Editing Gian Lorenzo Bernini (section)

== Biography ==

[[File:Pietro Bernini.jpg|upright=0.8|thumb|Portrait of [[Pietro Bernini]], father of Gian Lorenzo]]

=== Youth ===

Bernini was born on 7 December 1598 in [[Naples]] to Angelica Galante, a Neapolitan, and [[Mannerism|Mannerist]] sculptor [[Pietro Bernini]], originally from [[Florence]]. He was the sixth of their thirteen children.<ref>[http://www.gallery.ca/files/Bernini_Biography_ENG.pdf Gallery.ca] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100331234043/http://www.gallery.ca/files/Bernini_Biography_ENG.pdf |date=31 March 2010 }}. {{cite book|last=Gale|first=Thomson|chapter=Gian Lorenzo Bernini|title=Encyclopedia of World Biography|year=2004}} For a list of Bernini's siblings, see [[Franco Mormando]], ''Bernini: His Life and His Rome'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 2–3. Note that the primary source for much of the information about Bernini's life comes from the biography written by his youngest son Domenico. For a scholarly, annotated English translation of the latter, see [[Franco Mormando]], ed. and trans., Domenico Bernini, ''Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini'', University Park, Penn State Univ. Press, 2011.</ref> Gian Lorenzo Bernini 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 favour of powerful patrons who hailed him as 'the Michelangelo of his century'”.{{sfn|Posèq|2006|pp=161–190}} More specifically, it was [[Pope Paul V]], who after first attesting to the boy Bernini's talent, famously remarked, 'This child will be the Michelangelo of his age,' later repeating that prophecy to Cardinal Maffeo Barberini (the future [[Pope Urban VIII]]), as Domenico Bernini reports in his biography of his father.{{sfn|Mormando|2011|pp=98, 100}} In 1606 his father received a papal commission (to contribute a marble relief to the Cappella Paolina of [[Santa Maria Maggiore]]) and so moved from Naples to Rome, taking his entire family with him and continuing in earnest the training of his son Gian Lorenzo.

Several extant works, dating {{circa|1615}}–1620, are by general scholarly consensus, collaborative efforts by both father and son: they include the ''Faun Teased by Putti'' ({{circa|1615}}, [[Metropolitan Museum]], NYC), ''Boy with a Dragon'' ({{circa|1616}}–17, [[Getty Museum]], Los Angeles), the Aldobrandini ''Four Seasons'' ({{circa|1620}}, private collection), and the recently discovered ''Bust of the Savior'' (1615–16, New York, private collection).<ref>For the newly rediscovered bust of the Savior, see ''Pietro and Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Bust of the Savior.'' With an essay by Andrea Bacchi, New York: Andrew Butterfield Fine Arts, 2016. For the other collaborative works, see the 2017 Galleria Borghese exhibition catalogue, ''Bernini'' (eds. Andrea Bacchi and Anna Coliva [Milan): Officina Libraria, 2017), respectively pp. 38–41, 68–71, 48–53 and 28.</ref> Sometime after the arrival of the Bernini family in Rome, word about the great talent of the boy Gian Lorenzo spread throughout the city 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 marvelling pope, and this was the beginning of the pope's attention on this young talent.<ref>[[Franco Mormando]], ed. and trans., Domenico Bernini, ''Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini'', University Park, Penn State Univ. Press, 2011, p. 98.</ref>

Once he was brought to Rome, he rarely left its walls, except (much against his will) for a five-month stay in Paris in the service of King [[Louis XIV]] and brief trips to nearby towns (including [[Civitavecchia]], [[Tivoli, Lazio|Tivoli]] and [[Castelgandolfo]]), mostly for work-related reasons. Rome was Bernini's city: "You are made for Rome," said Pope Urban VIII to him, "and Rome for you."{{sfn|Briggs|1915|pp=197–202}} It was in this world of 17th-century Rome and the international religious-political power which resided there that Bernini created his greatest works. Bernini's works are therefore often characterized as perfect expressions of the spirit of the assertive, triumphal but self-defensive [[Counter Reformation]] Catholic Church. Certainly, Bernini was a man of his times and deeply religious (at least later in life),<ref>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: [http://www.berfrois.com/2012/10/franco-mormando-on-bernini/]</ref> but he and his artistic production should not be reduced simply to instruments of the papacy and its political-doctrinal programs, an impression that is at times communicated by the works of the three most eminent Bernini scholars of the previous generation, [[Rudolf Wittkower]], [[Howard Hibbard]], and [[Irving Lavin]].<ref>Regarding Hibbard's classic book on Bernini (''Bernini'' [New York: Penguin, 1965]), often cited as a leading authority, though still a valuable resource, it has never been updated since its original publication 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. Similar criticism regarding an insufficiently critical reading of contemporary sources (especially ecclesiastical ones) and a simplistic reductionism in the description of Bernini's true mindset and artistic vision could also be made of the scholarship of Wittkower and Lavin.</ref> As [[Tomaso Montanari]]'s recent revisionist monograph, ''La libertà di Bernini'' (Turin: Einaudi, 2016) argues and [[Franco Mormando]]'s anti-hagiographic biography, ''Bernini: His Life and His Rome'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), illustrates, Bernini and his artistic vision maintained a certain degree of freedom from the mindset and mores of Counter-Reformation Roman Catholicism.

[[File:Pope Paul V Borghese by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1621-1622 - Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek - Copenhagen - DSC09342.JPG|thumb|[[Bust of Pope Paul V]] (1621–1622) by Bernini.]]

===Partnership with Scipione Borghese===

{{multiple image | total_width = 400 |  image1 = Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius by Bernini.jpg | caption1 = ''[[Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius]]'' (1619) | image2 = The Rape of Proserpina (Rome).jpg | caption2 = ''[[The Rape of Proserpina (Bernini)|Rape of Proserpina]]'' (1621–22) |  image3 = Apollo and Daphne (Bernini) (cropped).jpg | caption3 = ''[[Apollo and Daphne (Bernini)|Apollo and Daphne]]'' (1622–25) | image4 = Bernini's David 02.jpg | caption4 = ''[[David (Bernini)|David]]'' (1623–24) }}

Under the patronage of the extravagantly wealthy and most powerful Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the young Bernini rapidly rose to prominence as a sculptor.<ref>The most up-to-date and most comprehensive catalogue raisonné of all of Bernini's sculptures is Maria Grazia Bernardini's monumental ''Catalogo delle sculture'', with an extensive bibliography (Turin: Allemandi Edizioni, 2022). It supersedes Rudolph Wittkower's catalogue, ''Bernini: The Sculptor of the Roman Baroque'', first published in 1955, but re-published in revised form even after the author's death (in 1971), the last edition being the 4th, London: Phaidon, 1997.</ref> Among his early works for the cardinal, as an assistant in his father's workshop, would have been small contributions to decorative pieces for the garden of the [[Villa Borghese gardens|Villa Borghese]], such as perhaps ''The Allegory of Autumn'' (formerly in the Hester Diamond collection in New York). Another small garden ornament work (in the Galleria Borghese since Bernini's lifetime), ''[[The Goat Amalthea with the Infant Jupiter and a Faun]]'', was from 1926 until 2022 generally considered by scholars to be the earliest work executed entirely by the young Bernini himself, despite the fact that it is never mentioned in any of the contemporary sources, except for a late reference (1675) as a Bernini work by Joachim von Sandrart, a German visitor to Rome, an attribution that was given no credence until the twentieth century. Indeed, the official 2022 ''Catalogo generale'' (vol. 1, ''Sculture moderne'', cat. 41) of the Galleria Borghese, edited by Anna Coliva (former director of the gallery) formally removes the attribution to Bernini completely, on the basis of both stylistic, technical, and historical (documentary) grounds.

Instead, among Bernini's earliest and securely documented work is his collaboration on his father's commission of February 1618 from Cardinal Maffeo Barberini to create four marble ''putti'' for the Barberini family chapel in the church of {{lang|it|[[Sant'Andrea della Valle]]|italic=no}}, the contract stipulating that his son Gian Lorenzo would assist in the execution of the statues.<ref>F. Mormando, ''Domenico Bernini's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini'' (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2011), p. 282, n. 23. Scholars, however, are still in debate as to which of the four 'putti' came from the hand of Gian Lorenzo.</ref> Also dating to 1618 is a letter by Maffeo Barberini in Rome to his brother Carlo in Florence, which mentions that he (Maffeo) was thinking of asking the young Gian Lorenzo to finish one of the statues left incomplete by Michelangelo, then in possession of Michelangelo's grandnephew which Maffeo was hoping to purchase, a remarkable attestation of the great skill that the young Bernini was already believed to possess.<ref>I. Lavin, 'Five New Youthful Sculptures by Gianlorenzo Bernini and a Revised Chronology of His Early Works,' ''Art Bulletin'' 50 (1968): 223–48, here 236–237. There is no scholarly consensus as to which unfinished Michelangelo statue the Maffeo letter was referring, but evidence all points strongly in the direction of the ''Palestrina Pietà'' (now in the Accademia, Florence): see Irving Lavin (†) and Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, "The ''Palestrina Pietà:'' Gatherings on the History of 'a Statue Begun by Michelangelo,'" ''Artibus et Historiae,'' no. 82, XLI, 2020: 249–65.</ref>

Although the Michelangelo statue-completion commission came to nought, the young Bernini was shortly thereafter (in 1619) commissioned to repair and complete a famous work of antiquity, the ''[[Sleeping Hermaphroditus]]'' owned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese ({{lang|it|[[Galleria Borghese]]|italic=no}}, Rome) and later ({{circa|1622}}) restored the so-called ''[[Ludovisi Ares]]'' ({{lang|it|[[Museo Nazionale Romano]]|italic=no}}, Rome).<ref>Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco and Marcello Fagiolo, ''Bernini. Una introduzione al gran teatro barocco'' (Rome: Bulzoni, 1967), cat. entries #11 (Hermaphrodite) and #25 (Ares). Contrary to what the Fagiolo dell'Arco brothers claim in their cat. #31, there is no documentation at all proving or even suggesting that Bernini was responsible for the restoration of the so-called ''[[Barberini Faun]]'' (now in the [[Glyptothek]] of Munich), as Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny have demonstrated in their ''Taste and the Antique'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), cat. 33, pp. 202–05.</ref>

Also dating to this early period are the so-called ''[[Damned Soul (Bernini)|Damned Soul]]'' and ''[[Blessed Soul (Bernini)|Blessed Soul]]'' of {{circa|1619}}, two small marble busts which may have been influenced by a set of prints by [[Pieter de Jode I]] or [[Karel van Mallery]], but which were in fact unambiguously catalogued in the inventory of their first documented owner, Fernando de Botinete y Acevedo, as depicting a nymph and a satyr, a commonly paired duo in ancient sculpture (they were not commissioned by nor ever belonged to either Scipione Borghese or, as most scholarship erroneously claims, the Spanish cleric, Pedro Foix Montoya).<ref>For the Jode / Mallery prints, see Leuschner, 2016, 135–46. For newly discovered archival documentation about the provenance and original identity of the subjects of the two busts, see Garcia Cueto, 2015, 37–53.</ref> 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 (Bernini)|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 (Bernini)|The Rape of Proserpina]]'' (1621–22), ''[[Apollo and Daphne (Bernini)|Apollo and Daphne]]'' (1622–1625), and ''[[David (Bernini)|David]]'' (1623–24)—"inaugurated a new era in the history of European sculpture."{{sfn|Wittkower|1955|p=14}} It is a view repeated by other scholars, such as Howard Hibbard who proclaimed that, in all of the seventeenth century, "there were no sculptors or architects comparable to Bernini."{{sfn|Hibbard|1965|p=21}} 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."<ref>Timothy Clifford and Michael Clarke, Foreword, ''Effigies and Ecstasies: Roman Baroque Sculpture and Design in the Age of Bernini'', Edinburgh: National Gallery of Scotland, 1998, p. 7</ref> Moreover, Bernini possessed the ability to depict highly dramatic narratives with characters showing intense psychological states, but also to organize large-scale sculptural works that convey a magnificent grandeur.{{sfn|Wittkower|1955|p=13}}

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 (mythology)|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 (Michelangelo)|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 [[David (Donatello, bronze)|Donatello]]'s, show the subject in his triumph after the battle with [[Goliath]]. Bernini illustrates [[David]] during his active combat with the giant, as 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, though he sculpted them fully in the round. Their original placements within the [[Villa Borghese]] were against walls so that the viewers' first view was the dramatic moment of the narrative.<ref>{{harvnb|Wittkower|1955|p=15}}; {{harvnb|Hibbard|1965|pp=53–54}}</ref>

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. This is shown by how Bernini portrays her braids coming undone which reveals her emotional distress.<ref>{{Cite book |first=Jonathan |last=Dewald |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/773533350 |title=Europe 1450 to 1789 : encyclopedia of the early modern world |date=2004 |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |isbn=0-684-31201-8 |oclc=773533350}}</ref> In addition to portraying psychological realism, they show a greater concern for representing physical details. The tousled hair of Pluto, the pliant flesh of [[The Rape of Proserpina|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.<ref>{{harvnb|Wittkower|1955|pp=14–15}}; {{harvnb|Hibbard|1965|pp=48–61}}</ref>

=== Papal artist: the pontificate of Urban VIII ===
[[File:Interiorvaticano8.jpg|thumb|''Baldacchino'' in [[St. Peter's Basilica]]]]
In 1621 Pope Paul V Borghese was succeeded on the throne of St. Peter by another admiring friend of Bernini's, Cardinal Alessandro Ludovisi, who became [[Pope Gregory XV]]: although his reign was very short (he died in 1623), Pope Gregory commissioned portraits of himself (both in marble and bronze) by Bernini. The pontiff also bestowed upon Bernini the honorific rank of 'Cavaliere,' the title with which for the rest of his life the artist was habitually referred. In 1623 came the ascent to the papal throne of his aforementioned friend and former tutor, Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, as [[Pope Urban VIII]], and henceforth (until Urban's death in 1644) Bernini enjoyed near monopolistic patronage from the Barberini pope and family. The new Pope Urban is reported to have remarked, "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."<ref>[[Franco Mormando]], ed. and trans., Domenico Bernini, ''Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini,'' University Park, Penn State Univ. Press, 2011, p. 111.</ref> Although he did not fare as well during the reign (1644–55) of [[Innocent X]], under Innocent's successor, [[Alexander VII]] (reigned 1655–67), Bernini once again gained pre-eminent artistic domination and continued in the successive pontificate to be held in high regard by [[Clement IX]] during his short reign (1667–69).

Under Urban VIII's patronage, Bernini'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.{{sfn|Hibbard|1965|p=68}} 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]]".{{sfn|Mormando|2011|p=72}} Such positions gave Bernini the opportunity to demonstrate his versatile skills throughout the city. To great protest from older, experienced master architects, he, with virtually no architectural training to his name, was appointed "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.

Bernini's artistic pre-eminence under Urban VIII (and later under Alexander VII) meant he was able to secure the most important commissions in the Rome of his day, namely, the various massive embellishment projects of the newly finished [[St. Peter's Basilica]], completed under Pope Paul V with the addition of Maderno's nave and facade and finally re-consecrated by Pope Urban VIII on 18 November 1626, after 100 years of planning and building. Within the basilica he was responsible for the [[St. Peter's Baldachin|Baldacchino]], the decoration of the four piers under the cupola, the Cathedra Petri or [[Chair of St. Peter]] in the apse, the [[Tomb of Countess Matilda of Tuscany]], the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in the right nave, and the decoration (floor, walls and arches) of the new nave. The Baldacchino immediately became the visual centrepiece of the basilica. Designed as a massive spiraling gilded bronze canopy over the tomb of St Peter, Bernini's four-columned creation reached nearly {{convert|30|m|ft|abbr=on}} from the ground and cost around 200,000 [[Roman scudi]] (about 8 million US dollars in the currency of the early 21st century).<ref>For the conversion of 17th-century Roman scudi into 21st-century U.S. dollars, see F. Mormando, ''Bernini: His Life and His Rome'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), p. xix.</ref> "Quite simply", writes one art historian, "nothing like it had ever been seen before".{{sfn|Mormando|2011|p=84}} Soon after the completion of the Baldacchino, Bernini undertook the whole-scale embellishment of the four massive piers at the crossing of the basilica (i.e., the structures supporting the cupola) including, most notably, four colossal, theatrically dramatic statues. Among the latter is the majestic ''[[Saint Longinus (Bernini)|St. Longinus]]'' executed by Bernini himself (the other three are by other contemporary sculptors [[François Duquesnoy]], [[Francesco Mochi]], and Bernini's disciple, [[Andrea Bolgi]]).

In the basilica Bernini also began work on the tomb for Urban VIII, completed only after Urban's death in 1644, one in a long, 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.<ref>Erwin Panofsky, ''Tomb Sculpture: Four Lectures on Its Changing Aspect From Ancient Egypt to Bernini,'' New York: Abrams, 1992, p. 96.</ref>

[[File:Richelieu le Bernin M.R.2165 mp3h9006.jpg|thumb|left|''Bust of Armand, Cardinal de Richelieu'' (1640–1641)]]

Despite this busy engagement with large works of public architecture, Bernini was still able to devote himself to his sculpture, especially portraits in marble, but also large statues such as the life-size ''[[Saint Bibiana (Bernini)|Saint Bibiana]]'' (1624, Church of [[Santa Bibiana]], Rome). Bernini's portraits show his ever-increasing ability to capture the utterly distinctive personal characteristics of his sitters, as well as his ability to achieve in cold white marble almost painterly-like effects that render with convincing realism the various surfaces involved: human flesh, hair, fabric of varying type, metal, etc. These portraits included a number of busts of Urban VIII himself, the family [[Bust of Francesco Barberini (Bernini)|bust of Francesco Barberini]] and 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.{{sfn|Wittkower|1955|p=88}} The transitory nature of the expression on Scipione's face is often noted by art historians, as iconic of the Baroque concern for representing fleeting 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".{{sfn|Wittkower|1955|p=88}}

Other marble portraits in this period include that of [[Bust of Costanza Bonarelli|Costanza Bonarelli]] unusual in its more personal, intimate nature. (At the time of the sculpting of the portrait, Bernini was having an affair with [[Costanza Piccolomini Bonarelli|Costanza]], wife of one of his assistants, sculptor, Matteo.) Indeed, it would appear to be the first marble portrait of a non-aristocratic woman by a major artist in European history.<ref>During her lifetime, Costanza was called most often by her maiden name, Piccolomini (she belonged to a minor branch of the papal family that had produced Pope Pius II). Sarah McPhee's archival research has definitively corrected the long-standing mistake regarding her married name: it was Bonucelli, not Bonarelli. For about her and this affair, see below, "Personal Life."</ref>

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]] the powerful [[Duchy of Modena and Reggio|Duke of Modena]], [[Charles I of England]] and his wife, Queen [[Henrietta Maria of France|Henrietta Maria]]. The [[Bust of King Charles I (Bernini)|bust of Charles I]] was produced in Rome from a triple portrait (oil on canvas) executed by [[Van Dyck]], that survives today in the British Royal Collection. 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]].<ref>Cust, 2007, p. 94. [https://web.archive.org/web/20131120043243/http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/eGallery/object.asp?object=404420&row=2062&detail=about Triple Portrait of Charles I].</ref>

===Temporary eclipse and resurgence under Innocent X===
[[File:Ecstasy of Saint Teresa September 2015-2a.jpg|thumb|''[[Ecstasy of Saint Teresa]]'', 1651]]

In 1644, with the death of Pope Urban with whom Bernini had been so intimately connected and the ascent to power of the fierce Barberini-enemy [[Pope Innocent X]] [[Pamphili family|Pamphilj]], Bernini's career suffered a major, unprecedented eclipse, which was to last four years. This had not only to do with Innocent's anti-Barberini politics but also with Bernini's role in the disastrous project of the new bell towers for St. Peter's basilica, designed and supervised entirely by Bernini.

The infamous bell tower affair was to be the biggest failure of his career, both professionally and financially. In 1636, eager to finally finish the exterior of St. Peter's, Pope Urban had 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 façade) decades earlier. Once the first tower was finished in 1641, cracks began to appear in the façade but, curiously enough, work nonetheless 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 [[Wars of Castro]]. Knowing that Bernini could no longer depend on the protection of a favourable pope, his enemies (especially [[Francesco 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]].<ref>For a brief but comprehensive summary of this entire, long and complicated episode in Bernini's life that takes into account the latest archival discoveries, see|Mormando|2011|pp=332–34, nn. 17–23, pp. 342–45, nn. 4–21. For a meticulous, exhaustive investigation of the case, see McPhee, Sarah, ''Bernini and the Bell Towers: Architecture and Politics at the Vatican'', Yale University Press, 2002.</ref>

[[File:Museo borghese, sala del gladiatore, g.l. bernini, verità svelata, 1645-52, 02.JPG|thumb|''[[Truth Unveiled by Time (Bernini)|Truth Unveiled by Time]]'', {{lang|it|[[Galleria Borghese]]|italic=no}}, Rome, 1645–1652]]

Nonetheless, Bernini's opponents in Rome succeeded in seriously damaging the reputation of Urban's artist and in persuading Pope Innocent to order (in February 1646) the complete demolition of both towers, to Bernini's great humiliation and indeed financial detriment (in the form of a substantial fine for the failure of the work). After this, one of the rare failures of his career, Bernini retreated into himself: according to his son, [[Domenico Bernini|Domenico]]. his subsequent unfinished statue of 1647, ''[[Truth Unveiled by Time (Bernini)|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 story and exonerate him fully, as indeed did occur.

Although he received no personal commissions from Innocent or the Pamphilj family in the early years of the new papacy, Bernini did not lose his former positions granted to him by previous popes. Innocent X maintained Bernini in all of the official roles given to him by Urban, including his most prestigious one as "Architect of St. Peter's." Under Bernini's design and direction, work continued on decorating the massive, recently completed but still entirely unadorned nave of St. Peter's, with the addition of elaborate multi-coloured 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.<ref>For Bernini's work on nave and the Alexander VII quotation, see F. Mormando, ''Bernini: His Life and His Rome,'' respectively pp. 149–50 and 328.</ref> He was also allowed to continue to work on Urban VIII's tomb, despite Innocent's antipathy for the Barberini.{{sfn|Mormando|2011|p=150}} A few months after completing Urban's tomb, in 1648 Bernini won (through furtive manoeuvring with the complicity of the pope's sister-in-law Donna [[Olimpia Maidalchini|Olimpia]]) 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.<ref>For Bernini's successful behind-the-scenes manoeuvring to secure the fountain commission, see F. Mormando, ''Bernini: His Life and His Rome,'' pp. 170-74.</ref> 
[[File:Gian lorenzo bernini, Cenotafio di Suor Maria Raggi (1647-53).JPG|thumb|left|''[[Memorial to Maria Raggi]]'', 1651]]
If there had been doubts over Bernini's position as Rome's preeminent artist, they were definitively removed by the unqualified success of the marvellously delightful and technically ingenious Four Rivers Fountain, featuring a heavy ancient obelisk placed over a void created by a cavelike rock formation placed in the centre of an ocean of exotic sea creatures. 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 [[Bust of Francesco I d'Este|Francesco d'Este]]. Recovering quickly from the humiliation of the bell towers, Bernini's boundless creativity continued as before. New types of funerary monument were designed, such as, in the Church of [[Santa Maria sopra Minerva]], the seemingly floating medallion, hovering in the air as it were, for the deceased nun [[Memorial to Maria Raggi|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 and to add a dramatically theatrical "spotlight" to enhance the main focus of the space.

One of the most accomplished and celebrated works to come from Bernini's hand in this period was the Cornaro Family Chapel in the small Carmelite church of [[Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome]]. The Cornaro Chapel (inaugurated in 1651) showcased Bernini's ability to integrate sculpture, architecture, fresco, stucco, and lighting into "a marvellous 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 Saint Teresa]], depicting the so-called "transverberation" of the Spanish nun and saint-mystic, Teresa of Avila.<ref>Irving Lavin, ''Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts'' (New York: Morgan Library and Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 107.</ref> 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 theatre boxes), portraits in relief of various members of the Cornaro family—the Venetian family memorialized in the chapel, including Cardinal [[Federico Baldissera Bartolomeo Cornaro|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 providing the spiritual context (a heavenly setting with a hidden source of light) that suggests to viewers the ultimate nature of this miraculous event.<ref>Irving Lavin, ''Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts'' (New York: Morgan Library and Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 104–06.</ref>

Nonetheless, during Bernini's lifetime and in the centuries following till this very day, Bernini's ''Saint Teresa'' has been accused of crossing a line of decency by sexualizing the visual depiction of the saint's experience, to a degree that no artist, before or after Bernini, dared to do: in depicting her at an impossibly young chronological age, as an idealized delicate beauty, in a semi-prostrate position with her mouth open and her legs splayed-apart, her wimple coming undone, with prominently displayed bare feet (Discalced [[Carmelites]], for modesty, always wore sandals with heavy stockings) and with the seraph "undressing" her by (unnecessarily) parting her mantle to penetrate her heart with his arrow.<ref>For these visual details of the statue and an examination of the charge of indecency, see Franco Mormando, 'Did Bernini's ''Ecstasy of St. Teresa'' Cross a 17th-century Line of Decorum?,' ''Word and Image,'' 39:4, 2023: 351-83 (Mormando's answer is yes.)[https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/twim20]</ref>

Matters of decorum aside, Bernini's ''Teresa'' was still 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".{{sfn|Mormando|2011|p=159}}

=== Embellishment of Rome under Alexander VII ===
Upon his accession to the Chair of St Peter, Pope Alexander VII [[Chigi family|Chigi]] (reigned 1655–1667) 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 deliberate campaign for the "''renovatio Romae''"—that had begun in the fifteenth century under the Renaissance popes. Over the course of his pontificate, Alexander commissioned many large-scale architectural changes in the city—indeed, some of the most significant ones in the city's recent history and for years to come—choosing Bernini as his principal collaborator (though other architects, especially [[Pietro da Cortona]], were also involved). Thus did commence another extraordinarily prolific and successful chapter in Bernini's career.

[[File:Bernini, Gianlorenzo - Self-portrait c1675-1680 - Royal Collection - Gould 1982 plate1.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Bernini self-portrait, {{circa|1665}}]]

Bernini's major commissions during this period include [[St. Peter's Square]]. In a previously broad, irregular, and completely unstructured space, he created two massive semi-circular colonnades, each row of which was formed of four simple white Doric 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 façade of St Peter's or at the traditional window of the neighbouring Palazzo Vaticano, to the right of the square. In addition to being logistically efficient for carriages and crowds, Bernini's design was completely in harmony with the pre-existing buildings and added to the majesty of the basilica. 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 emotionally thrilling and "exhilarating expanse" that was, architecturally, an "unequivocal success".<ref>Hibbard, p. 156; Mormando, ''Bernini: His Life and His Rome'', 2011, p. 204. 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.</ref>

Elsewhere within the Vatican, Bernini created systematic rearrangements and majestic embellishment of either empty or aesthetically undistinguished spaces that exist as he designed them to the present day and have become indelible icons of the splendour 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 (Vatican)|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.{{sfn|Hibbard|1965|pp=163–67}}

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 splendour), which Bernini executed completely free of charge. Sant'Andrea shared with Piazza San Pietro—unlike the complex geometries of his rival [[Francesco Borromini]]—a focus on basic geometric shapes, circles, and ovals to create spiritually intense spaces.{{sfn|Hibbard|1965|pp=144–8}} He also designed the church of [[Santa Maria Assunta, Ariccia|Santa Maria Assunta]] (1662–65) in the town of [[Ariccia]] with its circular outline, rounded dome and three-arched portico, reminiscent of the Pantheon.{{sfn|Hibbard|1965|pp=149–50}} In Santa Maria Assunta, as in his church of St. Thomas of Villanova in Castelgandolfo (1658–61), Bernini completely eschewed the rich polychrome marble decoration dramatically seen in Sant'Andrea and the Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria, in favour of an essentially white, somewhat stark interior, albeit still much adorned with stucco work and painted altarpieces.

===Visit to France and service to King Louis XIV===
[[File:Château de Versailles, salon de Diane, buste de Louis XIV, Bernin (1665) 03 black bg.jpg|thumb|''Bust of Louis XIV'', 1665]]

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.<ref>See Cecil Gould, ''Bernini in France: An Episode in Seventeenth-Century History'', Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982.</ref> The writer [[Charles Perrault]], who was serving at this time as an assistant to the French [[Controller-General of Finances]] [[Jean-Baptiste Colbert]], also provided a first-hand account of Bernini's visit.{{sfn|Zarucchi|2013|pp=356–70}}

Bernini was popular among the crowds who gathered wherever he stopped, which led him to compare his itinerary to the travelling exhibition of an elephant.<ref name=Poussins>{{cite journal |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/renaissance-quarterly/article/abs/poussins-elephant/884CA35266EC95189550E0754AE9BFDD |last=Rice |first=Louise |year=2017 |title=Poussin's Elephant |journal=Renaissance Quarterly |volume=70 |issue=2 |pages=548–593 |doi=10.1086/693181}} The primary source for this information is Chapter 17 of Domenico Bernini's biography of his father: see Mormando, 2011, p. 192.</ref> On his walks in Paris the streets were lined with admiring crowds too. But things soon turned sour.<ref>Cecil Gould, ''Bernini in France: An Episode in Seventeenth-century History'', Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982. 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.</ref> Bernini presented finished designs for the east front (i.e., the all-important principal facade of the entire palace) of the Louvre, which were ultimately rejected, albeit not formally until 1667, well after his departure from Paris (indeed, the already constructed foundations for Bernini's Louvre addition were inaugurated in October 1665 in an elaborate ceremony, with both Bernini and King Louis in attendance). It is often stated in the scholarship on Bernini that his Louvre designs were turned down because Louis and his finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert considered them too Italianate or too Baroque in style.{{sfn|Hibbard|1990|p=181}} In fact, as [[Franco Mormando]] points out, "aesthetics are ''never'' mentioned in any of [the]&nbsp;... 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).<ref>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.</ref> It is also indisputable that there was an interpersonal conflict between Bernini and the young French king, each one feeling insufficiently respected by the other.{{sfn|Zarucchi|2006|pp=32–38}} Though his design for the Louvre went unbuilt, it circulated widely throughout Europe by means of engravings and its direct influence can be seen in subsequent stately residences such as [[Chatsworth House]], Derbyshire, England, seat of the [[Duke of Devonshire|Dukes of Devonshire]].

Other projects in Paris suffered a similar fate, such as Bernini's plans for the Bourbon funerary chapel in the cathedral of Saint Denis and the main altar of the Church of Val de Grâce (done at the request of its patron the Queen Mother), as well as his idea for a fountain for Saint-Cloud, the estate of King Louis's brother, Philippe.<ref>Marcello Fagiolo, "Bernini a Parigi: le Colonne d'Ercole, l'Anfiteatro per il Louvre e i progetti per la Cappella Bourbon", in ''Confronto'', 10–11 (2010), pp. 104–22.</ref> 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]], the ''[[Annunciation (Reni)|Annunciation]]'' altarpiece (then in the Carmelite convent, now the Louvre Museum), was "alone worth half of Paris."{{sfn|Hibbard|1990|p=171, citing the Chantelou diary, July 16 entry}} The sole work remaining from his time in Paris is the ''[[Bust of Louis XIV (Bernini)|Bust of Louis XIV]]'' although he also contributed a great deal to the execution of the Christ Child Playing with a Nail marble relief (now in the Louvre) by his son Paolo as a gift to Queen [[Maria Theresa of Spain|Maria Theresa]]. Back in Rome, Bernini created a monumental [[Equestrian Statue of King Louis XIV (Bernini)|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]].<ref>The most thorough study of Bernini's ''King Louis XIV Equestrian'' statue, including its ultimate fate in France, remains Rudolf Wittkower, 'The Vicissitudes of a Dynastic Monument: Bernini's Equestrian Statue of Louis XIV.' In ''De artibus Opuscula XL: Essays in Honors of Erwin Panofsky,'' ed. Millard Meiss (New York: New York University Press, 1961), pp. 497–531. For much additional, new data about the work that has surfaced since Wittkower's 1961 work, see the many notes pertinent to the statue in Franco Mormando, ''Domenico Bernini's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini'' (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2011), pp. 396–402.</ref>

===Later years and death===
[[File:Bernini-tomb.jpg|alt=Tomb of Gian Lorenzo Bernini in Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore|thumb|Tomb of Gian Lorenzo Bernini in the [[Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore]]]]
[[File:Berninigrave.jpg|thumb|The grave of Bernini in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore]]

Bernini remained physically and mentally vigorous and active in his profession until just two weeks before his death which came as a result of a stroke. The pontificate of his old friend, [[Clement IX]], was too short (barely two years) to accomplish more than the dramatic refurbishment by Bernini of the [[Ponte Sant'Angelo]], while the artist's elaborate plan, under Clement, for a new apse for the basilica of [[Santa Maria Maggiore]] came to an unpleasant end in the midst of public uproar over its cost and the destruction of ancient mosaics that it entailed. The last two popes of Bernini's life, [[Clement X]] and [[Innocent XI]], were both not especially close or sympathetic to Bernini and not particularly interested in financing works of art and architecture, especially given the disastrous conditions of the papal treasury. The most important commission by Bernini, executed entirely by him in just six months in 1674, under Clement X was the statue of the ''[[Blessed Ludovica Albertoni]]'', another nun-mystic. The work, reminiscent of Bernini's ''Ecstasy of Saint Teresa,'' is located in the chapel dedicated to Ludovica remodelled under Bernini's supervision in the [[Trastevere]] church of [[San Francesco a Ripa]], whose façade was designed by Bernini's disciple, [[Mattia de' Rossi]].<ref>For the Albertoni commission, see F. Mormando, ''Domenico Bernini's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini'' (University Park: Penn State Univ. Press, 2011), pp. 411–412, nn. 33–35.</ref>

In his last two years, Bernini also carved (supposedly for Queen [[Christina, Queen of Sweden|Christina]]) the bust of the Savior (Basilica of [[San Sebastiano fuori le Mura]], Rome) and supervised the restoration of the historic [[Palazzo della Cancelleria]], a direct commission from Pope Innocent XI. The latter commission is an outstanding confirmation of both Bernini's continuing professional reputation and good health of mind and body even in advanced old age, inasmuch as the pope had chosen him over any number of talented younger architects plentiful in Rome, for this prestigious and most difficult assignment since, as his son Domenico points out, "deterioration of the palace had advanced to such an extent that the threat of its imminent collapse was quite apparent."{{sfn|Mormando|2011|p=227}}

Shortly after the completion of the latter project, Bernini died in his home 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 of [[Santa Maria Maggiore]]. Though an elaborate funerary monument had once been planned (documented by a single extant sketch of {{circa|1670}} by disciple [[Ludovico Gimignani]]), it was never built and Bernini remained with no permanent public acknowledgement of his life and career in Rome until 1898 when, on the anniversary of his birth, 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 whom reverently bowed popes, princes, and a multitude of peoples."