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Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Artists
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In 1665, when he was an old man, Bernini was called to France. The idea was to have the world's most famous artist, Bernini, serve the world's most powerful monarch, Louis XIV. The architect was to build a royal palace, a new and grander Louvre, for the King. Bernini's trip from Rome to Paris was like the triumphal procession of a great lord. But less than 6 months after he arrived, he was ready to go home, disillusioned by court intrigue and his lack of sympathy for almost anything French. (In Paris he considered himself surrounded by cultural barbarians.) His designs for the Louvre were never carried out.
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Bernini was highly respected in his day and enjoyed the prestige and protection that came with being one of the Vatican's favourite artists. This... did not always earn him the best of friends. The enmity that existed between Bernini and Borromini, his great rival, has taken on legendary proportions. The two artists spent a lifetime finding fault with one another's work and person, a rift that provided ample gossip for Rome's many social circles.
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Only at the age of sixty-six did Bernini leave his beloved city of Rome when summoned by Louis XIV to France for six months. Throughout this trip the famous artist was treated royally, more as a hero or prince than a craftsman. When Bernini died in 1680 at the age of eighty-two, he was buried with great pomp in Rome and mourned by all of Europe.
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PAUL SOLMAN: Divinely created, of course, because David's slaying of Goliath is an act of God--and at the same time a self-conscious act of Bernini's. The face is actually a self-portrait of the artist as a young man. The act of creation, of transformation, you can even see it through the grainy PBS film of the 60's. The artist as miracle worker who turns marble into flesh. In Bernini's own words, says Irv Lavin--
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Bernini fue famoso en vida y todas las cortes europeas deseaban sus servicios. Entre ellos estuvo el rey de Francia Luis XVI que lo llevó a trabajar a París cuando el artista ya contaba con 69 años de edad.
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