Bernini, Gianlorenzo
(1598-1680)
Bernini, Gianlorenzo (1598-1680), is the single most important artist of the Italian baroque. Although most significant as a sculptor, he was also highly gifted as an architect, painter, draftsman, stage set designer, and playwright. His art is the quintessence of high baroque energy and robustness.

Born in Naples as Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, he was taught by his father, Pietro Bernini, a talented sculptor. Many of Bernini's early sculptures were inspired by Hellenistic art (see Greek Art and Architecture). He was commissioned by seven popes over his career and completed numerous works in Vatican City and churches around Rome.


St. Peters
 
From 1624 to 1633 he created the altar canopy in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. This project, shown here on the left, is a masterful feat of engineering, architecture, and sculpture, was the first of a number of monumental undertakings for Saint Peter's. Bernini laid out a huge oval piazza in front of the cathedral, flanked by colossal colonnades with double coloum each side. The aim, brilliantly realized, was to embrace pilgrims within the two arms of the great mother church, which lay at the focus of the composition.
 
Bernini also designed much of the interior of St. Peters, all of it in a very lively personnal style. The picture of St Peter's  interior shown on the right, clearly illustrates Bernini's gilt cathedra Petri topped by a sunburst window. The giant Corinthain order pilasters also lended background monumentality.

Bernini's Cathedra Petri (Chair of Saint Peter, 1657-1666) uses marble, gilt bronze, and stucco in a splendid crescendo of motion, dramatized by the golden oval window in its center that becomes the focal point of the entire structure.
Bernini was the first sculptor to realize the dramatic potential of light in sculpture. This is fully realized in his famous masterpiece Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1645-1652, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome), in which the sun's rays, coming from an unseen source, illuminate the saint and the smiling angel about to pierce her heart with a golden arrow.

Bernini designed several churches, including the great Sant' Andrea al Quirinale (1658-1670) in Rome. He created the Scala Regia (Royal Staircase, 1663-1666), connecting the papal apartments in the Vatican Palace to Saint Peter's, and the Piazza San Pietro (Saint Peter's Square, designed 1667), the large plaza in front of Saint Peter's Basilica. Bernini's most famous fountain group is in the Fountain of the Four Rivers (1648-1651) in the Piazza Navona in Rome.

He was still extreamly active in his old age: he produced the Altieri Chapal in San Francesco a Ripa, which is up to his best standards, at the age of 75 - but by then, he had seen styles of design begin to chance again. He died in 1680, aged 81.
 

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