LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Gian Lorenzo Bernini: St Peter
built 185 days ago
Bernini was only 15 when he made his first experiment in this ego-play, The Martyrdom Of San Lorenzo (1613). St Lawrence was the librarian and archivist of the early Church, who had been roasted alive on a red-hot griddle. Since the saint was Bernini's namesake, the project was personal, but he took this identification to extremes by placing his own leg against the side of a hot brazier. Either he looked in a mirror while he was performing this exercise in tutelary masochism, or he had someone hold it as he sketched the expression of pain on his own face. But the look of St Lawrence is a peculiar mix of agony and ecstasy, because Bernini is trying to catch a literal turning point in the story of the martyrdom. According to popular hagiographies, at the height of his suffering Lawrence turned to his tormentors and told them, since one side was done, to turn him over.
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The David was the last commission Bernini could take for Borghese. Even before it was finished, his friend and protector Maffeo Barberini was elected pope, as Pope Urban VIII. This would lead to several large-scale architectural projects for Bernini, particularly in connection with the St. Peter's Basilica, and for several months even the Apollo and Daphne was left unfinished.[4]
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Bernini's crowning achievement in architecture was St. Peter's Square in Rome (1656-1667). The section nearest the church is a trapezoid, but the main part of the square is an enormous oval partially enclosed by two semicircular colonnades. The square provides a monumental entrance to St. Peter's and a place where crowds, up to half a million at a time, gather to receive the pope's blessing. Bernini is known to have visualized the square symbolically as arms reaching out to embrace a multitude of the faithful. Architecturally the idea of freestanding colonnades that contain the space of a circular square was Bernini's invention, but the inspiration went back to imperial Rome. Apart from the row of statues on the balustrade, Bernini's square has little ornament.
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Bernini ... revolutionized marble busts, lending glamorous dynamism to once stony stillness of portraiture. Starting with the immediate pose, leaning out of the frame, of Monsignor Pedro de Foix Montoya ( 1621 ) at Santa Maria di Monserrato , Rome. The once-gregarious Cardinal Scipione Borghese is frozen in conversation ( 1632 , Galleria Borghese ). The portrait of his alleged mistress, Costanza Buonarelli (1635), does not portray divinity or royalty; but a woman in a moment of disheveled privacy, captured in conversation or surprise.
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Bernini (1598-1680) is considered the most important sculptor, architect, draughtsman and painter of the 17th century. He was a celebrated child prodigy who trained in his fathers studio and carved his first portrait at age ten. Except for a six-month period in 1665 in Paris when he worked on designs for the Louvre, he worked exclusively in Rome.
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Pope Urban VIII was Bernini's greatest patron who put Bernini in charge of his entire artistic progam. They had been friends when the Pope was still Cardinal Maffeo Barberini. Bernini did other works depicting this Pope, most notably his tomb in St. Peter's.
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