Gian Lorenzo Bernini, (born December 7, 1598, Naples, Kingdom of Naples [Italy]—died November 28, 1680, Rome, Papal States), Italian artist who was perhaps the greatest sculptor of the 17th century and an outstanding architect as well. Bernini created the Baroque style of sculpture and developed it to such an extent that other artists are of only minor importance in a discussion of that style.
Bernini’s career began under his father, Pietro Bernini, a Florentine sculptor of some talent who ultimately moved to Rome. The young prodigy worked so diligently that he earned the praise of the painter Annibale Carracci and the patronage of Pope Paul V and soon established himself as a wholly independent sculptor. He was strongly influenced by his close study of the antique Greek and Roman marbles in the Vatican, and he also had an intimate knowledge of High Renaissance painting of the early 16th century. His study of Michelangelo is revealed in the St. Sebastian (c. 1617), carved for Maffeo Cardinal Barberini, who was later Pope Urban VIII and Bernini’s greatest patron.
A major figure in the world of architecture, he was the leading sculptor of his age, credited with creating the Baroque style of sculpture. As one scholar has commented, 'What Shakespeare is to drama, Bernini may be to sculpture: the first pan-European sculptor whose name is instantaneously identifiable with a particular manner and vision, and whose influence was inordinately powerful...' In addition, he was a painter (mostly small canvases in oil) and a man of the theater: he wrote, directed and acted in plays (mostly Carnival satires), also designing stage sets and theatrical machinery, as well as a wide variety of decorative art objects including lamps, tables, mirrors, and even coaches. As architect and city planner, he designed both secular buildings and churches and chapels, as well as massive works combining both architecture and sculpture, especially elaborate public fountains and funerary monuments and a whole series of temporary structures (in stucco and wood) for funerals and festivals.
Bernini died at age 81, after having served eight popes, and when he died he was widely considered not only Europe’s greatest artist but also one of its greatest men. He was the last of Italy’s remarkable series of universal geniuses, and the Baroque style he helped create was the last Italian style to become an international standard. His death marked the end of Italy’s artistic hegemony in Europe. The style he evolved was carried on for two more generations in various parts of Europe by the architects Mattia de’ Rossi and Carlo Fontana in Rome, J.B. Fischer von Erlach in Austria, and the brothers Cosmas and Egid Quirin Asam in Bavaria, among others.
TRITON FOUNTAIN
Fontana del Tritone (Triton Fountain) is a seventeenth-century fountain in Rome, by the Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Commissioned by his patron, Pope Urban VIII, the fountain is located in the Piazza Barberini, near the entrance to the Palazzo Barberini(which now houses the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica) that Bernini helped to design and construct for the Barberini, Urban's family. This fountain should be distinguished from the nearby Fontana dei Tritoni (Fountain of the Tritons) by Carlo Francesco Bizzaccheri inPiazza Bocca della Verità which features two Tritons.
The fountain was executed in travertine in 1642–43. At its centre rises a larger than lifesize muscular Triton, a minor sea god of ancient Greco-Roman legend, depicted as a merman kneeling on the sum of four dolphin tailfins. His head is thrown back and his arms raise aconch to his lips; from it a jet of water spurts, formerly rising dramatically higher than it does today. The fountain has a base of fourdolphins that entwine the papal tiara with crossed keys and the heraldic Barberini bees in their scaly tails.
Bernini has represented the triton to illustrate the triumphant passage from Ovid's Metamorphoses book I, evoking godlike control over the waters and describing the draining away of the Universal Deluge. The passage that Urban set Bernini to illustrate, was well known to all literate Roman contemporaries:
The Triton Fountain is one of those evoked in Ottorino Respighi's Fontane di Roma. The legend applied to Trevi Fountain has been extended to this: that any visitor who throws a coin into the water (while facing away from the fountain) will have guaranteed their return to Rome.
The setting of the Piazza Barberini has changed significantly since the seventeenth century. Engravings of the time and photographs from the nineteenth century show much lower buildings around the piazza, which would have made the fountain much more dramatic. However, it is a tribute to the artistic judgement of Bernini that even now, with tall buildings around the traffic-ridden piazza, that the Triton Fountain can still maintain a dramatic presence.
THE ECSTASY OF ST. THERESA
The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (alternatively Saint Teresa in Ecstasy or Transverberation of Saint Teresa; in Italian: L'Estasi di Santa Teresa or Santa Teresa in estasi) is the central sculptural group in white marble set in an elevated aedicule in the Cornaro Chapel,Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome. It was designed and completed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the leading sculptor of his day, who also designed the setting of the Chapel in marble, stucco and paint. It is generally considered to be one of the sculptural masterpieces of the High Roman Baroque. It pictures Teresa of Ávila.
The effects are theatrical, the Cornaro family seeming to observe the scene from their boxes, and the chapel illustrates a moment where divinity intrudes on an earthly body. Caroline Babcock speaks of Bernini's melding of sensual and spiritual pleasure in the "orgiastic" grouping as both intentional and influential on artists and writers of the day. Irving Lavin said "the transverberation becomes a point of contact between earth and heaven, between matter and spirit".
Robert Harbison, however, has expressed his doubt that Bernini, a follower of the mystical exercises of followers of St. Ignatius of Loyola, would have intended to depict here an episode of lust fulfilled and proposes that instead, Bernini aims to express the facial and bodily equivalents of a state of divine joy.
BLESSED LUDOVICA ALBERTONI
Blessed Ludovica Albertoni (Italian: Beata Ludovica Albertoni) is a funerary monument by the Italian Baroque artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini.[1] The trastevere sculpture is located in the specially designed Altieri Chapel in the Church of San Francesco a Ripa in Rome, Italy. Bernini started the project in 1671, but his work on two other major works—The Tomb of Pope Alexander VII and the Altar of the Blessed Sacrament in St. Peter's Basilica—delayed his work on the funerary monument. Bernini completed the sculpture in 1674; it was installed by August 31, 1674.
The subject of the sculpture, Ludovica Albertoni, was a Roman noblewoman who entered the Third Order of St. Francis following the death of her husband. She lived a pious life, working for the poor of the Trastevere neighborhood, under the guidance of the Franciscan friars of San Francesco Church, where she was buried in 1533. One of her descendants, Cardinal Paluzzo Paluzzi degli Albertoni, had a nephew who married the niece of Pope Clement X, who in turn formally adopted the cardinal as his own nephew and allowed him to take the pontiff's own surname, "Altieri". Pope Clement beatified Cardinal Albertoni's ancestor, granting her the title of "Blessed". The cardinal then commissioned major improvements to her chapel in the Church of San Francesco, which had become the site of her cultus. After several artists competed to do the work, Bernini was awarded the commission, and took on the project without pay. He was 71 years old when he began the work, and it was one of his last sculptures.
DAVID
David is a life-size marble sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The sculpture was one of many commissions to decorate the villa of Bernini's patron Cardinal Scipione Borghese – where it still resides today, as part of the Galleria Borghese It was completed in the course of seven months from 1623 to 1624.
The subject of the work is the biblical David, about to throw the stone that will bring down Goliath, which will allow David to behead him. Compared to earlier works on the same theme (notably the David of Michelangelo), the sculpture broke new ground in its implied movement and its psychological intensity.
The sculpture shows a scene from the Old Testament First Book of Samuel. The Israelites are at war with the Philistines, whose giant warrior Goliath has challenged any of the Israelite soldiers to settle the conflict by single combat. The young shepherd Davidhas just taken up the challenge, and is about to slay the giant with a stone from his sling:
David's nudity is only partially covered by a robe. At his feet lies the armour he has just shed, as he is unaccustomed to it and believes he can fight better without.[5] Also at his feet is his harp, often included as an iconographic device of David, although not mentioned in the biblical account.

SELF-PORTRAIT OF BERNINI

DAVID

ECSTASY OF ST. THERESA

THE TRITON FOUNTAIN