Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, (born Dec. 7, 1598, Naples, Kingdom of
Naples [Italy]—died Nov. 28, 1680, Rome, Papal States),
Italian artist who was perhaps the greatest sculptor of the
17th century and an outstanding architect as well. Bernini
created the Baroque style of sculpture and developed it to
such an extent that other artists are of only minor
importance in a discussion of that style.
Early years
Bernini’s career began under his father, Pietro Bernini,
a Florentine sculptor of some talent who ultimately moved to
Rome. The young prodigy worked so diligently that he earned
the praise of the painter Annibale Carracci and the
patronage of Pope Paul V and soon established himself as a
wholly independent sculptor. He was strongly influenced by
his close study of the antique Greek and Roman marbles in
the Vatican, and he also had an intimate knowledge of High
Renaissance painting of the early 16th century. His study of
Michelangelo is revealed in the St. Sebastian (c. 1617),
carved for Maffeo Cardinal Barberini, who was later Pope
Urban VIII and Bernini’s greatest patron.
Bernini’s early works attracted the
attention of Scipione Cardinal Borghese, a member of the
reigning papal family. Under his patronage, Bernini carved
his first important life-size sculptural groups. The series
shows Bernini’s progression from the almost haphazard single
view of Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius Fleeing Troy (1619)
to strong frontality in Pluto and Proserpina (1621–22) and
then to the hallucinatory vision of Apollo and Daphne
(1622–24), which was intended to be viewed from one spot as
if it were a relief. In his David (1623–24), Bernini depicts
the figure casting a stone at an unseen adversary. Several
portrait busts that Bernini executed during this period,
including that of Robert Cardinal Bellarmine (1623–24), show
a new awareness of the relationship between head and body
and display an ability to depict fleeting facial expressions
with acute realism. These marble works show an unparalleled
virtuosity in carving that obdurate material to achieve the
delicate effects usually found only in bronze sculptures.
Bernini’s sensual awareness of the surface textures of skin
and hair and his novel sense of shading broke with the
tradition of Michelangelo and marked the emergence of a new
period in the history of Western sculpture.
Patronage of Urban VIII
With the pontificate of Urban VIII (1623–44), Bernini
entered a period of enormous productivity and artistic
development. Urban VIII urged his protégé to paint and to
practice architecture. His first architectural work was the
remodeled Church of Santa Bibiana in Rome. At the same time,
Bernini was commissioned to build a symbolic structure over
the tomb of St. Peter in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The
result is the famous immense gilt-bronze baldachin executed
between 1624 and 1633. Its twisted columns derive from the
early Christian columns that had been used in the altar
screen of Old St. Peter’s. Bernini’s most original
contribution to the final work is the upper framework of
crowning volutes flanked by four angels that supports the
orb and cross. The baldachin is perfectly proportioned to
its setting, and one hardly realizes that it is as tall as a
four-story building. Its lively outline moving upward to the
triumphant crown, its dark colour heightened with burning
gold, give it the character of a living organism. An
unprecedented fusion of sculpture and architecture, the
baldachin is the first truly Baroque monument. It ultimately
formed the centre of a programmatic decoration designed by
Bernini for the interior of St. Peter’s.
Bernini next supervised the decoration of
the four piers supporting the dome of St. Peter’s with
colossal statues, though only one of the latter, St.
Longinus, was designed by him. He also made a series of
portrait busts of Urban VIII, but the first bust to achieve
the quality of his earlier portraits is that of his great
patron, Scipione Cardinal Borghese (1632). The cardinal is
shown in the act of speaking and moving, and the action is
caught at a moment that seems to reveal all the
characteristic qualities of the subject.
Bernini’s architectural duties increased
after the death of Carlo Maderno in 1629, when Bernini
became architect of St. Peter’s and of the Palazzo Barberini.
By this time he was not only executing works himself but
also having to rely on assistance from others as the number
of his commissions grew. He was successful in organizing his
studio and planning his work so that sculptures and
ornamentations produced by a team actually seem to be all of
a piece. Bernini’s work, then and always, was also shaped by
his fervent Roman Catholicism (he attended mass every day
and took communion twice a week). He would agree with the
formulations of the Council of Trent (1545–63) that the
purpose of religious art was to teach and inspire the
faithful and to serve as propaganda for the Roman Catholic
Church. Religious art should always be intelligible and
realistic, and, above all, it should serve as an emotional
stimulus to piety. The development of Bernini’s religious
art was largely determined by his conscientious efforts to
conform to those principles.
Under Urban VIII Bernini began to produce
new and different kinds of monuments—tombs and fountains.
The tomb of Urban VIII (1628–47) shows the pope seated with
his arm raised in a commanding gesture, while below him are
two white marble figures representing the Virtues. Bernini
also designed a revolutionary series of small tomb
memorials, of which the most impressive is that of Maria
Raggi (1643). But his fountains are his most obvious
contribution to the city of Rome. The Triton Fountain in the
Piazza Barberini (1642–43) is a dramatic transformation of a
Roman architectonic fountain—the superposed basins of the
traditional geometric piazza fountain appearing to have come
alive. Four dolphins raise a huge shell supporting the sea
god, who blows water upward out of a conch.
Bernini’s early architectural projects,
however, were not invariably successful. In 1637 he began to
erect campaniles, or bell towers, over the facade of St.
Peter’s. But, in 1646, when their weight began to crack the
building, they were pulled down, and Bernini was temporarily
disgraced.
Patronage of Innocent X and Alexander VII
Bernini’s most spectacular public monuments date from
the mid-1640s to the 1660s. The Fountain of the Four Rivers
in Rome’s Piazza Navona (1648–51) supports an ancient
Egyptian obelisk over a hollowed-out rock, surmounted by
four marble figures symbolizing four major rivers of the
world. This fountain is one of his most spectacular works.
The greatest single example of Bernini’s
mature art is the Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della
Vittoria, in Rome, which completes the evolution begun early
in his career. The chapel, commissioned by Federigo Cardinal
Cornaro, is in a shallow transept in the small church. Its
focal point is his sculpture of The Ecstasy of St. Teresa
(1645–52), a depiction of a mystical experience of the great
Spanish Carmelite reformer Teresa of Ávila. In representing
Teresa’s vision, during which an angel pierced her heart
with a fiery arrow of divine love, Bernini followed Teresa’s
own description of the event. The sculptured group, showing
the transported saint swooning in the void, covered by
cascading drapery, is revealed in celestial light within a
niche over the altar, where the architectural and decorative
elements are richly joined and articulated. At left and
right, in spaces resembling opera boxes, numerous members of
the Cornaro family are found in spirited postures of
conversation, reading, or prayer. The Cornaro Chapel carries
Bernini’s ideal of a three-dimensional picture to its apex.
The figures of St. Teresa and the angel are sculptured in
white marble, but the viewer cannot tell whether they are in
the round or merely in high relief. The natural daylight
that falls on the figures from a hidden source above and
behind them is part of the group, as are the gilt rays
behind. The Ecstasy of St. Teresa is not sculpture in the
conventional sense. Instead, it is a framed pictorial scene
made up of sculpture, painting, and light that also includes
the worshiper in a religious drama.
In his later years, the growing desire to
control the environments of his statuary led Bernini to
concentrate more and more on architecture. Of the churches
he designed after completing the Cornaro Chapel, the most
impressive is that of Sant’Andrea al Quirinale (1658–70) in
Rome, with its dramatic high altar, soaring dome, and
unconventionally sited oval plan. But Bernini’s greatest
architectural achievement is the colonnade enclosing the
piazza before St. Peter’s Basilica. The chief function of
the large space was to hold the crowd that gathered for the
papal benediction on Easter and other special occasions.
Bernini planned a huge oval attached to the church by a
trapezoidal forecourt—forms that he compared to the
encircling arms of the mother church. The freestanding
colonnades were a novel solution to the need for a
penetrable enclosure. The piazza guides the visitor toward
the church and counterbalances the overly wide facade of St.
Peter’s. Bernini’s oval encloses a space centred on the
Vatican obelisk, which had been moved before the church by
Sixtus V in 1586. Bernini moved an older fountain by Maderno
into the long axis of the piazza and built a twin on the
other side to make a scenographic whole. The analogies to
Bernini’s oval plan of Sant’Andrea al Quirinale are
fascinating, as are the differences in meaning and function.
Bernini’s most spectacular religious
decoration is the Throne of St. Peter, or the Cathedra Petri
(1657–66), a gilt-bronze cover for the medieval wooden
throne (cathedra) of the pope. Bernini’s task was not only
to make a decorative cover for the chair but also to create
a meaningful goal in the apse of St. Peter’s for the
pilgrim’s journey through the great church. The seat is
seemingly supported by four imposing bronze figures
representing theological doctors of the early church: Saints
Ambrose, Athanasius, John Chrysostom, and Augustine. Above,
a golden glory of angels on clouds and rays of light
emanates from the Dove of the Holy Spirit, which is painted
on an oval window. The cathedra was produced about the same
time as the piazza, and the contrast between these two works
shows Bernini’s versatility. Both works were done for the
Chigi pope, Alexander VII (1655–67), who was one of
Bernini’s greatest patrons. The tomb that Bernini designed
for Alexander VII (1671–78) was largely executed by his
pupils.
In addition to his large works, Bernini
continued to produce a few portrait busts. The first of
these, of Francesco I d’Este, duke of Modena (1650–51),
culminates his revolution in portraiture. Much of the
freedom and spontaneity of the bust of Cardinal Borghese is
kept, but it is united with a heroic pomp and grandiose
movement that portray the ideals of the Baroque age as much
as the man.
Trip to France
Bernini went to Paris in 1665, in what was his only
prolonged absence from Rome. The trip was made in response
to invitations that for many years had been extended to him
by King Louis XIV, and the purpose was the design of a new
French royal residence. By this time, Bernini was so famous
that crowds lined the streets of each city along the route
to watch him pass. His initial reception in Paris was
equally triumphant, but he soon offended his sensitive hosts
by imperiously praising the art and architecture of Italy at
the expense of that of France. His statements made him
unpopular at the French court and were to some degree
responsible for the rejection of his designs for the Louvre.
The only relic of Bernini’s visit to France is his great
bust of Louis XIV, a linear, vertical, and stable portrait,
in which the Sun King gazes out with godlike authority. The
image set a standard for royal portraits that lasted 100
years.
Later years
Bernini’s late works in sculpture are inevitably
overshadowed by his grandiose projects for St. Peter’s, but
a few of them are of outstanding interest. For the Chigi
Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, he
carved two groups, Daniel in the Lions’ Den and Habakkuk and
the Angel (1655–61). These works show the beginnings of his
late style: elongation of the body, expressive gesture, and
simplified yet emphatic emotional expression. The same
characteristics are already found in the figures supporting
the Throne of St. Peter and culminate in the moving Angels
for the Sant’Angelo Bridge in Rome, which Bernini
redecorated with the help of assistants between 1667 and
1671. Pope Clement IX (1667–69) so prized the Angels carved
by Bernini that they were never set up on the bridge and are
now in the church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte in Rome.
The redecorated Sant’Angelo Bridge leading
across the Tiber forms an introduction to the Vatican, and
Bernini’s other works—the piazza, Scala Regia, and the
baldachin and cathedra within St. Peter’s—form progressively
more powerful expressions of papal power to support and
inspire Roman Catholic pilgrims to the site. Bernini
completed one more decoration in St. Peter’s in his last
years: the altar of the Santissimo Sacramento Chapel
(1673–74). The pliant, human adoration of the angels
contrasts with the timeless architecture of the bronze
tabernacle that they flank and typifies Bernini’s late
style. In his last years he seems to have found the
inexorable laws of architecture a consoling antithesis to
the transitory human state.
Bernini’s greatest late work is the simple
Altieri Chapel in San Francesco a Ripa (c. 1674) in Rome.
The relatively deep space above the altar reveals a statue
representing the death of the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni.
Bernini consciously separated architecture, sculpture, and
painting for different roles, reversing the process that
culminated in the Cornaro Chapel. In that sense, the Altieri
Chapel is more traditional, a variation on his church
interiors of the preceding years. Instead of filling the
arched opening, the sculpted figure of Ludovica lies at the
bottom of a large volume of space, and is illuminated by a
heavenly light that plays on the drapery gathered over her
recumbent figure. Her hands weakly clutching her breast make
explicit her painful death.
Bernini died at age 81, after having
served eight popes, and when he died he was widely
considered not only Europe’s greatest artist but also one of
its greatest men. He was the last of Italy’s remarkable
series of universal geniuses, and the Baroque style he
helped create was the last Italian style to become an
international standard. His death marked the end of Italy’s
artistic hegemony in Europe. The style he evolved was
carried on for two more generations in various parts of
Europe by the architects Mattia de’ Rossi and Carlo Fontana
in Rome, J.B. Fischer von Erlach in Austria, and the
brothers Cosmas and Egid Quirin Asam in Bavaria, among
others.
Howard Hibbard
Encyclopædia Britannica
