Editing Gian Lorenzo Bernini (section)

=== 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.]]