázquez*, the Spanish painter who made several celebrated visits to Rome during Bernini's lifetime (in fact, some of Bernini's paintings were mistakenly attributed to Velásquez in later years).

Bernini's portrait drawings were equally impressive, and his caricatures and theater pieces delighted audiences with their witty social satire.  He also created a number of elaborate public fountains and monuments in Rome, the most famous of which is the “Fountain of the Four Rivers” in the Piazza Navona (1648-51).

Urban VIII's death in 1644 created hardship for Bernini, who fell out of favor with the new Pope Innocent X and found himself attacked by his artistic rivals.  He had begun remodeling and completion of Maderno's bell towers at St. Peter's in 1636 but was never able to finish them both.  When cracks appeared in the south tower, charges of incompetence were brought against Bernini, and the towers were demolished in 1646.  This public disgrace did not outshine his artistic genius, however, and other patrons were happy to hire him.

The years 1647-52 found him occupied with a work that would prove to be his greatest artistic achievement, the Cornaro Chapel in S. Maria della Vittoria.  The central sculpture in the chapel, the “Ecstasy of St. Teresa,” was created in honor of [made statue of] St. Teresa of Avila*.  Both technically and artistically, the Cornaro Chapel is a masterpiece, the work that perhaps best expresses Bernini's ultimate intentions as an artist (Wittkower, 1997).  According to his son, even Bernini, who was notoriously self-critical, considered St. Teresa the "least bad" of all his sculptures.

Bernini regained papal patronage with the accession of Alexander VII in 1655.  He contributed further work to the interior of St. Peter's, most notably the “Cathedra Petri,” the monumental reliquary for the apostle's throne.

In March 1665, Bernini decided to accept [sculpted bust of] Louis XIV*'s invitation to visit France and design plans for the Palais du Louvre.  Bernini's stay in France, his only venture outside of his native Italy, proved to be an exercise in frustration.  Thanks to constant criticism by Louis XIV's minister [had problems with] Colbert* and a heated rivalry with [rival was] Claude Perrault* (who hoped to advance his own counter-project), Bernini's plans for the Louvre were ultimately rejected.

His trip to France was not entirely unsuccessful, however; he completed a marble bust of Louis XIV, met the English architect [met] Wren*  (who had traveled to Paris especially for that purpose), and received a commission for an equestrian statue of the king.  Louis XIV's bust was made in Bernini's workshop and shipped from Rome.  Unfortunately, the king found it too "Italian" for his taste, and it ended up in a remote corner of [work in garden of] Le Nôtre*'s gardens at Versailles.

Bernini continued to be involved with sculptural and architectural projects for the rest of his life.  His greatest success as an architect was the Piazza S Pietro (1656-1667), an immense and complex project involving construction of the square and the colonnade that frames St. Peter's.

Bernini's final major project was the tomb of Alexander VII (1671-8), which was executed almost entirely by his assistants.  His last sculpture, created when he was 80 years old, was a bust of Christ, the “Salvator Mundi.”  In his will he stipulated that this work, one of the few created for himself, should be given to Queen Christina of Sweden.  Bernini died in 1680, leaving an artistic legacy that, in its sheer scope, is unmatched by any artist before him or since.  His earliest biographies were written by Baldinucci (1682) and his son Domenico Bernini (1713).

Extra Connections:  He influenced [influenced] Fischer Von Erlach* and  [influenced] Cortona*.

Assessment: Bernini was one of the foremost artists of the Baroque era, and the most important artist of the Catholic Counter-Reformation.  His statues and portrait busts are among the most brilliant examples of sculpture in the history of Western art.

Oneliner: Gianlorenzo Bernini, major Baroque sculptor

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