Gianlorenzo Bernini, Sculptor Extraordinaire

Fountain of Four Rivers, Bernini, 1648-51, Piazza Novena, Rome


Today’s subject is artsy.

All throughout high school, I took art/art history. I love art. I love going to art museums or galleries and standing in front of these paintings, some of them upwards of 500 years old, and just staring at them, noting the brush work and the detail. I’ve stood in front of Picasso’s ‘Guernica’, Bosch’s ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’, Tintoretto’s and art from the Group of Seven. I love that feeling you get when you look at something and you’re struck silent, not only because of the sheer beauty or talent and time put into it, but because this was something that was painted hundreds of years ago, something that has outlasted the artist, made him immortal. I love museums for that reason too, because even if I’m looking at a small clay pot, I imagine the creator’s hands shaping it, a young woman using it, a child chipping it. It is something that existed with people just like me. Living, breathing, feeling. When I look at art, I feel a connection to the artist that spans centuries. Sometimes you come across a particularly beautiful painting or sculpture that you can’t even believe was crafted by human hands.

I’m going to talk about such a sculptor, one of the most famous of the Vatican artists and one who is unrivaled in skill. You half-expect one of his figures to start breathing. His art was further popularized by the novel ‘Angels and Demons’ by Dan Brown.

Gianlorenzo Bernini was born in Naples on the seventh of December, 1598. Bernini was a sculptor, a painter and an architect, and an outstanding influence of the Italian Baroque, a period characterized by dynamic movement, overt emotion and self-confident rhetoric. His sculpture, which I will be focusing on today, was dramatic and natural realism that startled and became deeply admired by the Vatican. (His architecture and painting were also fantastic. For example; he was the architect who designed St. Peters.) A deeply religious man, Bernini accepted many commissions from the papacy after coming to the attention of the papal nephew, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, and was knighted by Pope Gregory XV at the age of twenty three. Bernini sculpted dozens upon dozens of figures, many of them religious. He died in 1680, at the age of 81, his legacy closely entwined with the Catholic church and the art of Rome.

While I won’t go in-depth about the life of Bernini, I want you to go look him up. Go on. Look him up. I DARE you. Part of the joy of learning is discovering it for yourself. You don’t need to be an artist to appreciate art (though I think if you haven’t tried your hand at art, you won’t appreciate the difficulty of it quite so well…). If you should ever drop by Rome, go see some of those sculptures in perfect. Stand in front of them and note the amazing detail, think of Bernini’s hand shaping the marble. Believe me, it’ll astound you.

Gotta say, Bernini is awesome.



This is a side-photo of his sculpture 'The Rape of Prosperina', 1621-22, when he was 23 YEARS OLD. look at that detail! My god.




This is one of my favourites. It's called 'The Ectasy of St. Theresa', (1647-1652)
from Bernini's later, more mature subject matter. Yes, she is orgasming or something like that, but it's from the presence of God. Look it up :)