Editing Gian Lorenzo Bernini (section)

==Influence and post-mortem reputation==

===Disciples, collaborators, and rivals===
Among the many sculptors who worked under his supervision (even though most were accomplished masters in their own right) were [[Luigi Bernini]], Stefano Speranza, [[Giuliano Finelli]], [[Andrea Bolgi]], [[Giacomo Antonio Fancelli]], [[Lazzaro Morelli]], [[Francesco Baratta the elder|Francesco Baratta]], [[Ercole Ferrata]], the Frenchman Niccolò Sale, Giovanni Antonio Mari, [[Antonio Raggi]], and [[François Duquesnoy]]. But his most trusted right-hand man in sculpture was Giulio Cartari, while in architecture it was [[Mattia de Rossi]], both of whom travelled to Paris with Bernini to assist him in his work there for King Louis XIV. Other architect disciples include [[Giovanni Battista Contini]] and [[Carlo Fontana]] while Swedish architect, [[Nicodemus Tessin the Younger]], who visited Rome twice after Bernini's death, was also much influenced by him.

Among his rivals in architecture were, above all, [[Francesco Borromini]] and [[Pietro da Cortona]]. Early in their careers, they had all worked at the same time at the [[Palazzo Barberini]], initially under [[Carlo Maderno]] and, following his death, under Bernini. Later on, however, they were in competition for commissions, and fierce rivalries developed, particularly between Bernini and Borromini.<ref name="morrissey">{{cite book|last=Morrissey |first=Jake |title=Genius in the Design: Bernini, Borromini and the rivalry that transformed Rome |publisher=Harper Perennial |location=New York |year=2005 }} The rivalry between Borromini and Bernini, though very much real, tends to be over-dramatized in popular works like that of Morrissey and in self-published non-scholarly works like that of Mileti. For a more careful, considered summary by a Bernini scholar, see Franco Mormando, ''Bernini: His Life and His Rome,'' Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, pp. 80–83.</ref> In sculpture, Bernini competed with [[Alessandro Algardi]] and [[François Duquesnoy]], but they both died decades earlier than Bernini (respectively in 1654 and 1643), leaving Bernini effectively with no sculptor of his same exalted status in Rome. [[Francesco Mochi]] can also be included among Bernini's significant rivals, though he was not as accomplished in his art as Bernini, Algardi or Duquesnoy.

There was also a succession of painters (the so-called 'pittori berniniani') who, working under the master's close guidance and at times according to his designs, produced canvases and frescos that were integral components of Bernini's larger multi-media works such as churches and chapels: Carlo Pellegrini, [[Guido Ubaldo Abbatini]], Frenchman [[Guillaume Courtois]] (Guglielmo Cortese, known as 'Il Borgognone'), [[Ludovico Gimignani]], and [[Giovanni Battista Gaulli]] (who, thanks to Bernini, was granted the prized commission to fresco the vault of the Jesuit mother [[Church of the Gesù]] by Bernini's friend, Jesuit Superior General, [[Giovanni Paolo Oliva]]).

As far as [[Caravaggio]] is concerned, in all the voluminous Bernini sources, his name appears only once: this occurs in the Chantelou Diary in which the French diarist claims that Bernini agreed with his disparaging remark about Caravaggio  (specifically his ''Fortune Teller'' that had just arrived from Italy as a Pamphilj gift to King Louis XIV). Yet, how much Bernini really scorned Caravaggio's art is a matter of debate whereas arguments have been made in favour of a strong influence of Caravaggio on Bernini. Bernini would, of course, have heard much about Caravaggio and seen many of his works not only because in Rome at the time such contact was impossible to avoid, but also because during his own lifetime, Caravaggio had come to the favourable attention of Bernini's own early patrons, both the [[Borghese family|Borghese]] and the Barberini. Indeed, much like Caravaggio, Bernini often devised strikingly bold compositions, akin to theatrical tableaux that arrest the scene at its dramatic key moment (such as in his ''Ecstasy of Saint Teresa'' in Santa Maria della Vittoria). And again much like Caravaggio, he made full and skillful use of theatrical lighting as an important aesthetic and metaphorical device in his religious settings, often employing hidden light sources that could intensify the focus of religious worship or enhance the dramatic moment of a sculptural narrative.<ref>All of the men mentioned in this section as disciples, collaborators, or rivals are discussed in the notes to [[Franco Mormando]], ''Domenico Bernini's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini'' (University Park: Penn State Univ. Press, 2011), passim, but especially pp. 372–74; for Bernini and Caravaggio, see 285 n. 39, as well as Tomaso Montanari, ''La libertà di Bernini'' (Turin: Einaudi, 2016), pp. 154–84, 'L'eredità di Caravaggio,' who makes an even stronger case for the influence of Caravaggio on Bernini, one that had long been ignored or denied in Bernini scholarship. For Gaulli, Bernini, Gian Paolo Oliva and the decoration of the Jesuit mother church, see the essays by Franco Mormando, Christopher M.S. Johns, and Betsy Rosasco in ''The Holy Name. The Art of the Gesù: Bernini and His Age,'' ed. Linda Wolk-Simon (Philadelphia: St. Joseph's University Press, 2018.).</ref>

===First biographies===
The most important primary source for the life of Bernini is the biography written by his youngest son, Domenico, entitled ''Vita del Cavalier Gio. Lorenzo Bernino,'' published in 1713 though first compiled in the last years of his father's life ({{circa|1675}}–80).<ref>For a list and discussion of important sources for Bernini's life, see [[Franco Mormando]], ''Bernini: His Life and His Rome'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 7–11.</ref> [[Filippo Baldinucci]]'s ''Life of Bernini'' was published in 1682, and a meticulous private journal, the ''Diary of the Cavaliere Bernini's Visit to France,'' was kept by the Frenchman [[Paul Fréart de Chantelou]] during the artist's four-month stay from June through October 1665 at the court of King Louis XIV. Also, there is a short biographical narrative, ''The Vita Brevis of Gian Lorenzo Bernini'', written by his eldest son, Monsignor Pietro Filippo Bernini, in the mid-1670s.<ref>For an unabridged translation and analysis of ''The Vita Brevis,'' see ''Domenico Bernini's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini'' in Mormando, ed., 201 Appendix 1, pp. 237–41.</ref>

Until the late 20th century, it was generally believed that two years after Bernini's death, Queen [[Christina of Sweden]], then living in Rome, commissioned Filippo Baldinucci to write his biography, which was published in Florence in 1682.<ref>Baldinucci, Filippo, ''Life of Bernini''. Translated from the Italian by Enggass, C. University Park, Penn State University Press, 2006. Unfortunately, the Enggass edition of Baldinucci contains many translation errors; readers should always consult the text of the original 1682 edition.</ref> However, recent research now strongly suggests that it was in fact Bernini's sons (and specifically the eldest son, Mons. Pietro Filippo) who commissioned the biography from Baldinucci sometime in the late 1670s, with the intent of publishing it while their father was still alive. This would mean that first, the commission did not at all originate in Queen Christina who would have merely lent her name as patron (in order to hide the fact that the biography was coming directly from the family) and secondly, that Baldinucci's narrative was largely derived from some pre-publication version of Domenico Bernini's much longer biography of his father, as evidenced by the extremely large amount of text repeated verbatim (there is no other explanation, otherwise, for the massive amount of verbatim repetition, and it is known that Baldinucci routinely copied verbatim material for his artists' biographies supplied by family and friends of his subjects).<ref>See Mormando, ''Domenico Bernini's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini,'' 2011, pp. 14–34. It is significant that Christina's extant financial records nowhere report the queen's having monetarily subsidized the publication of Baldinucci's biography, which would have been her responsibility as patron. As Mormando further explains, we also know (from his extant personal notes and correspondence with his sources) that in compiling his famous collection of artists' lives, Baldinucci routinely copied material, word for word, from texts supplied to him by family members and close friends and associates of his subjects. Also significant is the fact that in Domenico's biography of his father, the author is completely silent about the queen's supposed patronage of the Baldinucci biography, a strange omission since he devotes much space to the friendship between Gian Lorenzo and Queen Christina, recording the queen's many signs of favouritism, protection, and adulation towards the artist.</ref> As the most detailed account and the only one coming directly from a member of the artist's immediate family, Domenico's biography, despite having been published later than Baldinucci's, therefore represents the earliest and more important full-length biographical source of Bernini's life, even though it idealizes its subject and whitewashes a number of less-than-flattering facts about his life and personality.

===Legacy===
[[File:Lire 50000 (Bernini).JPG|right|300px|thumb|Bernini as depicted on the [[Bank of Italy|Banca d'Italia]] 50,000 [[Italian lira|lire banknote]] in the 1980s and 90s.]]As one Bernini scholar has summarized, "Perhaps the most important result of all of the [Bernini] studies and research of these past few decades has been to restore to Bernini his status as the great, principal protagonist of Baroque art, the one who was able to create undisputed masterpieces, to interpret in an original and genial fashion the new spiritual sensibilities of the age, to give the city of Rome an entirely new face, and to unify the [artistic] language of the times."<ref>Maria Grazia Bernardini, 'Le radici del barocco,' in ''Barocco a Roma: La meraviglia dell'arte,'' ed. M. G. Bernardini and M. Bussagli [Milan: Skira, 2015], p. 32.</ref> Few artists have had as decisive an influence on the physical appearance and emotional tenor of a city as Bernini had on Rome. Maintaining a controlling influence over all aspects of his many and large commissions and over those who aided him in executing them, he was able to carry out his unique and harmoniously uniform vision over decades of work with his long and productive life<ref>{{Cite web |title=Gian Lorenzo Bernini |url=https://www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.2025.html |access-date=2018-04-06 |website=National Gallery of Art}}</ref> Although by the end of Bernini's life there was in motion a decided reaction against his brand of flamboyant Baroque, the fact is that sculptors and architects continued to study his works and be influenced by them for several more decades ([[Nicola Salvi]]'s later [[Trevi Fountain]] [inaugurated in 1735] is a prime example of the enduring post-mortem influence of Bernini on the city's landscape).<ref>Livio Pestilli, "On Bernini's Reputed Unpopularity in Late Baroque Rome,' ''Artibus et historiae,'' 32.63: 119–42</ref>

In the eighteenth century, Bernini and virtually all Baroque artists fell from favor in the [[neoclassicism|neoclassical]] criticism of the [[Baroque]], that criticism aimed above all at the latter's supposedly extravagant (and thus illegitimate) departures from the pristine, sober models of Greek and Roman antiquity. It is only from the late nineteenth century that art historical scholarship, in seeking a more objective understanding of artistic output within the specific cultural context in which it was produced, without the a priori prejudices of neoclassicism, began to recognize Bernini's achievements and slowly began to restore his artistic reputation. However, the reaction against Bernini and the too-sensual (and therefore "decadent"), too-emotionally charged Baroque in the larger culture (especially in non-Catholic countries of northern Europe, and particularly in Victorian England) remained in effect until well into the twentieth century (most notable are the public disparagement of Bernini by Francesco Milizia, [[Joshua Reynolds]], and [[Jacob Burkhardt]]).

Among the influential 18th- and 19th-century figures who despised Bernini's art was also and most prominently [[Johann Joachim Winckelmann]] (1717–68), considered by many the father of the modern discipline of art history. For the neo-classicist Winkelmann, the one true, laudable "high style" of art was characterized by noble simplicity joined with a quiet grandeur that eschewed any exuberance of emotion, whether positive or negative, as exemplified by ancient Greek sculpture. The Baroque Bernini, instead, represented the opposite of this ideal and, moreover, according to Winkelmann, had been “utterly corrupted...by a vulgar flattery of the coarse and uncultivated, in attempting to render everything more intelligible to them.”<ref>Johann Joachim Winckelmann, ''History of Ancient Art Among the Greeks.'' Translated and edited by Giles Henry Lodge (Boston: J. Chapman, 1850): 76, quoted by Melissa L. Gustin, “'Two Styles More Opposed': Harriet Hosmer's Classicisms between Winckelmann and Bernini,” ''JOLCEL'' 6 (2021): pp. 1–31, here 14, see also 22.</ref>  Another major condemning voice is that of [[Colen Campbell]] (1676–1729), who on the very first page of his monumental and influential ''Vitruvius Britannicus'' (London, 1715, Introduction, vol. 1, p.&nbsp;1) singles out Bernini and Borromini as examples of the utter degradation of post-Palladian architecture in Italy: "With (the great [[Andrea Palladio|Palladio]]) the great Manner and exquisite Taste of Building is lost; for the Italians can no more now relish the Antique Simplicity, but are entirely employed in capricious Ornaments, which must at last end in the [[Gothic Revival|Gothick]]. For Proof of this Assertion, I appeal to the Productions of the last Century: How affected and licentious are the Works of Bernini and Fontana? How wildly Extravagant are the Designs of Boromini, who has endeavoured to debauch Mankind with his odd and chimerical Beauties…?" Accordingly, most of the popular eighteenth- and nineteenth-century tourist guides to Rome all but ignore Bernini and his work, or treat it with disdain, as in the case of the best-selling ''Walks in Rome'' (22 editions between 1871 and 1925) by Augustus J.C. Hare, who describes the angels on the Ponte Sant'Angelo as 'Bernini's Breezy Maniacs.'

But now in the twenty-first century, Bernini and his Baroque have been fully and enthusiastically restored to favour, both critical and popular. Since the anniversary year of his birth in 1998, there have been numerous Bernini exhibitions throughout the world, especially in Europe and North America, on all aspects of his work, expanding our knowledge of his work and its influence. In the late twentieth century, Bernini was commemorated on the front of the [[Bank of Italy]]'s 50,000 lire banknote in the 1980s and 90s (before Italy switched to the euro) with the back showing his [[The Vision of Constantine (Bernini)|equestrian statue of Constantine]]. Another outstanding sign of Bernini's enduring reputation came in the decision by architect [[I.M. Pei]] to insert a faithful copy in lead of his King Louis XIV Equestrian statue as the sole ornamental element in his massive modernist redesign of the entrance plaza to the Louvre Museum, completed to great acclaim in 1989, and featuring the giant [[Louvre Pyramid]] in glass. In 2000 best-selling novelist, [[Dan Brown]], made Bernini and several of his Roman works, the centrepiece of his political thriller, ''[[Angels & Demons]]'', while British novelist [[Iain Pears]] made a missing Bernini bust the centrepiece of his best-selling murder mystery, ''The Bernini Bust'' (2003).<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.foxnews.com/story/touring-rome-through-the-eyes-of-angels-and-demons |title=Touring Rome Through the Eyes of 'Angels and Demons' |date=25 March 2015 |website=Associated Press |access-date=31 May 2019}}</ref> There is even a [[Bernini (crater)|crater]] near the south pole of [[Mercury (planet)|Mercury]] named after Bernini (in 1976).<ref>{{cite web |url = http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Feature/708 |title = Bernini |publisher = [[NASA]] |work = Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature |access-date = 9 June 2022}}</ref>