Editing Gian Lorenzo Bernini (section)

==Personal life==
In the late 1630s, Bernini had an affair with a married woman named [[Costanza Piccolomini Bonarelli|Costanza]] (wife of his workshop assistant, Matteo Bonucelli, also called Bonarelli) and [[Bust of Costanza Bonarelli|sculpted a bust of her]] (now in the Bargello, Florence) during the height of their romance. However, at some point, Costanza began at the same time an affair also with Bernini's younger brother, [[Luigi Bernini|Luigi]], who was Bernini's right-hand man in his studio. When Bernini found out about Costanza and his brother, in a fit of mad fury, he chased Luigi through the streets of Rome and into the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, almost ending his life. To punish his unfaithful mistress, Bernini had a servant go to the house of Costanza, where the servant slashed her face several times with a razor. The servant was later jailed, while Costanza herself was jailed for adultery. Bernini himself was exonerated by the pope, even though he had committed a crime in ordering the face-slashing.<ref>{{harvnb|Mormando|2011|pp=99–106}} See also F. Mormando, ed. and trans., ''Domenico Bernini, Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini,'' University Park, Penn State Univ. Press, 2011, p. 113 and accompanying notes. For further information about Costanza (before and after her affair with Bernini), see the comprehensive and fully documented biography by Sarah McPhee, ''Bernini's Beloved: A Portrait of Costanza Piccolomini'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012); McPhee found no indication whatsoever of any further interaction between Bernini and Costanza after the explosive conclusion to their affair, and no indication of any children born as a result of that relationship.</ref>

Soon after, in May 1639, at age forty-one, Bernini wed a twenty-two-year-old Roman woman, Caterina Tezio, in an arranged marriage, under orders from Pope Urban. She had eleven children, including youngest son [[Domenico Bernini]], who would later be his father's first biographer.<ref>For Bernini's marriage to Caterina, and a list of Bernini's children, see Franco Mormando, ''Bernini: His Life and His Rome,'' University of Chicago Press, 2011, pp. 109–16.</ref> After his never-repeated episode of stalking and disfigurement by proxy, in his subsequent marriage Bernini turned more sincerely to the practice of his faith, according to his early official biographers. Luigi, however, once again brought scandal to his family in 1670 by raping a young Bernini workshop assistant at the construction site of the 'Constantine' memorial in St. Peter's Basilica.<ref>As Bernini scholar, Franco Mormando, underscores (''Domenico Bernini: Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini'' Intro., pp. 60–61): "Any discussion of Bernini's religion, that is, his personal faith and the practice of his devotional life, must open with a word of caution: we have absolutely no reliable, nonpartisan (that is, not coming from Bernini, his family, or apologetic biographers) documentation on the topic until 1665, when Chantelou began writing his diary" (at which time Bernini was 67 years old). For Luigi's 1670 crime, see {{harvnb|Mormando|2011|pp=307–312}}.</ref>

===Personal residences===
During his lifetime Bernini lived in various residences throughout the city: principal among them, a palazzo right across from Santa Maria Maggiore and still extant at Via Liberiana 24, while his father was still alive; after his father died in 1629, Bernini moved the clan to the long-ago-demolished Santa Marta neighbourhood behind the apse of St. Peter's Basilica, which afforded him more convenient access to the Vatican Foundry and to his working studio also on the Vatican site. In 1639, Bernini bought property on the corner of the Via della Mercede and the Via del [[Collegio di Propaganda Fide]] in Rome. This gave him the distinction of being only one of two artists (the other is [[Pietro da Cortona]]) to be the proprietor of his own large palatial (though not sumptuous) residence, furnished as well with its own water supply. Bernini refurbished and expanded the existing palazzo on the Via della Mercede site, at what are now Nos. 11 and 12. (The building is sometimes referred to as "Palazzo Bernini", but that title more properly pertains to the Bernini family's later and larger home on Via del Corso, to which they moved in the early nineteenth century, now known as the Palazzo Manfroni-Bernini.) Bernini lived at No. 11 (extensively remodelled in the 19th century), where his working studio was located, as well as a large collection of works of art, his own and those of other artists.<ref>For the artists on display in Casa Bernini according to the post-mortem inventory of his household possessions, complied January 1681, see Franco Mormando, "Bernini's painting collection: A reconstructed catalogue raisonné, ''Journal of the History of Collections,'' 34.1 (March 2022): 33–50.</ref>

It is imagined that it must have been galling for Bernini to witness through the windows of his dwelling the construction of the tower and dome of [[Sant'Andrea delle Fratte]] by his rival, Borromini and also the demolition of the chapel that he, Bernini, had designed at the Collegio di Propaganda Fide, which was later replaced by Borromini's chapel in 1660 (because the Collegio required a much larger chapel), but there is no documentation of this belief.<ref>Blunt, Anthony. ''Guide to Baroque Rome'', Granada, 1982, p. 166 for this legend. For circumstances requiring the demolition of Bernini's chapel, see Domenico Bernini, ''Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini'', 2011, Mormando's n. 16, p. 332.</ref> The construction of Sant'Andrea, however, was completed by Bernini's close disciple, [[Mattia de Rossi]] and it contains (to this day) the marble originals of two of Bernini's own angels executed by the master for the Ponte Sant'Angelo.