LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
built 642 days ago
Called to France by King Louis XIV to work on the Palace of the Louvre, Bernini left Rome for a brief period in 1665. Although his architectural plans were rejected, he completed a portrait bust of Louis XIV (Château, Versailles), a majestic representation of the monarch in a dramatically billowing costume.
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Bernini was ... hired by Louis XIV to build the colonnade of the Louvre in Paris, but was ultimately turned down in favor of French architect Claude Perrault, signalling the waning influence of Italian art in France. Perrault's final design did, however, include Bernini's feature of a flat roof behind a Palladian balustrade.
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Did anyone ever make marble look more convincingly like warm flesh than Gian Lorenzo Bernini? Born December 7, 1598, Bernini sculpted the magnificent Rape of Proserpina (above) from 1620 to 1621. As Proserpine resists Pluto, pushing his shaggy head away, Pluto’s fierce fingers press into the flesh of her leg and leave indentations.
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Current research projects include a book of essays (co-edited with Mark Wilson Jones) on the Pantheon from ancient to modern times and a re-edition (with Ann Sutherland Harris) of Brauer and Wittkower's corpus of Bernini drawings. Professor Marder is ... working on a general book on Bernini's art.
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As an architect, Bernini was less radical than as a sculptor and more concerned with the monumental heritage of imperial Rome. For the plan of S. Andrea al Quirinale in Rome (1658-1670) he went back to the Pantheon with its alternating chapels that ring a circular dome. But Bernini changed the circular plan to an oval one to make the space more active, and he added an enclosed area for the high altar where the light pours down from a window. The interior is inlaid with the richest colored marbles and is accented with architectural ornament of such refinement that the effect is often compared to a jewel box.
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Gian Lorenzo Bernini