Bernini, Gian Lorenzo

BERNINI, GIAN LORENZO. - Architect, sculptor, painter, set designer, b. in Naples on 7 Dec. 1598 to the sculptor Pietro B., a Florentine, and to Angelica Galante, a Neapolitan; d. in Rome on 28 Nov. 1680. He was defined by Schlosser as "a much debated genius." His personality was certainly complex; but it is precisely through the force of his genius that B. demonstrated how the Baroque taste, deprecated by neoclassical criticism, could resolve itself into art. The Bal-

Baldinucci, in his Life of B., already gave voice to a widespread conviction, writing: «It is a very universal notion that he was the first who attempted to unite architecture with sculpture and painting in such a way that from all of them a beautiful composite should be made». Apparently it seems so: but B. was essentially a sculptor, in the sense that his architectural mass, even when resolved into coloristic movement, always has inherent in it an ineliminable sculptural and representational «feeling». Naturally B. was not a sculptor in the manner of Michelangelo, precisely because of the coloristic and pictorial experience implicit in his way of understanding mass. As a sculptor he was a pupil of his father, who urged him to practice on the models of classical art. For B., classical art meant above all Hellenistic art, that is, where the pictorial experience of sculpture itself manifested itself most vividly.

Already in the youthful group Boy Jupiter (Rome, Galleria Borghese) he presents himself to our eyes as «Alexandrian»; but together with an intention of returning to the simple Renaissance elements, analogous to the figurative situation of the Carracci. The monument to Bishop Santoni in S. Prassede (1612) appears sixteenth-century and timid in execution. But afterwards his pictorial vein was to triumph: the very figurative environment in which B. was being formed contributed to this, represented in Rome by that current of Venetian origin which, from Alessandro Vittoria, through Pietro B., develops in Rome in Camillo Mariani and in Mochi. Mochi, on the other hand, shows that he had surpassed the taste of the late sixteenth century, which is still found for the most part in Pietro B., initiating the new Baroque language in the field of sculpture. In the group Aeneas and Anchises of the Galleria Borghese, the young Gian Lorenzo is said to have collaborated with his father; but in reality no trace of his personality is visible there. His personality manifests itself instead in youthful works, such as the S. Lorenzo Strozzi (Florence), The Damned Soul and The Blessed Soul (Rome, Palazzo di Spagna) and, above all, the David (ca. 1619, Rome, Galleria Borghese). The latter derives iconographically from a figure in Guido Reni's frescoes in S. Gregorio al Celio, and, at bottom, there is no trace of Michelangelism in it. B. immediately intuits the image in pictorial movement, with an anti-classical curve of posture, with the virtuosity of surfaces, glossy or rough (to indicate the different material) and the expressive energy of the face, which is said to be a self-portrait. The Rape of Proserpina (Galleria Borghese), far less significant, is probably a case of collaboration between Gian Lorenzo and Pietro B.; in reality it is a group much less «Baroque» and more sixteenth-century and Giambolognesque than it may seem. The group Apollo and Daphne (1622; Galleria Borghese) is instead among the highest affirmations of B. still young, but by now fully sure of his own means. Apollo's whirling garment is a Mochian recollection and the face recalls the Apollo Belvedere. In reality the figure of Daphne is better; but the work then appears admirable for that trembling and moving musicality, in a light rhythm, in a pictorial movement at its maximum, complex because of the coloristic research inherent in it. Perhaps from the time of the brief pontificate of Gregory XV (1622) date the bust of Card. Montoya (Church of S. Maria in Monserrato) and the monument of Card. Bellarmine (Church of the Gesù), iconographically linked to the type of late sixteenth-century sculptural portraiture, but so intense with pictorial life, and vivid, that the conventional significance of the severe Counter-Reformation tradition appears by now surpassed. B. in fact rejects no tradition, provided it is possible to lead it back and reduce it to the meaning of his own figurative vision. The pontificate of Urban VIII (1624) comprises the highest affirmations of Berninian genius, both in the sculptural field and in the architectural and pictorial one. The marble portrait of Costanza Buonarelli, loved by B. (Florence, Bargello, ca. 1625) reveals a portraiture freedom, a synthesis of psychological and pictorial vitality, surpassed — as regards the open «cut» of the portrait — by the busts of Card. Scipione Borghese (ca. 1632) where the dynamic breadth of the impasto denotes the influence of Rubens and concretizes B.'s new portrait canon, which required that the personage «should move, and should speak» (Baldinucci). To this time also dates the painted self-portrait of the Uffizi. Moreover, B.'s pictorial activity unfolded discontinuously, predominantly between 1625 and 1635. As a painter B. confirms (contrary to what has been asserted) his belonging to the neo-Venetian group, because of his relations with Andrea Sacchi and Poussin; and the David of the Incisa della Rocchetta collection shows how he also looked to Guercino. B. intended above all, however, to avail himself of certain painters who would carry out under his guidance the Berninian figurative ideas, such as Carlo Pellegrini, author of the picture of St. Maurice, once assigned to B. himself, and Guido Ubaldo Abbatini. Among the sculptures of this period one should also remember the statue of St. Bibiana (1626).

But above all as an architect B. asserted himself in more than one work, and at least in one masterpiece: the baldachin for St. Peter's (1624). The pictorial movement by which the baldachin is animated realizes, more than anywhere else, the synthesis of sculpture and architecture proper to B., and the rhythm of the twisted columns is truly that of an animated mass. The work lasted 9 years and established B.'s fame as an architect. In the facade of S. Bibiana (1626) and in that of the college of Propaganda Fide (1627), although the accent of Berninian proportions is recognizable, he presents himself as an artist of a sixteenth-century severity, not unmindful of Giacomo della Porta. In the palace of Propaganda Fide, however, he obtains pictorial reliefs through the spur-like inclination of the facade. B. also had a great part in the construction of Palazzo Barberini; but the problem of how much is due to B. and how much to Maderno and Borromini is not definitively resolved. It should be remembered that, during the pontificate of Urban VIII, B. was also a set designer for the Barberini theater. To 1628 dates the beginning of the works for the mausoleum of Urban VIII in St. Peter's, completed much later (1647). It responds to a new type of funerary monument that would last until Neoclassicism; and it is a masterpiece of B. In chronological order the other works of the pontificate of Urban VIII are: the tomb of Countess Matilda in St. Peter's (1635); the model for the two bell towers of the facade of St. Peter's (1637), of which the only one begun was interrupted and then demolished because of certain cracks that appeared and because of the opposition it encountered; the fountain of the Triton in Piazza Barberini, so picturesque and dynamic, etc.

B. first fell into disfavor with the new pontiff Innocent X (1644), who preferred Borromini. He then sculpted Truth Unveiled by Time (Borghese Gallery), which remained unfinished in the figure of Time, and which was meant to symbolize the artist's state of mind in the face of human injustice. In it one observes a complex pictorial and coloristic research, through a broad movement in a rippling of Rubensian forms. But the masterpiece of this period is The Ecstasy of St. Teresa (1647) in S. Maria della Vittoria, which not only represents an architectural, sculptural, pictorial and scenographic synthesis, but also reveals B.'s extreme sensibility, in a sincere vision revealed by the virtuosic treatment of the marble masses. Having returned to the Pope's favor, he invented the Fountain of the Rivers in Piazza Navona (1651), for the execution of which he availed himself of the help of some disciples. He began (1650) the construction of the Palazzo Montecitorio, important for the broken line of its facade and completed much later by Carlo Fontana.

B.'s activity continued to develop during the pontificate of Alexander VII Chigi. Suffice it to think of the marvelous project for the colonnade of St. Peter's (1656); of the church of S. Andrea al Quirinale (1658); of the bronze chair in St. Peter's (1661). In this last the principle of the coloristic mass in movement is important, creating a representational space that is anti-landscape.

B.'s fame was by now such that the King of France, Louis XIV, asked him for the project for the facade of the Louvre and insisted that he come to Paris. He remained there five months, from April 1665; but his project was not followed, also for reasons of jealousy on the part of French artists. And the equestrian portrait of the king, too, did not please and was badly patched up by Giraudon (a admirable terracotta sketch is in the Borghese Gallery). In any case, B.'s journey to France, faithfully described in a diary by Fréart de Chantelou, remains a fundamental document of the history of figurative taste in general, and of B. in particular.

Having returned to his homeland, he still executed numerous works, among which we recall: the equestrian statue of Constantine (1670, portico of St. Peter's); the statues for the Ponte S. Angelo, two of which are in the church of S. Andrea delle Fratte; the monument of Pope Alexander VII in St. Peter's (1672-1678); the recumbent statue of the blessed Ludovica Albertoni in S. Francesco a Ripa (1674); etc.

Numerous drawings by B. are also preserved, which often spring from an intimate and immediate state of mind. Drawings that cannot be understood without discovering in them, entire and concrete, the personality of B., sculptor, architect, painter, scenographer. Even his caricatures recall the artist's activity as playwright and actor, and seem to arise rather from a personal dramatic attitude, harshly biting and caustic, than from a benevolent experience of the "comic."

B. was a classic. Not only because in his works, especially architectural ones, he uses the traditional classical vocabulary, but because the Baroque language (positively understood) that he exalts is often resolved into a very lofty individual synthesis, and, therefore, still classical. - See PLATES XCII-XCIII.

Wittkower, A counter project to B.'s P. di S. P., in Jahrb. Warburg Inst., 3 (1939-40), pp. 88-106; H. T. Folker, The career of G. L. B. as sculptor, in The Art Quarterly, 3 (1940), pp. 245-66; U. Donati, Tre fontane berniniane, Rome 1941; A. De Rinaldis, Il luminismo del B., in Primato, 3 (1942), pp. 185-86; A. Schiavo, La donna nelle sculture del B., Milan 1942; C. Mezzana, L'altare berniniana della Visitazione nel santuario di Savona, Rome 1942; R. Battaglia, Crocifasi del B. in S. Pietro in Vaticano, ibid. 1942; id., Un'opera del B. ritrovata: la memoria del Merenda, Florence 1942; id., La cattedra berniniana di S. Pietro, Rome 1943; L. Grassi, Disegni del B., Bergamo 1944; id., B. pittore, Rome 1945; F. Niño, B. en Madrid, in Archivo Español de Arte, 69 (1945), pp. 150-61; L. Grassi, Disegni inediti del B. e la decorazione di ponte S. Angelo, in Arti figurative, 2 (1946), pp. 186-192; M. Cardenal, Opiniones y dichos del caballero B., in Revista de ideas estéticas, 5 (1947), pp. 355-73; L. Grassi, Storia del disegno, Rome 1947, p. 144.