Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini Biography
Rated • 1 review • italy, painter, sculptor, biographiesgian lorenzo bernini • giovanni-lorenzo-bernini.de
GIAN LORENZO BERNINI (1598-1680)
Italian playwright, painter, composer, architect, theater designer, and caricaturist. However, he was most known for his sculptor. His sculptors are so detailed that you can mistake it for real.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini was born in Naples in 1598. His mother was Neapolitan. He was trained as a sculptor by his father, Pietro, who came from Florence. But Bernini was Roman: he was brought to Rome as a child; he remained there almost all his life; and he absorbed completely Rome's dual heritage of empire and papacy.
Not long after Pietro Bernini moved from Naples to Rome, he began work on the sculpture of the Pauline Chapel, the enormous addition to S. Maria Maggiore built for the reigning pope, Paul V. This commission gave the elder Bernini an opportunity to introduce his son, who was a child prodigy, to the Pope and the Pope's favorite nephew, Cardinal Scipione Borghese. The cardinal, a man of vast wealth with a real passion for art, was to become Bernini's first important patron
In his youth Bernini made the customary studies of the work of Raphael and Michelangelo. But Hellenistic sculpture and Roman sculpture in the Hellenistic tradition were to influence his development far more, and it was largely from these ancient sources that he drew the powerfully dynamic and fluid style that was to characterize his mature work. Contemporary painting as well, by Caravaggio, the Carracci, and Guido Reni, was to play a role in his stylistic formation.
Under the rule of the Barberini pope, Urban VIII , Bernini dominated the artistic scene in Rome. With Urban's successor, Innocent X, his fortunes changed. Finding the papal treasury empty the new pope drove the Barberini from Rome and rejected everyone, including, Bernini. At the same time sculptors and architects who had been envious of Bernini's fabulous success rushed to attack him on trumped-up charges. But Bernini's trials were short-lived. He was soon back in favor, hard at work for Innocent X, who had found it impossible to find another artist with half Bernini's talent. For the rest of his life each succeeding pope sought his services.
