Architect, sculptor and Italian decorator.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, known as in French the Rider Bernin or Bernin). Incarnation of the triumphing baroque, the Bernin Rider knew during some sixty years the favor of the papacy, which saw in him the creator able to equip the Church with spectacular images.

With a great plastic freedom, an acute sense of space, materials and light, it was, more than its Borromini rival, the director of Rome baroque, and provides the prelates and the princes many times imitated models. Its talent was worth to him to know, of alive sound, an immense glory seldom tarnished after its death.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini is born in Naples, where his/her father, Tuscan, are sculptor. In 1606, this one comes to settle in Rome: Pietro Bernini works for the pope Paul V, and trains her son, who, at eighteen years, enters to the service of the cardinal Scipion Borghèse. The history of Bernin will be from now on inseparable from that of its patrons, their personality and confidence that they will grant to him. In 1621, it begins for the gardens of the Borghèse villa three carved groups. Those will be noticed by the Barberini cardinal, who will become pope the following year.

Of Urbain VIII with Alexandre VII

As of his election, Urbain VIII takes Bernin under his protection, pushes it to paint and orders many architectural achievements to him: in 1624, Bernin constructs the frontage of the church Santa Bibiana and succeeds Carlo Maderno with the direction of the building site of Saint-Pierre of Rome. It will adapt the building to which generations of artists and popes had contributed their more or less homogeneous shares. In 1633, it completes the very theatrical bronze baldachin; placed at the transept crossing, the ridge raised to 29 m by four twisted columns, this monument baroque par excellence reorganizes the space of the basilica while playing of the prospect and the proportions. To revive the traditional rigor of Maderno, Bernin uses the multiple colors of the marble in the decoration of the pillars of the side aisles and in that of the pavement of the basilica.

The monument of Urbain VIII will reflect so much the personality of the pope - represented sitted, the hand raised to bless the faithful ones - who the creative freedom of the sculptor: on the sarcophagus, the bronze skeleton registering the name of the pontiff on a roller concerns symbolic system a typical mode of expression of Bernin.

With the death of Urbain VIII, the fame of the Rider is largely established - one disputes his portraits in bust, of Charles Ier of England in 1636 in Richelieu in 1641 -, but the Master receives relatively less orders at the beginning of the pontificate of Innocent X, which prefers Borromini to him. He has time to look after decoration, in the church Santa Maria della Vittoria, of the funerary vault of the Cornaro family, which he organizes like an ECRIN around one of his more remarkable carved groups, the Ecstasy of holy Therese: columns of marble sinks and a pediment frame a “gilded bronze glory” papering an alabaster bottom, having which the holy one of white marble, pretense to plane on a cloud, is given up with the arrow of the angel.

It will complete to convince the pope with the fountain of the Four-Rivers. This one seems to transgress the laws of balance, the rigorous geometry of the Egyptian obelisk being opposed to the chaotic naturalism of the base, the blades of water which spout out of its rocks coming to balance and animate work.

It is with Alexandre VII that Bernin will maintain most intense collaboration. The pope entrusts the most varied tasks to him - among which the majestic pulpit of Saint-Pierre. Concerned of architecture and town planning, the pope makes widen the streets, demolish the unhealthy houses and release the houses of the doors of the palate of the Vatican to let there penetrate the light. Under its pontificate, Bernin will realize most important of the churches in centered plan, Sant' Andrea Al Quirinale, whose vaults, spared in the thickness of the walls, open on central elliptic volume.

Lastly, Alexandre VII and Bernin collaborate in the installation of the square of Saint-Pierre, intended to accommodate the faithful ones for the papal blessing.

French bracket

Elected by the Vatican, at the request of Louis XIV, Bernin leaves on on June 2nd, 1665 for Paris, where it is accommodated princely. Colbert orders to him a project for the frontage of Louvre. The king often comes to visit the Italian, poses for him, and declares himself satisfied with the bust which it makes of him. But the projects of Louvre are long to be concretized. The dialog proves to be difficult between the world colbertien, more carried with the classicism, and the baroque spirit of Bernin. The war threatens, and Louis XIV seizes this occasion to stop work to which it cannot give his attention any more nor the necessary budgets. Of return to Rome, Bernin will carry out for Versailles an equestrian statue of the Sun king, but it will have definitively ceased liking the court of France: its sculpture will be transformed by Girardon into Marcus Curtius, and will be relegated at the edge of the water part of the Swiss ones.

Last papal orders

Under the pontificate of Clement IX (1667-1669), Bernin will complete the left arm of the Saint-Pierre colonnade and will carve a new decoration for the bridge Saint-Angel. But the following pope, Clement X, not giving following the last great project of the artist, the platform of Holy-Marie-Major, Bernin recovers to the design from vaults, as the Fonseca vault of the church San Francesco has Ripa. Under the pontificate from Innocent XI, the economic difficulties persist and the orders rarefy. Bernin transforms the palate of Lateran into asylum for the poor, creates churches of countryside, vaults of second plan or rather modest projects of statues.

To eighty one years, the Rider carves its last work, now disappeared, Christ saver of the world, last testimony of the piety whose this filled man of honors never separates himself. He dies on on November 28th, 1680, of an attack of apoplexy. Its funeral is sumptuous and it is buried with Holy-Marie-Major, in Rome.

The work of Bernin is marked by an exceptional freedom compared to the esthetic rules into force. It is by representing the naturalness that it creates the effect of surprised: inside the churches, it carves the rays of the sun, the clouds. But the naturalness is all the more spectacular as it is accompanied by some artifices: it is the gesture which counts, the movement, the dash at the edge of imbalance. Thus, as of Apollo and Daphne, masterpiece of youth, Bernin proposes a ballet naturalist of the metamorphosis, where the theatrical dash of the characters seems to involve the stone, matter itself: is this the nymph or the marble which is transformed into bay-tree? This theatricalness will be found in the religious subjects, of the Ecstasy of holy Therese to lying of Happy Ludovica Alberoni of the church San Francesco has Ripa.

Inseparable from the sculptor, Bernin architect conceives a space moving, and frequently resorts to the tumultuous forms where is expressed torsion and with the matter like alive element with which it ingénie to be composed.

Play of the matters and the light

The travertine, hones porous of which it makes great use, takes a different color and an aspect according to whether it is cut in the direction of sedimentation or not, property which allures the architect and the sculptor. Bronze, extremely worked, blackened, browned or gilded, is opposed to the whiteness of the marble, or answers the polychromy of the marble of Sicily. The modelled and painted stucco simulates the other matters. But the work of Bernin counts two other essential matters: water - it will equip Rome with many fountains -, element of predilection, mirror, instrument of metamorphosis, and the light, divine element which confers life on the inanimate forms. To the Fonseca vault, a fall of light falls on the angels and the clouds; for the pulpit of Saint-Pierre, Bernin imagines a source of light which regains the shape of the dove of the Holy Ghost thanks to the play of the stained glass, bright sun in the middle of gilded bronze.

Outline with work

Bernin intervenes as much at the time of the realization of the project as to that of its design. He is wary of the drawings and carries out models, often out of plaster and life size. This step signs the characteristic of the artist, who seeks to check the effect obtained in space. Thus, the installation of the model of the baldachin of Saint-Pierre under the cupola of the basilica will lead it to replace the statue of the Christ, who was to crown work, by a simple cross.

The freedom of its step pushes it to translate its sketches and its ideas by many collaborators - of which Borromini - in drawings to the scale which take account of the real conditions of the building site: it goes until simulating the colonnade of Saint-Pierre, whom it makes paint on the walls existing at the place where must be realized final work.

Impassioned by Rome, Bernin impregnates architectural richnesses of the city, and more particularly of its ancient inheritance. But if it preserves important traces of its Roman rooting, the colossal work of the artist marks the art history considerably: with Borromini, Bernin “invents” the baroque, despizing traditional rules. Thus, for the Barberini palate, it transgresses the law of balance between interior and outside: surmounted concentric arcs, the windows in semicircular arch of the loggia, by an effect of prospect, seem outside larger.

The influence of Bernin is partly propagated by the means of its pupils, come from the other countries Europe to work at its sides. In England, Wren, which observed the projects of Bernin for Louvre, will be inspired some for Hampton Court De luxe hotel (covered staircases of the court, for example).

The voyage of Bernin in France provides him the occasion to dissociate classicism clearly: contrary to Mansart, Perrault and Vau which are due to the traditional values of architecture where are illustrated the play of symmetries, the balance of the masses, the relationship between the order and volumes, Bernin plays with curves and counter-curves, lights and matters, to create unceasingly the illusion as well in the field of architecture as in that of the sculpture.

It is of a marriage of this French classicism and elements resulting from the project of Louvre suggested by Bernin that will be born the royal palace from Stockholm, under the direction of the Tessin architect. In Prague, the Czernin palate is inspired to him also project by Louvre, and it is through the Fontana architect that the mark of the Rider is felt with the royal palace of Madrid. Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt, disciple of Fontana, will contribute, after the death of Bernin, to extend his lessons in Bavaria, in particular in Würzburg (residence of the prince-bishops, with Neumann).