Editing Gian Lorenzo Bernini (section)

===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.