Gian Lorenzo Bernini
The Baroque sculptor and architect of Rome.
Bernini made marble as soft as skin. He created The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, the fountains in Piazza Navona and the colonnades of St Peter's.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini was born in Naples on 7 December 1598. His father, Pietro, was a sculptor, and the family moved to Rome when Gian Lorenzo was about seven. He was a child prodigy and worked in his father's workshop from an early age. While still a teenager he received commissions from the Pope's family.
His breakthrough came with a series of marble groups for Cardinal Scipione Borghese in the 1620s. They still stand in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. In The Rape of Proserpina the god's fingers press into the girl's thigh as if the marble were soft skin. In Apollo and Daphne the nymph turns into a tree as Apollo reaches for her, and leaves and roots grow from her body. David tenses his body in the moment before he slings the stone.
The election of Pope Urban VIII in 1623 began a long career in the service of the popes. Bernini made the huge bronze baldacchino over the papal altar in St Peter's and became the architect of the basilica. His best-known sculpture is The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, where a hidden window lets light fall on the saint while an angel aims an arrow at her heart. He made the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona and the great colonnades around St Peter's Square. Bernini combined sculpture, architecture and light into ensembles designed to overwhelm the viewer.
Bernini was proud and hot-tempered. He had a love affair with Costanza Bonarelli, of whom he made a lively bust, now in the Bargello. When he learned that she was unfaithful to him with his brother, he had a servant slash her face. He married in 1639 and had eleven children. In 1665 he travelled to Paris to design a new façade for the Louvre for Louis XIV, but the design was never carried out. He was a friend of Queen Christina of Sweden when she lived in Rome. He died in 1680.
Bernini shaped Baroque Rome more than anyone else. His dramatic sculpture and architecture became a model throughout Europe for more than a hundred years.