Editing Gian Lorenzo Bernini (section)

===Tomb monuments and other works===
Another major category of Bernini's activity was that of the tomb monument, a genre on which his distinctive new style exercised a decisive and long-enduring influence; included in this category are his tombs for Popes Urban VIII and Alexander VII (both in St. Peter's Basilica), Cardinal Domenico Pimentel (Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, design only), and [[Tomb of Countess Matilda of Tuscany|Matilda of Canossa]] (St. Peter's Basilica). Related to the tomb monument is the funerary memorial, of which Bernini executed several (including that, most notably, of [[Memorial to Maria Raggi|Maria Raggi]] (Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome) also of greatly innovative style and long enduring influence.<ref>For his tomb monuments and funerary memorials, see the relative pages in Mormando, ''Domenico Bernini's 'Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini,'' University Park, 2011; see also Mormando's 'A Bernini workshop drawing for a tomb monument,' ''The Burlington Magazine'', n. 1376, vol. 159, November 2017: 886–92.</ref>

Among his smaller commissions, although not mentioned by either of his earliest biographers, Baldinucci or Domenico Bernini, the [[Elephant and Obelisk]] is a sculpture located near the [[Pantheon, Rome|Pantheon]], in the [[Piazza della Minerva]], in front of the Dominican church of [[Santa Maria sopra Minerva]]. [[Pope Alexander VII]] decided that he wanted a small ancient Egyptian [[obelisk]] (that was discovered beneath the piazza) to be erected on the same site, and in 1665 he commissioned Bernini to create a sculpture to support the obelisk. The sculpture of an elephant bearing the obelisk on its back was executed by one of Bernini's students, [[Ercole Ferrata]], upon a design by his master, and finished in 1667. An inscription on the base relates the Egyptian goddess [[Isis]] and the Roman goddess [[Minerva]] to the Virgin Mary, who supposedly supplanted those pagan goddesses and to whom the church is dedicated.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Heckscher|first=W.|title=Bernini's Elephant and Obelisk|journal=Art Bulletin|volume=XXIX|issue=3|year= 1947|page=155|doi=10.1080/00043079.1947.11407785}}</ref> Bernini's elephants are highly realistic as Bernini had twice the opportunity to see a live elephant: [[Don Diego (elephant)|Don Diego]] in 1630 and [[Hansken]] in 1655.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.elephanthansken.com/berninis-beeld-van-een-olifant-in-het-rijksmuseum/ |first=M. Roscam |last=Abbing |title=Bernini's beeld van een olifant in het Rijksmuseum |language=nl |trans-title=Bernini's Sculpture of an Elephant at the Rijksmuseum |access-date=12 September 2023}}</ref> A popular anecdote concerns the elephant's smile. To find out why it is smiling, legend has it, the viewer must examine the rear end of the animal and notice that its muscles are tensed and its tail is shifted to the left as if it were defecating. The animal's rear is pointed directly at one of the headquarters of the [[Dominican Order]], housing the offices of its Inquisitors as well as the office of Father Giuseppe Paglia, a Dominican friar who was one of the main antagonists of Bernini, as a final salute and last word.<ref>This anecdote regarding the Elephant and Obelisk monument (more formally, it is a monument to Divine Wisdom and a tribute to Pope Alexander VII) is one of the many undocumented popular legends circulating about Bernini. The elephant, in fact, is not smiling, and even less so, in the act of defecating. As for Bernini, although he may have had professional reasons to resent Paglia, the conservative, pious and utterly orthodox artist personally had no grudges against the Dominican Order or the Inquisition: neither he nor his family nor his friends were ever given trouble by the Dominicans. Moreover, Giuseppe Paglia was director of the overall project to reconstruct the piazza in front of Santa Maria Minerva, appointed by Pope Alexander VII himself and, as such, had supervisory authority over Bernini and the design of his Elephant and Obelisk monument. The final design of that monument, in fact, owes much to Paglia's direct intervention. Hence, it is unlikely that Paglia (or Pope Alexander) would have allowed this supposed insult to him or his Dominican order. Finally, if Bernini did intend to deliver this visual insult, he failed totally, for there is no contemporary documentation indicating that visitors to the piazza during the artist's lifetime ever noticed the supposed insult: see Franco Mormando, ed. and trans., ''Domenico Bernini's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini'' (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2011), p. 369, n. 33. Instead, the origins of this anecdote can be traced to the very end of the 17th century, when the satirist [[Lodovico Sergardi]] circulated a two-line epigram in which the elephant tells the Dominicans that the position of his rear end is meant to announce "where I hold you in my esteem" (see Ingrid Rowland, 'The Friendship of Alexander VII and Athanasius Kircher, 1637-1667' in ''Early Modern Rome: Proceedings of a Conference Held on 13–15 May 2010 in Rome,'' ed. Portia Prebys [Ferrara: Edisai, 2011], pp. 669–78, here p. 670; see also p. 671 where Rowland absolves Bernini of any satiric intent: 'The Dominicans, who followed the evolution of Bernini's design for this monument with meticulous care from beginning to end, must have realized that the only reasonable placement for this remarkable creation was the placement that we see today.')</ref>

[[File:Gianlorenzo Bernini by Giovanni Battista Gaulli (National Galleries of Scotland).jpg|thumb|left|Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1665, painted by [[Giovanni Battista Gaulli]]]]

Among his minor commissions for non-Roman patrons or venues, in 1677 Bernini worked along with [[Ercole Ferrata]] to create a fountain for the [[Lisbon]] palace of the Portuguese nobleman, [[Luís de Meneses, 3rd Count of Ericeira]]: copying his earlier fountains, Bernini supplied the design of the fountain sculpted by Ferrata, featuring Neptune with four tritons around a basin. The fountain has survived and since 1945 has been outside the precincts of the gardens of the [[Palace of Queluz]], several miles outside of Lisbon.<ref>Angela Delaforce et al., 'A Fountain by Gianlorenzo Bernini and Ercole Ferrata in Portugal,' ''Burlington,'' vol. 140, issue 1149, pp. 804–811.</ref>