Editing Gian Lorenzo Bernini (section)

===Temporary eclipse and resurgence under Innocent X===
[[File:Ecstasy of Saint Teresa September 2015-2a.jpg|thumb|''[[Ecstasy of Saint Teresa]]'', 1651]]

In 1644, with the death of Pope Urban with whom Bernini had been so intimately connected and the ascent to power of the fierce Barberini-enemy [[Pope Innocent X]] [[Pamphili family|Pamphilj]], Bernini's career suffered a major, unprecedented eclipse, which was to last four years. This had not only to do with Innocent's anti-Barberini politics but also with Bernini's role in the disastrous project of the new bell towers for St. Peter's basilica, designed and supervised entirely by Bernini.

The infamous bell tower affair was to be the biggest failure of his career, both professionally and financially. In 1636, eager to finally finish the exterior of St. Peter's, Pope Urban had ordered Bernini to design and build the two, long-intended bell towers for its facade: the foundations of the two towers had already been designed and constructed (namely, the last bays at either extremity of the facade) by Carlo Maderno (architect of the nave and the façade) decades earlier. Once the first tower was finished in 1641, cracks began to appear in the façade but, curiously enough, work nonetheless continued on the second tower and the first storey was completed. Despite the presence of the cracks, work only stopped in July 1642 once the papal treasury had been exhausted by the disastrous [[Wars of Castro]]. Knowing that Bernini could no longer depend on the protection of a favourable pope, his enemies (especially [[Francesco Borromini]]) raised a great alarm over the cracks, predicting a disaster for the whole basilica and placing the blame entirely on Bernini. The subsequent investigations, in fact, revealed the cause of the cracks as Maderno's defective foundations and not Bernini's elaborate design, an exoneration later confirmed by the meticulous investigation conducted in 1680 under [[Pope Innocent XI]].<ref>For a brief but comprehensive summary of this entire, long and complicated episode in Bernini's life that takes into account the latest archival discoveries, see|Mormando|2011|pp=332–34, nn. 17–23, pp. 342–45, nn. 4–21. For a meticulous, exhaustive investigation of the case, see McPhee, Sarah, ''Bernini and the Bell Towers: Architecture and Politics at the Vatican'', Yale University Press, 2002.</ref>

[[File:Museo borghese, sala del gladiatore, g.l. bernini, verità svelata, 1645-52, 02.JPG|thumb|''[[Truth Unveiled by Time (Bernini)|Truth Unveiled by Time]]'', {{lang|it|[[Galleria Borghese]]|italic=no}}, Rome, 1645–1652]]

Nonetheless, Bernini's opponents in Rome succeeded in seriously damaging the reputation of Urban's artist and in persuading Pope Innocent to order (in February 1646) the complete demolition of both towers, to Bernini's great humiliation and indeed financial detriment (in the form of a substantial fine for the failure of the work). After this, one of the rare failures of his career, Bernini retreated into himself: according to his son, [[Domenico Bernini|Domenico]]. his subsequent unfinished statue of 1647, ''[[Truth Unveiled by Time (Bernini)|Truth Unveiled by Time]]'', was intended to be his self-consoling commentary on this affair, expressing his faith that eventually Time would reveal the actual Truth behind the story and exonerate him fully, as indeed did occur.

Although he received no personal commissions from Innocent or the Pamphilj family in the early years of the new papacy, Bernini did not lose his former positions granted to him by previous popes. Innocent X maintained Bernini in all of the official roles given to him by Urban, including his most prestigious one as "Architect of St. Peter's." Under Bernini's design and direction, work continued on decorating the massive, recently completed but still entirely unadorned nave of St. Peter's, with the addition of elaborate multi-coloured marble flooring, marble facing on the walls and pilasters, and scores of stuccoed statues and reliefs. It is not without reason that Pope Alexander VII once quipped, 'If one were to remove from Saint Peter's everything that had been made by the Cavalier Bernini, that temple would be stripped bare.' Indeed, given all of his many and various works within the basilica over several decades, it is to Bernini that is due the lion's share of responsibility for the final and enduring aesthetic appearance and emotional impact of St. Peter's.<ref>For Bernini's work on nave and the Alexander VII quotation, see F. Mormando, ''Bernini: His Life and His Rome,'' respectively pp. 149–50 and 328.</ref> He was also allowed to continue to work on Urban VIII's tomb, despite Innocent's antipathy for the Barberini.{{sfn|Mormando|2011|p=150}} A few months after completing Urban's tomb, in 1648 Bernini won (through furtive manoeuvring with the complicity of the pope's sister-in-law Donna [[Olimpia Maidalchini|Olimpia]]) the Pamphilj commission for the prestigious [[Four Rivers Fountain]] on Piazza Navona, marking the end of his disgrace and the beginning a yet another glorious chapter in his life.<ref>For Bernini's successful behind-the-scenes manoeuvring to secure the fountain commission, see F. Mormando, ''Bernini: His Life and His Rome,'' pp. 170-74.</ref> 
[[File:Gian lorenzo bernini, Cenotafio di Suor Maria Raggi (1647-53).JPG|thumb|left|''[[Memorial to Maria Raggi]]'', 1651]]
If there had been doubts over Bernini's position as Rome's preeminent artist, they were definitively removed by the unqualified success of the marvellously delightful and technically ingenious Four Rivers Fountain, featuring a heavy ancient obelisk placed over a void created by a cavelike rock formation placed in the centre of an ocean of exotic sea creatures. Bernini continued to receive commissions from Pope Innocent X and other senior members of Rome's clergy and aristocracy, as well as from exalted patrons outside of Rome, such as [[Bust of Francesco I d'Este|Francesco d'Este]]. Recovering quickly from the humiliation of the bell towers, Bernini's boundless creativity continued as before. New types of funerary monument were designed, such as, in the Church of [[Santa Maria sopra Minerva]], the seemingly floating medallion, hovering in the air as it were, for the deceased nun [[Memorial to Maria Raggi|Maria Raggi]], while chapels he designed, such as the Raimondi Chapel in the church of [[San Pietro in Montorio]], illustrated how Bernini could use hidden lighting to help suggest divine intervention within the narratives he was depicting and to add a dramatically theatrical "spotlight" to enhance the main focus of the space.

One of the most accomplished and celebrated works to come from Bernini's hand in this period was the Cornaro Family Chapel in the small Carmelite church of [[Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome]]. The Cornaro Chapel (inaugurated in 1651) showcased Bernini's ability to integrate sculpture, architecture, fresco, stucco, and lighting into "a marvellous whole" (''bel composto'', to use early biographer Filippo Baldinucci's term to describe his approach to architecture) and thus create what scholar Irving Lavin has called the "unified work of art". The central focus of the Cornaro Chapel is the [[Ecstasy of Saint Teresa]], depicting the so-called "transverberation" of the Spanish nun and saint-mystic, Teresa of Avila.<ref>Irving Lavin, ''Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts'' (New York: Morgan Library and Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 107.</ref> Bernini presents the spectator with a theatrically vivid portrait, in gleaming white marble, of the swooning Teresa and the quietly smiling angel, who delicately grips the arrow piercing the saint's heart. On either side of the chapel the artist places (in what can only strike the viewer as theatre boxes), portraits in relief of various members of the Cornaro family—the Venetian family memorialized in the chapel, including Cardinal [[Federico Baldissera Bartolomeo Cornaro|Federico Cornaro]] who commissioned the chapel from Bernini—who are in animated conversation among themselves, presumably about the event taking place before them. The result is a complex but subtly orchestrated architectural environment providing the spiritual context (a heavenly setting with a hidden source of light) that suggests to viewers the ultimate nature of this miraculous event.<ref>Irving Lavin, ''Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts'' (New York: Morgan Library and Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 104–06.</ref>

Nonetheless, during Bernini's lifetime and in the centuries following till this very day, Bernini's ''Saint Teresa'' has been accused of crossing a line of decency by sexualizing the visual depiction of the saint's experience, to a degree that no artist, before or after Bernini, dared to do: in depicting her at an impossibly young chronological age, as an idealized delicate beauty, in a semi-prostrate position with her mouth open and her legs splayed-apart, her wimple coming undone, with prominently displayed bare feet (Discalced [[Carmelites]], for modesty, always wore sandals with heavy stockings) and with the seraph "undressing" her by (unnecessarily) parting her mantle to penetrate her heart with his arrow.<ref>For these visual details of the statue and an examination of the charge of indecency, see Franco Mormando, 'Did Bernini's ''Ecstasy of St. Teresa'' Cross a 17th-century Line of Decorum?,' ''Word and Image,'' 39:4, 2023: 351-83 (Mormando's answer is yes.)[https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/twim20]</ref>

Matters of decorum aside, Bernini's ''Teresa'' was still an artistic tour de force that incorporates all of the multiple forms of visual art and technique that Bernini had at his disposal, including hidden lighting, thin gilded beams, recessive architectural space, secret lens, and over twenty diverse types of colored marble: these all combine to create the final artwork—"a perfected, highly dramatic and deeply satisfying seamless ensemble".{{sfn|Mormando|2011|p=159}}