Gian Lorenzo Bernini was born on December 7, 1598, in Naples, the son of the Mannerist sculptor Pietro Bernini, who moved the family to Rome around 1605 to work on papal commissions. The young Bernini’s talent was recognized almost immediately: by his early teens he was carving works of astonishing technical virtuosity, and according to legend, Pope Paul V, upon seeing the boy’s skill, predicted he would become the “Michelangelo of his age.” Under the patronage of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, Bernini produced, between 1618 and 1625, a series of life-size marble groups — “The Rape of Proserpina,” “David,” and “Apollo and Daphne” — that shattered every convention of Renaissance sculpture. Where Michelangelo’s figures were contained within the block, Bernini’s exploded outward into the viewer’s space; where classical sculpture froze a single ideal moment, Bernini captured the instant of transformation — Daphne’s fingers sprouting laurel leaves, her toes rooting into bark — with a virtuosity that made cold marble appear to be living flesh, flying hair, and rustling foliage.
The ascension of Maffeo Barberini to the papacy as Urban VIII in 1623 inaugurated Bernini’s nearly six-decade dominance over the artistic life of Rome. He designed the massive bronze “Baldacchino” (1624-1633) beneath the dome of St. Peter’s, a ninety-five-foot-tall canopy of twisted Solomonic columns that established the visual anchor of the greatest church in Christendom. He created the “Cathedra Petri” (Chair of Saint Peter, 1657-1666) in the basilica’s apse, an extravagant multimedia ensemble of gilt bronze, stucco, marble, and stained glass that fuses sculpture, architecture, and theatrical lighting into a single overwhelming experience. For the Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria, he conceived “The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa” (1647-1652), in which the saint swoons on a cloud of marble as a smiling angel prepares to pierce her heart with a golden arrow — a work of astonishing emotional and sensual intensity, framed by an architectural setting that includes sculpted spectators in theater boxes, transforming the chapel into a sacred stage.
Bernini was not only a sculptor but also an architect, painter, playwright, set designer, and urban planner of extraordinary range. His architectural masterworks include the oval colonnade of St. Peter’s Square (1656-1667), whose sweeping arms were designed, he said, to embrace the faithful like the arms of the Church, and the jewel-like church of Sant’Andrea al Quirinale (1658-1670). He briefly fell from favor under Pope Innocent X, who preferred the rival architect Francesco Borromini, but regained supremacy under Alexander VII, for whom he created the “Scala Regia” in the Vatican and numerous fountains and piazzas that continue to define Rome’s urban character. His one major venture abroad — a trip to Paris in 1665 at the invitation of Louis XIV to redesign the Louvre — ended in mutual disappointment, as French taste found his exuberance excessive, though the marble bust of Louis XIV he produced during the visit is considered one of the finest portrait sculptures ever made. Bernini worked until the end of his long life, dying on November 28, 1680, at the age of eighty-one. More than any other individual, he shaped the visual identity of Baroque Rome, and his fusion of architecture, sculpture, painting, and dramatic lighting into unified theatrical environments established the model for public art and spectacle that endures to this day.