Gian Lorenzo Bernini

3/29/2018 Gian Lorenzo Bernini - Wikipedia
Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdʒan loˈrɛntso berˈniːni]; also Gianlorenzo or Giovanni Lorenzo; 7
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
December 1598 – 28 November 1680) was an Italian sculptor and architect.[1] While a major figure in the world of
architecture, he was, also and even more prominently, the leading sculptor of his age, credited with creating the
Baroque style of sculpture.[2] 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...."[3] 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), also designing stage sets and
theatrical machinery, as well as a wide variety of decorative art objects including lamps, tables, mirrors, and even
coaches. As architect and city planner, he designed both secular buildings and churches and chapels, 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.
Bernini possessed the ability to depict dramatic narratives with characters showing intense psychological states, but
also to organize large-scale sculptural works that convey a magnificent grandeur.[4] His skill in manipulating marble
ensured that he would be considered a worthy successor of Michelangelo, far outshining other sculptors of his
generation, including his rivals, François Duquesnoy and Alessandro Algardi. 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,
Self-portrait of Bernini, c. 1623
and architecture into a coherent conceptual and visual whole has been termed by the art historian Irving Lavin the Born Gian Lorenzo
"unity of the visual arts".[5] In addition, a deeply religious man (at least later in life),[6] working in Counter Reformation Bernini
Rome, Bernini used light both as an important theatrical and metaphorical device in his religious settings, often using 7 December 1598
hidden light sources that could intensify the focus of religious worship[7] or enhance the dramatic moment of a Naples, Kingdom of
sculptural narrative. Naples, in present-
day Italy
Bernini was also a leading figure in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture along with his contemporaries, the
Died 28 November 1680
architect Francesco Borromini and the painter and architect Pietro da Cortona. Early in their careers they had all
(aged 81)
worked at the same time at the Palazzo Barberini, initially under Carlo Maderno and, following his death, under
Rome, Papal
Bernini. Later on, however, they were in competition for commissions, and fierce rivalries developed, particularly
States, in present-
between Bernini and Borromini.[8][9] Despite the arguably greater architectural inventiveness of Borromini and Cortona,
day Italy
Bernini's artistic pre-eminence, particularly during the reigns of popes Urban VIII (1623–44) and Alexander VII (1655–
65), meant he was able to secure the most important commissions in the Rome of his day, the various massive Nationality Italian
embellishment projects of the newly finished St. Peter's Basilica, completed under Pope Paul V with the addition of Known for Sculpture, painting,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gian_Lorenzo_Bernini 1/24
Maderno's nave and facade and finally re-consecrated by Pope Urban VIII on 18 November 1626, after 150 years of architecture
planning and building. Bernini's design of the Piazza San Pietro in front of the Basilica is one of his most innovative and Notable work David, Apollo and
successful architectural designs. Within the basilica he is also responsible for the Baldacchino, the decoration of the four Daphne, The Rape
piers under the cupola, the Cathedra Petri or Chair of St. Peter in the apse, the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in the of Proserpina,
right nave, and the decoration (floor, walls and arches) of the new nave. Ecstasy of Saint
Theresa
During his long career, Bernini received numerous important commissions, many of which were associated with the
papacy. At an early age, he came to the attention of the papal nephew, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, and in 1621, at the Movement Baroque style
age of only twenty-three, he was knighted by Pope Gregory XV. Following his accession to the papacy, Urban VIII is
reported to have said, "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."[10] Although he did not fare so well during the reign of Innocent X, under Alexander VII, he once again regained pre-eminent
artistic domination and continued to be held in high regard by Clement IX.
Bernini and other artists fell from favor in later neoclassical criticism of the Baroque. It is only from the late nineteenth century that art historical scholarship, in
seeking an understanding of artistic output in the cultural context in which it was produced, has come to recognise Bernini's achievements and restore his artistic
reputation. The art historian Howard Hibbard concludes that, during the seventeenth century, "there were no sculptors or architects comparable to Bernini".[11]
Contents
Biography
Early life
Early works for Cardinal Borghese
Papal artist
Under Innocent X
Embellishment of Rome under Alexander VII
Visit to France
Death
Personal life
Architecture
Personal residences
Fountains in Rome
Other works
Disciples and collaborators
Biographies
Legacy
Selected works
Sculpture
Architecture and fountains
Paintings
Gallery
References
Citations
Bibliography
External links
Biography
Early life
Bernini was born in Naples in 1598 to Angelica Galante and Mannerist sculptor Pietro Bernini, originally from Florence. He was the sixth of their thirteen
children.[12][13] Gian Lorenzo Bernini was the definition of childhood genius. He 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’”.[14] 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. Sometime thereafter, word about the great talent of the boy Gian Lorenzo got around 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.[15] Once he was brought to Rome, he never left. Rome was Bernini’s city. “For Bernini there could be only
one Rome. ‘You are made for Rome,’ said Pope Urban VIII to him, ‘and Rome for you’”.[16] It was in this world of 17th-century Rome and religious power that
Bernini created his greatest works.
Early works for Cardinal Borghese

Under the patronage of the extravagantly wealthy and most powerful Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the young Bernini rapidly rose to prominence as a sculptor.
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,
and several allegorical busts, including the so-called Damned Soul and Blessed Soul, which may have been influenced by a set of prints by Pieter de Jode I but
which were in fact long cataloged in the inventory of their original owner as depicting a nymph and s satyr, a commonly paired duo in ancient sculpture.[17] By the
time he was twenty-two, Bernini was considered talented enough to have been given a commission for a papal portrait, the Bust of Pope Paul V, now in the J. Paul
Getty Museum.
Bernini's reputation, however, was definitively established by four masterpieces, executed between 1619 and 1625, all
now displayed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. To the art historian Rudolf Wittkower these four works—Aeneas,
Anchises, and Ascanius (1619), The Rape of Proserpina (1621–22), Apollo and Daphne (1622–25), and David (1623–
24)—"inaugurated a new era in the history of European sculpture".[18] It is a view repeated by other scholars.[19]
Adapting the classical grandeur of Renaissance sculpture and the dynamic energy of the Mannerist period, Bernini
forged a new, distinctly Baroque conception for religious and historical sculpture, powerfully imbued with dramatic
realism, stirring emotion and dynamic, theatrical compositions. Bernini's early sculpture groups and portraits manifest
"a command of the human form in motion and a technical sophistication rivalled only by the greatest sculptors of
classical antiquity."[20]
Unlike sculptures done by his predecessors, these focus on specific points of narrative tension in the stories they are
trying to tell: Aeneas and his family fleeing the burning Troy; the instant that Pluto finally grasps the hunted
Persephone; the precise moment that Apollo sees his beloved Daphne begin her transformation into a tree. They are
transitory but dramatic powerful moments in each story. Bernini's David is another stirring example of this.
Michelangelo's motionless, idealized David shows the subject holding a rock in one hand and a sling in the other,
contemplating the battle; similarly immobile versions by other Renaissance artists, including Donatello's, show the
subject in his triumph after the battle with Goliath. Bernini illustrates David during his active combat with the giant, as
Apollo and Daphne (1622–25)
he twists his body to catapult toward Goliath. To emphasize these moments, and to ensure that they were appreciated
by the viewer, Bernini designed the sculptures with a specific viewpoint in mind. Their original placements within the
Villa Borghese were against walls so that the viewers' first view was the dramatic moment of the narrative.[21][22]
The result of such an approach is to invest the sculptures with greater psychological energy. The viewer finds it easier to gauge the state of mind of the characters
and therefore understands the larger story at work: Daphne's wide open mouth in fear and astonishment, David biting his lip in determined concentration, or
Proserpina desperately struggling to free herself. In addition to portraying psychological realism, they show a greater concern for representing physical details. The
tousled hair of Pluto, the pliant flesh of Proserpina, or the forest of leaves beginning to envelop Daphne all demonstrate Bernini's exactitude and delight for
representing complex real world textures in marble form.[23][24]
Papal artist
In 1623, upon the ascent of Cardinal Maffeo Barberini to the papal throne as Pope Urban VIII, and Bernini's subsequent near monopolistic patronage from the
Barberini pope and family, the artist'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, most experienced architects, he 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.
The St Peter's Baldacchino was the centerpiece of his ambitious plans for the embellishment of the recently completed
but still rather unadorned 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 $8m in 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).
Bernini also began work on the tomb for Urban VIII, completed only after Urban's death in 1644, one in a long,
Baldacchino in St. Peter's Basilica
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]
Despite this engagement with public architecture, Bernini was still able to produce artworks that showed the gradual
refinement of his portrait technique. A number of Bernini's sculptures show the continual evolution of his ability to
capture the utterly distinctive personal characteristics that he saw in his sitters. This included a number of busts of
Urban VIII himself, the family bust of Francesco Barberini or 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 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]
Bust of Cardinal Armand de
Richelieu (1640-1641) Portraits in marble include that of Costanza Bonarelli (executed around 1637), unusual in its more personal, intimate
nature (in fact, it would appear to be the first fully finished marble portrait of a non-aristocratic woman by a major
artist in European history). Bernini had an affair with Costanza, who was the wife of one of his assistants. When Bernini
then suspected Costanza of involvement with his brother, he badly beat him and ordered a servant to slash her face with a razor. Pope Urban VIII intervened on his
behalf, and he was simply fined.[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 of Modena, Charles I of England and Henrietta Maria. The sculpture of Charles
I was produced in Italy from a portrait made by Van Dyck, though Bernini preferred to produce portraits from life. 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][33]
Under Innocent X
Under Urban VIII, Bernini had been appointed chief architect for the basilica of St. Peter's. Work by Bernini included
the aforementioned Baldacchino and the St Longinus. In 1636, eager to finally finish the exterior of St. Peter's, Pope
Urban 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 facade) decades earlier. Once the first tower was finished in 1641, cracks began
to appear in the facade but, curiously enough, work 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 War of Castro. With the death of Pope Urban and the ascent to power of Barberini-enemy in 1644, Pope
Innocent X Pamphilj, Bernini's enemies (especially 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.[34]
Nonetheless, Bernini's opponents in Rome succeeded in seriously damaging the reputation of Urban's artist and in
persuading the pope to order (in February 1646) the complete demolition of both towers, to Bernini's great humiliation
and indeed financial detriment. 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
Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, 1651
story and exonerate him fully, as indeed did occur.
Bernini did not entirely lose patronage, not even of the pope. Innocent X maintained Bernini in all of the official roles
given to him by Urban. Under Bernini's design and direction, work continued on decorating the massive new but entirely unadorned nave of St. Peter's, with the
addition of an elaborate multi-colored marble flooring, marble facing on the walls and pilasters, and scores of stuccoed statues and reliefs. It is not without reason
that Pope Alexander VII once quipped, 'if one were to remove from Saint Peter's everything that had been made by the Cavalier Bernini, that temple would be
stripped bare.' Indeed, given all of his many and various works within the basilica over several decades, it is to Bernini that is due the lion's share of responsibility
for the final and enduring aesthetic appearance and emotional impact of St. Peter's.[35] He was also allowed to continue to work on Urban VIII's tomb, despite
Innocent's antipathy for the Barberini.[36] A few months after completing Urban's tomb, Bernini won, in controversial circumstances, the Pamphilj commission for
the prestigious Four Rivers Fountain on Piazza Navona, marking the end of his disgrace and the beginning a yet another glorious chapter in his life.
If there had been doubts over Bernini's position as Rome's preeminent artist, the success of the Four Rivers Fountain removed them. Bernini continued to receive
commissions from Pope Innocent X and other senior members of Rome's clergy and aristocracy, as well as from exalted patrons outside of Rome, such as
Francesco d'Este. In such an environment, Bernini's artistic style flourished. New types of funerary monument were designed, such as the seemingly floating
medallion, hovering in the air as it were, for the deceased nun Maria Raggi, while chapels he designed, such as the Raimondi Chapel in the church of San Pietro in
Montorio, illustrated how Bernini could use hidden lighting to help suggest divine intervention within the narratives he was depicting.
The Cornaro Chapel showcased Bernini's ability to integrate sculpture,

architecture, fresco, stucco, and lighting into "a marvelous whole" (bel
composto, to use early biographer Filippo Baldinucci's term to describe his
approach to architecture) and thus create what scholar Irving Lavin has
called the "unified work of art". The central focus of the Cornaro Chapel is
the ecstasy of the Spanish nun and saint-mystic, Teresa of Avila.[37] Bernini
presents the spectator with a theatrically vivid portrait, in gleaming white
marble, of the swooning Teresa and the quietly smiling angel, who delicately
grips the arrow piercing the saint's heart. On either side of the chapel the
artist places (in what can only strike the viewer as theater boxes), portraits
in relief of various members of the Cornaro family — the Venetian family
memorialized in the chapel, including Cardinal Federico Cornaro who
commissioned the chapel from Bernini — who are in animated conversation
among themselves, presumably about the event taking place before them.
The result is a complex but subtly orchestrated architectural environment Truth Unveiled by Time, Galleria
Memorial to Maria Raggi, 1651. Borghese, Rome, Photo by Paolo
providing the spiritual context (a heavenly setting with a hidden source of
Monti
light) that suggests to viewers the ultimate nature of this miraculous
event.[38]
It was an artistic tour de force that incorporates all of the multiple forms of visual art and technique that Bernini had at his disposal, including hidden lighting, thin
gilded beams, recessive architectural space, secret lens, and over twenty diverse types of colored marble: these all combine to create the final artwork—"a perfected,
highly dramatic and deeply satisfying seamless ensemble".[39]
Embellishment of Rome under Alexander VII

Upon his accession to the Chair of St Peter, Pope Alexander VII Chigi (1655–67) 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. Alexander immediately commissioned large-scale
architectural changes in the city, for example connecting new and existing buildings by opening up streets and piazzas. Bernini’s career showed a greater focus on
designing buildings (and their immediate surroundings) during this pontificate, as there were far greater opportunities.
Bernini’s creations during this period include the piazza leading to St Peter's. In a previously broad, 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 facade of St Peter's or on balconies on the
neighbouring 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".[40][41][42]
Elsewhere within the Vatican, Bernini created systematic rearrangements and majestic embellishment of either empty or
aesthetically undistinguished space that exist as he designed them to the present day and have become indelible icons of the
splendor of the papal precincts. Within the hitherto unadorned apse of the basilica, the Cathedra Petri, the symbolic throne of St
Peter, was rearranged as a monumental gilded bronze extravagance that matched the Baldacchino created earlier in the century.
Bernini's complete reconstruction of the Scala Regia, the stately papal stairway between St. Peters's and the Vatican Palace, was
slightly less ostentatious in appearance but still taxed Bernini's creative powers (employing, for example, clever tricks of optical
illusion) to create a seemingly uniform, totally functional, but nonetheless regally impressive stairway to connect two irregular
buildings within an even more irregular space.[43]
Not all works during this era were on such a large scale. Indeed, the commission Bernini received to build the church of
Sant'Andrea al Quirinale for the Jesuits was relatively modest in physical size (though great in its interior chromatic splendor),
which Bernini executed completely free of charge. Sant'Andrea shared with the St. Peter's piazza—unlike the complex geometries
of his rival Francesco Borromini—a focus on basic geometric shapes, circles and ovals to create spiritually intense buildings.[44]
Equally, Bernini moderated the presence of colour and decoration within these buildings, focussing visitors' attention on these
Bernini self-portrait, c. 1665
simple forms that underpinned the building. Sculptural decoration was never eliminated, but its use was more minimal. He also
designed the church of Santa Maria dell'Assunzione in the town of Ariccia with its circular outline, rounded dome and three-
arched portico.[45]
Visit to France
At the end of April 1665, and still considered the most important artist in Rome, if indeed not in all of Europe, Bernini
was forced by political pressure (from both the French court and Pope Alexander VII) to travel to Paris to work for King
Louis XIV, who required an architect to complete work on the royal palace of the Louvre. Bernini would remain in Paris
until mid-October. Louis XIV assigned a member of his court to serve as Bernini's translator, tourist guide, and overall
companion, Paul Fréart de Chantelou, who kept a Journal of Bernini's visit that records much of Bernini's behaviour
and utterances in Paris.[46]
Bernini's popularity was such that on his walks in Paris the streets were lined with admiring crowds. But things soon
turned sour.[47] Bernini presented some designs for the east front (i.e., the all-important principal facade of the entire Bust of Louis XIV, 1665
palace) of the Louvre, which were, after a short while, rejected. It is often stated in the scholarship on Bernini that his
Louvre designs were turned down because Louis and his financial advisor Jean-Baptiste Colbert considered them too
Italianate or too Baroque in style.[48] In fact, as Franco Mormando points out, "aesthetics are never mentioned in any of [the] . . . surviving memos" by Colbert or
any of the artistic advisors at the French court. The explicit reasons for the rejections were utilitarian, namely, on the level of physical security and comfort (e.g.,
location of the latrines).[49]
Other projects suffered a similar fate.[50] With the exception of Chantelou, Bernini failed to forge significant friendships at the French court. His frequent negative
comments on various aspects of French culture, especially its art and architecture, did not go down well, particularly in juxtaposition to his praise for the art and
architecture of Italy (especially Rome); he said that a painting by Guido Reni was worth more than all of Paris.[51] The sole work remaining from his time in Paris is
the Bust of Louis XIV. Back in Rome, Bernini created a monumental equestrian statue of Louis XIV; when it finally reached Paris (in 1685, five years after the
artist's death), the French king found it extremely repugnant and wanted it destroyed; it was instead re-carved into a representation of the ancient Roman hero
Marcus Curtius.[52]
Death
Bernini remained physically and mentally vigorous and active in his profession until just two weeks before his death
that came as a result of a stroke. In his last two years, he carved (supposedly for Queen Christina) the bust of the Savior
and supervised the restoration of the Palazzo della Cancelleria as per papal commission. He died in Rome on 28
November 1680 and was buried, with little public fanfare, in the simple, unadorned Bernini family vault, along with his
parents, in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. Though an elaborate funerary monument had once been planned
(documented by a single extant sketch of circa 1670), it was never built and Bernini remained with no permanent public
acknowledgement of his life and career in Rome until 1898 when a simple plaque and small bust was affixed to the face
of his home on the Via della Mercede, proclaiming "Here lived and died Gianlorenzo Bernini, a sovereign of art, before
Tomb of Gian Lorenzo Bernini in
whom reverently bowed popes, princes, and a multitude of peoples." Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore
Personal life
In the 1630s he engaged in an affair with a married woman named Costanza (wife of his workshop assistant, Matteo
Bonucelli, also called Bonarelli) and sculpted a bust of her (now in the Bargello, Florence) during the height of their
romance. She later had an affair with his younger brother, Luigi, who was Bernini's right-hand man in his studio. When
Gian Lorenzo found out about Costanza and his brother, in a fit of mad fury, he chased Luigi through the streets of
Rome and into the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, threatening his life. To punish his unfaithful mistress, Bernini had
a servant go to the house of Costanza, where the servant slashed her face several times with a razor. The servant was
later jailed, and Costanza was jailed for adultery; Bernini himself was exonerated by the pope, even though he had
The grave of Bernini in the Basilica
committed a crime in ordering the face-slashing.[53] Soon after, in May 1639, at age forty-one, Bernini wed a twenty- di Santa Maria Maggiore
two-year-old Roman woman, Caterina Tezio, in an arranged marriage, under orders from Pope Urban. She bore him
eleven children, including youngest son Domenico Bernini, who would later be his first biographer.[54] After his never-
repeated fit of passion and bloody rage and his subsequent marriage, Bernini turned more sincerely to the practice of his faith, according to his early official
biographers, whereas brother Luigi was to once again, in 1670, bring great grief and scandal to his family by his sodomitic rape of a young Bernini workshop
assistant at the construction site of the 'Constantine' memorial in St. Peter's Basilica.[55]
Architecture
Bernini's architectural works include sacred and secular buildings and sometimes their urban settings and interiors.[56] He made adjustments to existing buildings
and designed new constructions. Amongst his most well known works are the Piazza San Pietro (1656–67), the piazza and colonnades in front of St. Peter's Basilica
and the interior decoration of the Basilica. Amongst his secular works are a number of Roman palaces: following the death of Carlo Maderno, he took over the
supervision of the building works at the Palazzo Barberini from 1630 on which he worked with Borromini; the Palazzo Ludovisi (now Palazzo Montecitorio, started
1650); and the Palazzo Chigi (now Palazzo Chigi-Odescalchi, started 1664).
His first architectural projects were the façade and refurbishment of the church of Santa Bibiana (1624–26) and the St.
Peter's baldachin (1624–33), the bronze columned canopy over the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica. In 1629, and before
St. Peter's Baldachin was complete, Urban VIII put him in charge of all the ongoing architectural works at St Peter's.
However, Bernini fell out of favor during the papacy of Innocent X Pamphili: one reason was the pope's animosity
towards the Barberini and hence towards their clients including Bernini. Another reason was the failure of the
belltowers designed and built by Bernini for St. Peter's Basilica, commencing during the reign of Urban VIII. The
completed north tower and the only partially completed south tower were ordered demolished by Innocent in 1646
because their excessive weight had caused cracks in the basilica's facade and threatened to do more calamitous damage.
Professional opinion at the time was in fact divided over the true gravity of the situation (with Bernini's rival Borromini
St. Peter's baldachin, 1624–1633
spreading an extreme, anti-Bernini catastrophic view of the problem) and over the question of responsibility for the
damage: Who was to blame? Bernini? Pope Urban VIII who forced Bernini to design over-elaborate towers? Deceased
Architect of St. Peter's, Carlo Maderno who built the weak foundations for the towers? Official papal investigations in 1680 in fact completely exonerated Bernini,
while inculpating Maderno.[57] Never wholly without patronage during the Pamphilj years, after Innocent's death in 1655 Bernini regained a major role in the
decoration of St. Peter's with the Pope Alexander VII Chigi, leading to his design of the piazza and colonnade in front of St. Peter's. Further significant works by
Bernini at the Vatican include the Scala Regia (1663–66), the monumental grand stairway entrance to the Vatican Palace, and the Cathedra Petri, the Chair of
Saint Peter, in the apse of St. Peter's, in addition to the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in the nave.
Bernini did not build many churches from scratch; rather, his efforts were concentrated on pre-existing structures, such as the restored church of Santa Bibbiana
and in particular St. Peter's. He fulfilled three commissions for new churches in Rome and nearby small towns. Best known is the small but richly ornamented oval
church of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, done (beginning in 1658) for the Jesuit novitiate, representing one of the rare works of his hand with which Bernini's son,
Domenico, reports that his father was truly and very pleased.[58] Bernini also designed churches in Castelgandolfo (San Tommaso da Villanova, 1658–61) and
Ariccia (Santa Maria Assunta, 1662–64).
When Bernini was invited to Paris in 1665 to prepare works for Louis XIV, he presented designs for the east facade of the Louvre Palace, but his projects were
ultimately turned down in favour of the more sober and classic proposals of the French doctor and amateur architect Claude Perrault,[59] signaling the waning
influence of Italian artistic hegemony in France. Bernini's projects were essentially rooted in the Italian Baroque urbanist tradition of relating public buildings to
their settings, often leading to innovative architectural expression in urban spaces like piazze or squares.
However, by this time, the French absolutist monarchy now preferred the classicising monumental severity of
Perrault's facade, no doubt with the added political bonus that it had been designed by a Frenchman. The final
version did, however, include Bernini's feature of a flat roof behind a Palladian balustrade.
Personal residences
During his lifetime Bernini lived in various residences throughout the city: principal among them, a palazzo right
across from Santa Maria Maggiore and still extant at Via Liberiana 24, while his father was still alive; after his
father's death in 1629, Bernini moved the clan to the long-ago-demolished Santa Marta neighborhood behind the
apse of St. Peter's Basilica, which afforded him more convenient access to the Vatican Foundry. In 1639, Bernini View of the piazza and colonnade in front
bought property on the corner of the via della Mercede and the via del Collegio di Propaganda Fide in Rome. This of St. Peter's
gave him the distinction of being the only one of two artists (the other is Pietro da Cortona) to be proprietor of
his own large palatial (though not sumptuous) residence. Bernini refurbished and expanded the existing palazzo
on the Via della Mercede site, at what are now Nos. 11 and 12. (The building is sometimes referred to as "Palazzo Bernini," but that title more properly pertains to
the Bernini family's latter and larger home on Via del Corso, to which they moved in the eighteenth century.) Bernini lived at No. 11, but this was extensively
changed in the 19th century. It is imagined that it must have been galling for Bernini to witness through the windows of his dwelling, the construction of the tower
and dome of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte by his rival, Borromini, and also the demolition of the chapel that he, Bernini, had designed at the Collegio di Propaganda
Fide to see it replaced by Borromini's chapel.[60] The construction of Sant'Andrea, however, was completed by Bernini's close disciple, Mattia de' Rossi, and it
contains (to this day) the marble originals of two of Bernini's own angels executed by the master for the Ponte Sant'Angelo.
Fountains in Rome
True to the decorative dynamism of Baroque, among Bernini's most gifted creations were his Roman fountains, which were both public works and papal
monuments. His fountains include the Fountain of the Triton, or Fontana del Tritone, and the Barberini Fountain of the Bees, the Fontana delle Api.[61] The
Fountain of the Four Rivers, or Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, in the Piazza Navona is a masterpiece of spectacle and political allegory. An oft-repeated, but false,
anecdote tells that one of the Bernini's river gods defers his gaze in disapproval of the facade of Sant'Agnese in Agone (designed by the talented, but less politically
successful, rival Francesco Borromini), impossible because the fountain was built several years before the façade of the church was completed. Bernini was also the
artist of the statue of the Moor in La Fontana del Moro in Piazza Navona (1653).
Other works
Another major category of Bernini's activity was that of the tomb monument, a genre on which his distinctive new style exercised a decisive and long-enduring
influence; included in this category are his tombs for Popes Urban VIII and Alexander VII (both in St. Peter's Basilica), Cardinal Domenico Pimental (Santa Maria
sopra Minerva, Rome, design only), and Matilda of Canossa (St. Peter's Basilica). Related to the tomb monument is the funerary memorial, of which Bernini
executed several (including that, most notably, of Maria Raggi [Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome] also of greatly
innovative style and long enduring influence.[62] Among his smaller commissions, although not mentioned by either of
his earliest biographers, Baldinucci or Domenico Bernini, the Elephant and Obelisk is a sculpture located near the
Pantheon, in the Piazza della Minerva, in front of the Dominican church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Pope Alexander
VII decided that he wanted a small ancient Egyptian obelisk (that was discovered beneath the piazza) to be erected on
the same site, and in 1665 he commissioned Bernini to create a sculpture to support the obelisk. The sculpture of an
elephant bearing the obelisk on its back was executed by one of Bernini's students, Ercole Ferrata, upon a design by his
master, and finished in 1667. An inscription on the base relates the Egyptian goddess Isis and the Roman goddess
Minerva to the Virgin Mary, who supposedly supplanted those pagan goddesses and to whom the church is
dedicated.[63] A popular anecdote concerns the elephant's smile. To find out why it is smiling, legend has it, the viewer
must examine the rear end of the animal and notice that its muscles are tensed and its tail is shifted to the left as if it
were defecating. The animal's rear is pointed directly at one of the headquarters of the Dominican Order, housing the
offices of its Inquisitors as well as the office of Father Giuseppe Paglia, a Dominican friar who was one of the main
antagonists of Bernini, as a final salute and last word.[64] Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi
Among his minor commissions for non-Roman patrons or venues, in 1677

Bernini worked along with Ercole Ferrata to create a fountain for the Lisbon palace of the Portuguese nobleman, the
Count of Ericeira: copying his earlier fountains, Bernini supplied the design of the fountain sculpted by Ferrata,
featuring Neptune with four tritons around a basin.The fountain has survived: since 1945 located outside the precincts
of the gardens of the Palacio Nacional de Queluz, several miles outside of Lisbon.[65] For the same patron he also
supposedly created a series of paintings with the battles of Louis XIV as the subject. These works were lost as the palace,
its great library and the rich art collection of the Counts of Ericeira, were destroyed along with most of central Lisbon as
a result of the great earthquake of 1755.[66]
In the 1620s, encouraged by Pope Urban VIII who wanted him to fresco the Benediction Loggia of St. Peter's (never
executed), Bernini began in earnest to develop and perfect his technique as a painter. He probably had learned the
basics from his father who was a painter as well, in addition to some training in the studio of the Florentine painter,
Cigoli. According to early biographers, Baldinucci and Domenico Bernini, Bernini completed at least 150 canvases,
mostly in the decades of the 1620s and 30s, but currently there are no more than 35-40 surviving paintings that can be
confidently attributed to his hand (they are mostly close-up faces—including several wonderfully wrought self-portraits
Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1665, —set against a blank background, employing a loose, painterly brushstroke (similar to that of his Spanish contemporary
painted by Giovanni Battista Gaulli Velasquez) and a very limited palette of mostly somber colors with deep chiaroscuro. The only one that is securely dated
is that of the Apostles Andrew and Thomas in London's National Gallery.[67] As for his drawings, about 300 still exist;
but this is a minuscule percentage of the drawings he would have created in his lifetime; these include rapid sketches relating to major sculptural or architectural
commissions, presentation drawings given as gifts to his patrons and aristocratic friends, and exquisite, fully finished portraits, such as those of Agostino Mascardi
(Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris) and Scipione Borghese and Sisinio Poli (both in New York's Morgan Library).[68]
Disciples and collaborators

Among the many sculptors who worked under his supervision 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 Francois 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 Francesco Borromini and Pietro da
Cortona; in sculpture, Alessandro Algardi. 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).[69]
Biographies
The most important primary source for the life of Bernini is the biography written by his youngest son, Domenico, entitled Vita del Cavalier Gio. Lorenzo Bernino,
published in 1713 though first compiled in the last years of his father's life (c. 1675–80).[70] Filippo Baldinucci's Life of Bernini, was published in 1682, and a
meticulous private journal, the Diary of the Cavaliere Bernini's Visit to France, was kept by the Frenchman Paul Fréart de Chantelou during the artist's four-
month stay from June through October 1665 at the court of King Louis XIV. Also, there is a short biographical narrative, The Vita Brevis of Gian Lorenzo Bernini,
written by his eldest son, Monsignor Pietro Filippo Bernini, in the mid-1670s.[71]
Until the late 20th century, it was generally believed that two years after Bernini's death, Queen Christina of Sweden, then living in Rome, commissioned Filippo
Baldinucci to write his biography, which was published in Florence in 1682.[72] However, recent research now strongly suggests that it was in fact Bernini's sons
(and specifically the eldest son, Mons. Pietro Filippo) who commissioned the biography from Baldinucci sometime in the late 1670s, with the intent of publishing it
while their father was still alive. This would mean that first, the commission did not at all originate in Queen Christina who would have merely lent her name as
patron (in order to hide the fact that the biography was coming directly from the family) and secondly, that Baldinucci's narrative was largely derived from some
pre-publication version of Domenico Bernini's much longer biography of his father, as evidenced by the extremely large amount of text repeated verbatim (there is
no other explanation, otherwise, for the massive amount of verbatim repetition, and it is known that Baldinucci routinely copied verbatim material for his artists'
biographies supplied by family and friends of his subjects).[73] As the most detailed account and the only one coming directly from a member of the artist's
immediate family, Domenico's biography, despite having been published later than Baldinucci's, therefore represents the earliest and more important full-length
biographical source of Bernini's life, even though it idealizes its subject and whitewashes a number of less-than-flattering facts about his life and personality.
Legacy
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."[74]
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).[75] The reaction against Bernini and the too-sensual, too emotionally charged Baroque in
the larger culture (especially in non-Catholic countries of 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). Most of the popular eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century tourist's guides to Rome all but ignore 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 has hardly been a year in which there has not been at least one major Bernini exhibition somewhere in the world, especially Europe and
North America. In the late twentieth century, Bernini was commemorated on the front of the Banca d'Italia 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 the latter 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).
Selected works
Sculpture
The Goat Amalthea with the Infant Jupiter and a Faun (c. 1609–15) Marble, height 44 cm (17 in), Galleria Borghese, Rome
Bust of Giovanni Battista Santoni (c. 1613–16) Marble, life-size, Santa Prassede, Rome
A Faun Teased by Children (1616–17) Marble, height 132 cm (52 in), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence (1617) Marble, 66 cm x 108 cm (26 in x 43 in), Uffizi, Florence
Saint Sebastian (1617–18) Marble, life-size, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid
Bust of Giovanni Vigevano (1617–18) Marble tomb, life-size, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome
Bust of Pope Paul V (1618) Marble, 35 cm (14 in), Galleria Borghese, Rome
Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius (1618–19) Marble, height 220 cm (87 in), Galleria Borghese, Rome
Damned Soul (1619) Marble, life-size, Palazzo di Spagna, Rome
Blessed Soul (1619) Marble, life-size, Palazzo di Spagna, Rome
Neptune and Triton (1620) Marble, height 182 cm (72 in), Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The Rape of Proserpina (1621–22) Marble, height 225 cm (89 in), Galleria Borghese, Rome
Bust of Pope Gregory XV (1621) Marble, height 64 cm (25 in), Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Bust of Monsignor Pedro de Foix Montoya (c. 1621) Marble, life-size, Santa Maria di Monserrato, Rome
Bust of Cardinal Escoubleau de Sourdis (1622) Marble, life-size, Musée d'Aquitaine, Bordeaux
Apollo and Daphne (1622–25) Marble, height 243 cm (96 in), Galleria Borghese, Rome
Bust of Antonio Cepparelli (1622) Marble, Museo di San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Rome
David (1623–24) Marble, height 170 cm (67 in), Galleria Borghese, Rome
Saint Bibiana (1624–26) Marble, life-size, Santa Bibiana, Rome
St. Peter's Baldachin (1623–34) Bronze, partly gilt, 20 m (66 ft), St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City
Bust of Francesco Barberini (1626) Marble, height 80 cm (31 in), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Charity with Four Children (1627–28) Terracotta, height 39 cm (15 in), Vatican Museums, Vatican City
Tomb of Pope Urban VIII (1627–47) Bronze and marble, larger than life-size, St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City
Bust of Jesus Christ by Gianlorenzo
Saint Longinus (1631–38) Marble, height 440 cm (174 in), St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City
Bernini
Two Busts of Scipione Borghese (1632) Marble, height 78 cm (31 in), Galleria Borghese, Rome
Bust of Costanza Bonarelli (1635) Marble, height 72 cm (28 in), Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence
Bust of Thomas Baker (1638) Marble, height 82 cm (32 in), Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Bust of Cardinal Richilieu (1640–41) Marble, life-size, The Louvre, Paris
Truth Unveiled by Time (1645–52) Marble, height 280 cm (110 in), Galleria Borghese, Rome
Memorial to Maria Raggi (1647–53) Gilt bronze and coloured marble, life-size Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome
Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1647–52) Marble, life-size, Cappella Cornaro, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome
Loggia of the Founders (1647–52) Marble, life-size, Cappella Cornaro, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome
Corpus (1650) Bronze, life-size, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
Bust of Francesco I d'Este (1650–51) Marble, height 107 cm, Galleria Estense, Modena
The Vision of Constantine (1654–70) Marble, Vatican Museums, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City
Daniel and the Lion (1655) Terracotta, height 41.6 cm, Vatican Museums, Vatican City Blessed Ludovica Albertoni
Daniel and the Lion (1655–56) Marble, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome
Habakkuk and the Angel (1655) Terracotta, height 52 cm, Vatican Museums, Vatican City
Habakkuk and the Angel (1656-1661) Marble, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome
Altar Cross (1657–61) Gilt bronze corpus on bronze cross, height 45 cm (18 in), St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City
Chair of Saint Peter (1657–66) Marble, bronze, white and golden stucco, St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City
Statue of Saint Augustine (1657–66) Bronze, St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City
Saints Jerome and Mary Magdalen (1661–63) Marble, height 180 cm, Cappella Chigi, Siena Cathedral, Siena
Constantine, Scala Regia (1663–70) Marble with painted stucco drapery, Scala Regia, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City
Bust of Louis XIV (1665) White marble, height 105 cm, Salon de Diane, Musée National de Versailles, Versailles
Elephant and Obelisk (erected 1667) Marble, Piazza di Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome
Standing Angel with Scroll (1667–68) Clay, terracotta, height: 29.2 cm, Fogg Museum, Cambridge
Angels of Ponte Sant'Angelo (1667–69) Marble, Ponte Sant'Angelo, Rome
Angel with the Crown of Thorns (1667–69) Marble, over life-size, Sant'Andrea delle Fratte, Rome
Angel with the Superscription (1667–69) Marble, over life-size, Sant'Andrea delle Fratte, Rome
Bust of Gabriele Fonseca (1668–75) Marble, over life-size, San Lorenzo in Lucina, Rome
Equestrian Statue of King Louis XIV (1669–84) Marble, height 76 cm, Palace of Versailles, Versailles
Herm of Saint Stephen, King of Hungary Bronze, Cathedral Treasury, Zagreb Cathedral, Zagreb
Blessed Ludovica Albertoni (1671–74) Marble, Cappella Altieri-Albertoni, San Francesco a Ripa, Rome
Tomb of Pope Alexander VII (1671–78) Marble and gilded bronze, over life-size, St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City
Architecture and fountains

St. Peter's Square (1656–67) Marble, granite, travertine, stone, Vatican City
Fontana della Barcaccia (1627) Marble, Piazza di Spagna, Rome
Fontana del Tritone (1624–43) Travertine, over life-size, Piazza Barberini, Rome
Fontana delle Api (1644) Travertine, Piazza Barberini, Rome
Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (1648–51) Travertine and marble, Piazza Navona, Rome
Fontana del Moro (1653–54) Marble, Piazza Navona, Rome
Paintings
Bernini's activity as a painter was a sideline which he did mainly in his youth. Despite this his work reveals a sure and brilliant hand, free from any trace of
pedantry. He studied in Rome under his father, Pietro, and soon proved a precocious infant prodigy. His work was immediately sought after by major collectors.
Self-Portrait as a Young Man (c. 1623) Oil on canvas, Galleria Borghese, Rome
Portrait of Pope Urban VIII (c. 1625) Oil on canvas, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome
Saint Andrew and Saint Thomas (c. 1627) Oil on canvas, 59 x 76 cm, National Gallery, London
Self-Portrait as a Mature Man (1630–35) Oil on canvas, Galleria Borghese, Rome
Portrait of a Boy (c. 1638) Oil on canvas, Galleria Borghese, Rome
Christ Mocked (c. 1644–55) Oil on canvas, Private Collection, London
Gallery
Pluto and Persephone Damned Soul Blessed Soul Bust of Antonio Bust of Pope Urban VIII Bust of Monsignor
(detail) Cepparelli Carlo Antonio Pozzo
Self-portrait
St. Peter's colonade St. Peter's baldachin Ponte St. Angelo angels
References
Citations
1. "Gian Lorenzo Bernini" (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/62547/Gian-Lorenzo-Bernini). Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica.
Retrieved 2012-12-06.
2. Boucher, Bruce (1998). Italian Baroque Sculpture. Thames & Hudson (World of Art). pp. 134–42. ISBN 0500203075.
3. Katherine Eustace, Editorial, Sculpture Journal, vol. 20, n. 2, 2011, p. 109.
4. Wittkower, p. 13.
5. Levin, Irving (1980). Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts. New York: Oxford University Press.
6. For a more nuanced, cautious discussion of the traditional hagiographic view of Bernini as "fervent Catholic" and of his art as simply a direct manifestation of
his personal faith, see Mormando, "Bernini's Religion: Myth and Reality," pp. 60–66 of the Introduction to his critical, annotated edition, Domenico Bernini, The
Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, University Park, Penn State U Press, 2011.See also the same author's article, 'Breaking Through the Bernini Myth' in the online
journal, Berfrois, 11 October 2012: [1] (http://www.berfrois.com/2012/10/franco-mormando-on-bernini/)
7. Hibbard, Howard (1965). Bernini. New York: Penguin. p. 136. Hibbard's classic book on Bernini, though still a valuable resource, has never been updated
since its original publication in 1965 and the author's premature death; a vast amount of new information about Bernini has surfaced since then. It also accepts
too readily the whitewashed, hagiographic depictions of Bernini, his patrons, and of Baroque Rome as supplied by the first, official biographies by Baldinucci
and Domenico Bernini.
8. Mileti, Nick J. (2005). Beyond Michelangelo: The deadly rivalry between Bernini and Borromini. Philadelphia: Xlibris Corporation.
9. Morrissey, Jake (2005). Genius in the Design: Bernini, Borromini and the rivalry that transformed Rome. New York: Harper Perennial. The rivalry between
Borromini and Bernini, though very much real, tends to be over-dramatized in popular works like that of Morrissey and in self-published non-scholarly works
like that of Mileti. For a more careful, considered summary by a Bernini scholar, see Franco Mormando, Bernini: His Life and His Rome, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2011, pp. 80-83.
10. Franco Mormando, ed. and trans., Domenico Bernini, Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, University Park, Penn State Univ. Press, 2011., p. 111.
11. Hibbard, p. 21.
12. Gallery.ca (http://www.gallery.ca/files/Bernini_Biography_ENG.pdf) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20100331234043/http://www.gallery.ca/files/Bernini_

Biography_ENG.pdf) 31 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine.
13. Gale, Thomson (2004). "Gian Lorenzo Bernini". Encyclopedia of World Biography. For list of Bernini's siblings, see Franco Mormando, Bernini: His Life and
His Rome (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 2–3.
14. Poséq, Avigdor W.G. "On Physiognomic Communication in Bernini". Artibus Et Historiae. 27.54 (2006).
15. Schama, Simon (2006). Simon Schama's Power of Art. London: BBC. pp. 111–125 – via Print. Unfortunately Schama's popularizing version of Bernini's life,
done for TV, is not always factually accurate, repeating old unsubstantiated legends.
16. Briggs, Martin S. "The Genius of Bernini". The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. 26.143 (1915): 197–202.
17. Eckhard Leuschner, The Role of Prints in the Artistic Genealogy of Bernini’s Anima beata and Anima damnata, Print Quarterly, 33:2, 2016. For the original
identity of the subjects of the two busts, see David García Cueto, 'On the original meanings of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Anima beata and Anima dannata:
Nymph and Satyr?,' Sculpture Journal 2015 24 (1):37-53.
19. Hibbard, p. 14. Although Hibbard, as well as other scholars, are more reticent about the overall quality of the earliest of these sculptures, of Aeneas, Anchises,
and Ascanius.
20. Timothy Clifford and Michael Clarke, Foreword, Effigies and Ecstasies: Roman Barowue Sculpture and Design in the Age of Bernini, Edinburgh: National
Gallery of Scotland, 1998, p.7
22. Hibbard, pp. 53-54.
23. Wittkower, pp. 14–15.
24. Hibbard, pp. 48–61.
25. Hibbard, p. 68
26. Mormando, Bernini: His Life and His Rome, 2011, p. 72
27. For the conversion of 17th-century Roman scudi to modern American dollars, see Mormando, "Bernini: His Life and His Rome", 2011, pp. xvii-xix, Money,
Wages, and Cost of Living in Baroque Rome.
28. see Franco Mormando, Bernini: His Life and His Rome, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, p.84
29. Erwin Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture: Four Lectures on Its Changing Aspect From Ancient Egypt to Bernini, New York: Abrams, 1992, p.96.
30. Wittkower, p. 88
31. "Biographies – Gian Lorenzo Bernini" (http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/artist.php?iartistid=456), National Gallery of Canada, retrieved 29 October 2009
32. Triple Portrait of Charles I (http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/eGallery/object.asp?object=404420&row=2062&detail=about)
33. Lionel Cust (31 March 2007). Van Dyck (https://books.google.com/books?id=Ay9zMlAZG9cC&pg=PA94). Wellhausen Press. p. 94. ISBN 978-1-4067-7452-8.
Retrieved 19 April 2012.
34. For a thorough summary of this entire, long and complicated episode in Bernini's life that takes into account the latest archival discoveries, see Franco
Mormando, Domenico Bernini: The Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, University Park: Penn State University Press, 2011, pp. 332-34, nn.17-23 and pp. 342-45, nn.
4-21.
35. Mormando, Bernini: His Life and HIs Rome, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, p.156 (for work on nave) and p. 241 (for Alexander VII quotation).
36. Mormando, Bernini: His Life and His Rome, 2011, p. 150.
37. Lavin, Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts, passim
38. Lavin, ibid.
39. Mormando, Bernini: His Life and His Rome, p. 159.
40. Hibbard, p. 156
41. Mormando, Bernini: His LIfe and His Rome, 2011, p. 204
42. The long, broad, straight avenue (Via della Conciliazione) to the river Tiber was an early 20th century addition, when Benito Mussolini ordered the clearing of
housing that led up to Bernini's piazza in order to afford a more commodious access to the Vatican.
43. Hibbard, pp. 163–7
44. Hibbard, pp. 144–8
45. Hibbard, pp. 149–50
46. See Gould, Cecil. Bernini in France, an episode in Seventeenth Century History, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1981
47. Gould, C., 1982. Bernini in France: an episode in 17th-century history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Pr. For more recent treatments of the same episode in
Bernini's life, incorporating the most recent documentary research since Gould's book of 1982, see Mormando, Bernini: His Life and His Rome, 2011, chap. 5,
A Roman Artist in King Louis's Court; see also Mormando's many documentary footnotes to Domenico Bernini's account of his father's dealings with the
French: Domenico Bernini, Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini," notes to chapters 16–20.
48. Hibbard, Howard (1990). Bernini. Penguin. p. 181.
49. Mormando, Bernini: His LIfe and His Rome, pp. 255-56, emphasis added. Another issue of concern was the fact that Bernini's plan would have called for the
demolition of older portions of the Louvre contrary to royal wishes.
50. Fagiolo, M., 2008. Bernini a Parigi: le Colonne d'Ercole, l'Anfiteatro per il Louvre e i progetti per la Cappella Bourbon.
51. Hibbard, Howard. Bernini. p. 171.
52. Wittkower, p. 89
53. Mormando, Franco (2011). Bernini: His Life and His Rome. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 99–106.
54. For Bernini's marriage to Caterina, and a list of Bernini's children, see Franco Mormando, Bernini: His Life and His Rome University of Chicago Press, 2011,
pp. 109–16.
55. As Bernini scholar, Franco Mormando, underscores (Domenico Bernini: LIfe of Gian Lorenzo Bernini Intro., pp. 60-61): "Any discussion of Bernini's religion,
that is, his personal faith and the practice of his devotional life, must open with a word of caution: we have absolutely no reliable, nonpartisan (that is, not
coming from Bernini, his family, or apologetic biographers) documentation on the topic until 1665, when Chantelou began writing his diary" (at which time
Bernini was 67 years old). For Luigi's 1670 crime, see Mormando, Bernini: His Life and His Rome, 307-312.
56. Marder, Tod A. Bernini and the Art of Architecture Abbeville Press, New York and London, 1998
57. See McPhee, Sarah. Bernini and the Bell Towers: Architecture and Politics at the Vatican, Yale University Press, 2002
58. See Domenico Bernini, The Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, trans. and ed. Franco Mormando, University Park: Penn State University Press, 2011, pp. 178-179.
Magnuson Torgil, Rome in the Age of Bernini, Volume II, Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm, 1986: 202
59. Most probably made in collaboration with Lebrun and Le Vau, Blunt, Anthony. Architecture in France 1500–1700, Pelican History of Art, 1953, p. 232.
60. Blunt, Anthony. Guide to Baroque Rome, Granada, 1982, p. 166
61. This was dismantled in the nineteenth century and reassembled (incorrectly) in the twentieth in the Via Veneto. A second Fontana delle Api in the Vatican has
sometimes been attributed to Bernini of which Blunt has written, "Borromini is documented as having carved the fountain in 1626, but it is not certain whether
he made the design for it, and it has also been attributed—not very plausibly—to Bernini." Blunt, Anthony. Borromini, Belknap Harvard, 1979, 17
62. For his tomb monuments and funerary memorials, see the relative pages in Mormando, Domenico Bernini's 'Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini,'" University Park,
2011; see also Mormando's 'A Bernini workshop drawing for a tomb monument,' The Burlington Magazine, n. 1376, vol. 159, November 2017: 886-92.
63. Heckscher, W. (1947). "Bernini's Elephant and Obelisk". Art Bulletin. XXIX: 155.
64. This anecdote regarding the Elephant and Obelisk monument (more formally, it is a monument to Divine Wisdom and a tribute to Pope Alexander VII) is one of
the many undocumented popular legends circulating about Bernini. The elephant, in fact, is not smiling, and even though he may have had professional
reasons to resent Paglia, the conservative, pious and utterly orthodox Bernini personally had no grudges against the Dominican Order or the Inquisition.
Moreover, Giuseppe Paglia was director of the overall project to reconstruct the piazza in front of Santa Maria Minerva, appointed by Pope Alexander VII
himself and, as such, had supervisory authority over Bernini and the design of his Elephant and Obelisk monument. The final design of that monument, in fact,
owes much to Paglia's direct intervention. Hence, it is unlikely that Paglia (or Pope Alexander) would have allowed this supposed insult to him or his
Dominican order. Finally, if Bernini did intend to deliver this visual insult, he failed totally, for there is no contemporary documentation indicating that visitors to
the piazza during the artist's lifetime ever noticed the supposed insult: see Franco Mormando, ed. and trans., Domenico Bernini's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini
(University Park: Penn State University Press, 2011), p. 369, n. 33. Instead, the origins of this anecdote can be traced to the very end of the 17th century,
when the satirist and Cardinal Lodovico Sergardi circulated a two-line epigram in which the elephant tells the Dominicans that the position of his rear end is
meant to announce "where I hold you in my esteem" (see Ingrid Rowland, 'The Friendship of Alexander VII and Athanasius Kircher, 1637-1667' in Early
Modern Rome: Proceedings of a Conference Held on May 13–15, 2010 in Rome, ed. Portia Prebys [Ferrara: Edisai, 2011], pp. 669-78, here p. 670; see also
p. 671 where Rowland absolves Bernini of any satiric intent: 'The Dominicans, who followed the evolution of Bernini's design for this monument with
meticulous care from beginning to end, must have realized that the only reasonable placement for this remarkable creation was the placement that we see
today.')
65. Angela Delaforce et al., 'A Fountain by Gianlorenzo Bernini and Ercole Ferrata in Portugal,' Burlington, vol. 140, issue 1149, pp. 804-811.
66. What is the source of this information about Bernini's supposed authorship of the paintings in question? highly doubtful claim.
67. For a concise summary statement about Bernini's training and production as a painter, see Franco Mormando, ed. and trans., Domenico Bernini: The Life of
Gian Lorenzo Bernini(University Park: Penn State U Press, 2011), pp. 294-296, nn.4-12.
68. The most complete edition of Bernini drawings remains Heinrich Brauer and Rudolf Wittkower, Die Ziechnungen des Gianlorenzo Bernini, Berlin: Verlag
Heinrich Keller, 1931, reprinted New York: Collectors Edition, 1970. Also very useful is Ann Sutherland Harris, Selected Drawings of Gian Lorenzo Bernini,
New York: Dover, 1977; see also her article, 'Three Proposals for Gian Lorenzo Bernini' in Master Drawings, vol. 41, no.2 (Summer 2003), pp. 119–127. More
recent is the catalog of the exhibition of Bernini drawings in Leipzig's Museum der bildenden Kunste (which boasts one of the largest collection of Bernini
drawings in the world): Hans-Werner Schmidt et al., Bernini: Erfinder des barocken Rom, Bielefeld: Kerber Art, 2014. For the drawings in the Vatican
collection, see the comprehensive, detailed, illustrated catalogue, Manuela Gobbi, and Barbara Jatta, eds., I disegni di Bernini e della sua scuola nella
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Drawings by Bernini and His School at the Vatican Apostolic Library. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2015.
69. All of the men mentioned in this section as disciples, collaborators, or rivals are discussed in the notes to Franco Mormando, Domenico Bernini's Life of Gian
Lorenzo Bernini (University Park: Penn State Univ. Press, 2011), passim, but especially pp. 372-74.
70. For a list and discussion of important sources for Bernini's life, see Franco Mormando, Bernini: His Life and His Rome (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2011), pp. 7–11.
71. For an unabridged translation and analysis of The Vita Brevis, see Domenico Bernini's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini in Mormando, ed., 201 Appendix 1, pp.
237–41.
72. Baldinucci, Filippo, Life of Bernini. Translated from the Italian by Enggass, C. University Park, Penn State University Press, 2006. Unfortunately, the Enggass
edition of Baldinucci contains many translation errors; readers should always consult the text of the original 1682 edition.
73. See Mormando, Domenico Bernini's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 2011, pp. 14–34. It is significant that Christina's extant financial records nowhere report the
queen's having monetarily subsidized the publication Baldinucci's biography, which would have been her responsibility as patron. As Mormando further
explains, we also know that in compiling his famous collection of artists' lives, Baldinucci routinely copied material, word for word, from texts supplied to him by
family members and close friends and associates of his subjects. Also significant is the fact that in Domenico's biography of his father, the author is completely
silent about the queen's supposed patronage of the Baldinucci biography, a strange omission since he devotes much space to the friendship between Gian
Lorenzo and Queen Christina, recording the queen's many signs of favoritism, protection, and adulation towards the artist.
74. Maria Grazia Bernardini, 'Le radici del barocco,' in Barocco a Roma: La meraviglia dell'arte, ed. M. G. Bernardini and M. Bussagli [Milan: Skira, 2015], p.32.
75. Livio Pestilli,"On Bernini's Reputed Unpopularity in Late Baroque Rome,' Artibus et historiae, 32.63: 119-42
Bibliography
Avery, Charles (1997). Bernini: Genius of the Baroque. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-28633-3.
Bacchi, Andrea, ed. (2009). I marmi vivi: Bernini e la nascita del ritratto barocco. Firenze: Firenze musei. ISBN 978-8-809-74236-9.
Bacchi, Andrea; Catherine Hess, Jennifer Montagu, eds. (2008). Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum.
ISBN 978-0-892-36932-4.
Baldinucci, Filippo (2006) [1682]. The Life of Bernini. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 978-0-271-73076-9.
Bernini, Domenico (2011) [1713]. Franco Mormando, ed. The Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. University Park: Penn State University Press. ISBN 978-0-271-
03748-6.
Borsi, Franco (2005). Bernini. Milano: Rizzoli. ISBN 978-0-847-80509-9.
Careri, Giovanni (1995). Bernini: Flights of Love, the Art of Devotion. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-09273-7.
Chantelou, Paul Fréart de (1985). Anthony Blunt, ed. Journal du voyage en France du cavalier Bernin. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-833-
70531-0.
Delbeke, Maarten; Evonne Levy; Steven F. Ostrow, eds. (2006). Bernini's Biographies: Critical Essays. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
ISBN 978-0-271-02901-6.
Dickerson III, C. D.; Sigel, Anthony; Wardropper, Ian (2012). Bernini: Sculpting in Clay. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 978-0-300-18500-3.
Fagiolo, Maurizio; Cipriani, Angela (1981). Bernini. Florence: Scala. ISBN 978-8-881-17223-8.
Ferrari, Oreste (1991). Bernini. Firenze: Giunti Gruppo. ISBN 978-8-809-76153-7.
Fraschetti, Stanislao (1900). Il Bernini: La sua vita, la sua opera, il suo tempo. Milano: U.Hoepli. ISBN 978-1-248-32889-7.
Gould, Cecil (1981). Bernini in France: An Episode in Seventeenth Century History. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-77944-5.
Harris, Ann Sutherland (Summer 2003). "Drawings by Sculptors". Master Drawings. 41: 119–127. JSTOR 1554582 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1554582).
Hibbard, Howard (1965). Bernini. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-140-13598-5.
Lavin, Irving (1980). Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-195-20184-0.
Lavin, Irving, ed. (1985). Gianlorenzo Bernini: New Aspects of his Art and Thought. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 978-0-271-
00387-0.
Lavin, Irving (2007). Visible Spirit: The Art of Gianlorenzo Bernini. London: Pindar Press. ISBN 978-1-899-82839-5.
Martinelli, Valentino, ed. (1996). L'ultimo Bernini (1665–1680): nuovi argomenti, documenti e immagini. Roma: Quasar. ISBN 978-8-871-40095-2.
McPhee, Sarah (2012). Bernini's Beloved: A Portrait of Costanza Piccolomini. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-17527-1.
Mormando, Franco (2011). Bernini: His Life and His Rome. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-53852-5.
Morrissey, Jake (2005). The Genius in the Design. New York: William Morrow. ISBN 978-0-060-52533-0.
Perlove, Shelley Karen (1990). Bernini and the Idealization of Death. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University. ISBN 978-0-271-01477-7.
Petersson, Robert T. (1970). The Art of Ecstasy: Teresa, Bernini, and Crashaw. London: Routledge & K. Paul. ISBN 978-0-689-70515-1.
Petersson, Robert T. (2002). Bernini and the Excesses of Art. Florence: Maschietto editore. ISBN 978-8-887-70083-1.
Petrucci, Francesco (2007). Bernini pittore / dal disegno al "maraviglioso composto". Ediz. Italiano. Rome: Ugo Bozzi Editore. ISBN 88-7003-042-3.
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Pinton, Daniel (2009). Bernini. I Percorsi Nell'arte. Ediz. Inglese. ATS Italia Editrice. ISBN 978-8-875-71777-3.
Scribner III, Charles (2014) [1991]. Gianlorenzo Bernini: Impresario of the Baroque (Revised ed.). New York: Carolus Editions. ISBN 978-1-503-01633-0.
Warwick, Genevieve (2012). Bernini: Art as Theatre. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-18706-9.
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External links
Tools and techniques used by Bernini (http://dondougan.homestead.com/theprocess3_history.html)
Checklist of Bernini's architecture and sculpture in Rome (http://www.slowtrav.com/italy/rome/es_bernini.htm)
Gian Lorenzo Bernini - Biography, Style and Artworks (http://www.artble.com/artists/gian_lorenzo_bernini)
Extract on Bernini from (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/sep/16/art) Simon Schama's The Power of Art
Photographs of Bernini's Santa Maria Assunta (http://www.fredcamper.com/A/Accretions/AC001/index.html)
smARThistory: Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome (http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/blog/63/berninis-ecstasy-of-st
-theresa-cornaro-chapel-rome-c-1650/)
Constantly updated list and discussion of the most recent archival discoveries regarding Bernini's biography and works (http://www.francomormando.com/bern
ini-updates-2/)
The Vatican: spirit and art of Christian Rome (http://cdm16028.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15324coll10/id/107497), a book from The
Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains a good deal of material on Bernini
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3/29/2018 Gian Lorenzo Bernini - Wikipedia

Early works for Cardinal Borghese

The Cornaro Chapel showcased Bernini's ability to integrate sculpture,

Embellishment of Rome under Alexander VII

Among his minor commissions for non-Roman patrons or venues, in 1677

Disciples and collaborators

Architecture and fountains

12. Gallery.ca (http://www.gallery.ca/files/Bernini_Biography_ENG.pdf) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20100331234043/http://www.gallery.ca/files/Bernini_

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gian_Lorenzo_Bernini&oldid=830410399"

This page was last edited on 14 March 2018, at 17:24.

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