Bernini's Scala Regia is the paradigm of the Baroque aesthetic. Combining art and architecture, sculpture and decoration in an illusionistic ensemble, this monumental staircase served as the main entrance to the Vatican Palace, as well as the principal connection between the palace and St. Peter's basilica. This book is the first complete account of the Scala Regia in the context of the long building history of the Vatican Palace, the history of St. Peter's, and the architecture and sculpture of Bernini.
In 1638, Gianlorenzo Bernini began the ambitious architectural project of designing and constructing massive twin bell towers atop St. Peter's basilica. But the project failed spectacularly. This volume tells the story of the bell towers, presenting both visual and documentary evidence.
Unique among early modern artists, the Baroque painter, sculptor, and architect Gianlorenzo Bernini was the subject of two monographic biographies published shortly after his death in 1680: one by the Florentine connoisseur and writer Filippo Baldinucci (1682), and the second by Bernini's son, Domenico (1713). This interdisciplinary collection of essays by historians of art and literature marks the first sustained examination of the two biographies, first and foremost as texts. A substantial introductory essay considers each biography's author, genesis, and foundational role in the study of Bernini. Nine essays combining art-historical research with insights from philology, literary history, and art and literary theory offer major new insights into the multifarious connections between biography, art history, and aesthetics, inviting readers to rethink Bernini's life, art, and milieu. Contributors are Eraldo Bellini, Heiko Damm, John D. Lyons, Sarah McPhee, Tomaso Montanari, Rudolf Preimesberger, Robert Williams, and the editors.Maarten Delbeke is Assistant Professor of architectural history and theory at the universities of Ghent and Leiden. Formerly the Scott Opler Fellow in Architectural History at Worcester College (Oxford), he is the author of several articles and a forthcoming book on Seicento art and theory.Evonne Levy is Associate Professor of the History of Art at the University of Toronto. She is also the author of Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque (2004).
"The brilliantly expressive clay models created by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) as "sketches" for his works in marble offer extraordinary insights into his creative imagination. Although long admired, the terracotta models have never been the subject of such detailed examination. This publication presents a wealth of new discoveries (including evidence of the artist's fingerprints imprinted on the clay), resolving lingering issues of attribution while giving readers a vivid sense of how the artist and his assistants fulfilled a steady stream of monumental commissions. Essays describe Bernini's education as a modeler; his approach to preparatory drawings; his use of assistants; and the response to his models by 17th-century collectors. Extensive research by conservators and art historians explores the different types of models created in Bernini's workshop. Richly illustrated, Bernini transforms our understanding of the sculptor and his distinctive and fascinating working methods."--Publisher's website.
"A critical translation of the unabridged Italian text of Domenico Bernini's biography of his father, seventeenth-century sculptor, architect, painter, and playwright Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). Includes commentary on the author's data and interpretations, contrasting them with other contemporary primary sources and recent scholarship"--Provided by publisher.
Bernini at Saint Peter's may be a unique case in history: a single artist in change of a grandiose monument in a continuous state of creativity under constantly changing patrons and a variety of projects, for nearly six decades. This book argues that a continuous thread of thought may be discerned underlying and connecting the vicissitudes of this spectacular display. From first to last, Gianlorenzo Bernini conceived of Saint Peter's as a pilgrimage church, a kind of pilgrimage of human life, his own and of the believers who visited the basilica to worship and give testimony. Irving Lavin is professor emeritus in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is one of the most distinguished and honoured art historians in the United States. Professor Lavin is best known for his series of fundamental publications on the Baroque artist Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680). These include new discoveries and studies on the master's prodigious early life, his architecture and portraiture, his invention of caricature, his depictions of religious faith and political leadership, his work in the theatre, his attitude towards death and the role of the artist in the creation of a modem sense of social responsibility.
A novel exploration of the threads of continuity, rivalry, and self-conscious borrowing that connect the Baroque innovator with his Renaissance paragon Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), like all ambitious artists, imitated eminent predecessors. What set him apart was his lifelong and multifaceted focus on Michelangelo Buonarroti—the master of the previous age. Bernini’s Michelangelo is the first comprehensive examination of Bernini’s persistent and wide-ranging imitation of Michelangelo’s canon (his art and its rules). Prevailing accounts submit that Michelangelo’s pervasive, yet controversial, example was overcome during Bernini’s time, when it was rejected as an advantageous model for enterprising artists. Carolina Mangone reconsiders this view, demonstrating how the Baroque innovator formulated his work by emulating his divisive Renaissance forebear’s oeuvre. Such imitation earned him the moniker “Michelangelo of his age.” Investigating Bernini’s “imitatio Buonarroti” in its extraordinary scope and variety, this book identifies principles that pervade his production over seven decades in papal Rome. Close analysis of religious sculptures, tomb monuments, architectural ornament, and the design of New Saint Peter’s reveals how Bernini approached Michelangelo’s art as a surprisingly flexible repertory of precepts and forms that he reconciled—here with daring license, there with creative restraint—to the aesthetic, sacred, and theoretical imperatives of his own era. Situating Bernini’s imitation in dialogue with that by other artists as well as with contemporaneous writings on Michelangelo’s art, Mangone repositions the Renaissance master in the artistic concerns of the Baroque from peripheral to pivotal. Without Michelangelo, there was no Bernini.
Examining Bernini's works from 1665 on, from Paris and Rome, this book demonstrates the wealth of material still to be drawn from close visual and material examination, archival research, and comparative textual analysis. On the whole, this collection deals with Bernini's position as the leading creator of portraits - in oils, marble, monumental architecture, and metaphor - of some of the most powerful political players of his day. These studies speak to the growing distance of Gallic absolutism from the fading dreams of papal hegemony over Europe, and to the complexities of Bernini's role as mouthpiece, obstacle, and flatterer of the Princes of the Papal States.
In recent years, art historians have begun to delve into the patronage, production and reception of sculptures-sculptors' workshop practices; practical, aesthetic, and esoteric considerations of material and materiality; and the meanings associated with materials and the makers of sculptures. This volume brings together some of the top scholars in the field, to investigate how sculptors in early modern Italy confronted such challenges as procurement of materials, their costs, shipping and transportation issues, and technical problems of materials, along with the meanings of the usage, hierarchies of materials, and processes of material acquisition and production. Contributors also explore the implications of these facets in terms of the intended and perceived meaning(s) for the viewer, patron, and/or artist. A highlight of the collection is the epilogue, an interview with a contemporary artist of large-scale stone sculpture, which reveals the similar challenges sculptors still encounter today as they procure, manufacture and transport their works.
