Editing Gian Lorenzo Bernini (section)

===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>