LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
built 614 days ago
Gian Lorenzo Bernini was the heroic central figure in Italian Baroque sculpture. The influence of his father, the Florentine-born Pietro, can be seen here in the buoyant forms and cottony texture of the Bacchanal. The liveliness and strongly accented diagonals... are the distinctive contribution of the young Gian Lorenzo. Although about eighteen when he made this work, he already displayed what would become a lifelong interest in the rendering of emotional and spiritual exaltation. The Bacchanal reveals the young Bernini's intensive study of bacchic subject matter.
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[One] of the famous fountains by Gian Lorenzo Bernini is the Fontana del Tritone in Piazza Barberini. This fountain was completed in approximately 1644. The design of this fountain is a large shell with a Triton in the center and surrounded by four dolphins. The goal of this fountain was to help Bernini demonstrate the power of Pope Barerini. Soon after this fountain was completed, another fountain of Bernini's hand was completed nearby. However, this fountain, called the Fontana delle Api, was deconstructed in the late 1800's, and rebuilt in 1917 at the intersection of Via Vento and Via di S. Basilio.
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Taddeo Landini (bronze youths); Gian Lorenzo Bernini (bronze tortoises) (contributors); allegorical, symbolic forms & elements, mythological, marine theme; fountain, tortoise; ""This magnificent Roman Fountain is located in the center of Piazza Mattei. It was designed in 1581 by Giacomo della Porta, the Lombardian architect and pupil and follower of Michelangelo, who magically combines water, architecture and sculpture. However much of its grace and charm is due to the bronze youths ephebes (from the Greek ""ephebos"" - in Greek mythology a youth that is between 18 to 20), sculpted by Florentine architect-sculptor Taddeo Landini (1550-1576). Four large marble shells rest in the centre of a wide basin with a square base and concave sides, above which are four static bronze ephebes each with their foot on the head of a bronze dolphin. The ephebes, all in the same position, raise their arm towards the overhanging marble basin. In the original plans another four bronze dolphins (perhaps the same ones that initially decorated the fountain in Campo de' Fiore), should have been found where the tortoises are now.
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Even if Gian Lorenzo Bernini is not originally from Rome, he can be considered Roman, as there are almost no monuments, works of art, buildings of the seventeenth-century Rome that he did not make or participated in building. Born in Naples in 1598 and son of Pietro Bernini, a sculptor from Tuscany, he expressed his genius at its maximum level when he worked for the popes. Amongst his youth works, there are the rape of Proserpine (1621), the David (1623), Apollo and Daphne (1625), for the gallery of cardinal Borghese. Awesome marble works, followed by the popular and sumptuous canopy in the middle of Saint Peter's Basilica, finished in 1633. A monumental bronze structure, commissioned by pope Urban VIII Barberini, standing on four twisted columns supporting a frame from which hangings of a drape come down. The works on the imposing Colonnade for the Basilica (actually the square in front of it), symbol of the church embracing the believers.
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Gian Lorenzo Bernini was born in Naples and received his early training from his father. His first bust was completed at the age of ten. Working in Rome, Bernini received sculptural and architectural commissions from many European royalties. In addition to these skills, he ... painted and wrote comedies. Bernini remained in Rome until he turned sixty-six when King Louis XIV summoned him to France. A beloved artist and treated with the respect of royalty, Bernini received an elaborate burial in Rome upon his death in 1680.
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Gian Lorenzo Bernini was born in Naples on Dec. 7, 1598. His mother was Neapolitan. He was trained as a sculptor by his father, Pietro, who came from Florence. But Bernini was Roman: he was brought to Rome as a child; he remained there almost all his life; and he absorbed completely Rome's dual heritage of empire and papacy.
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Gian Lorenzo Bernini