Gian Lorenzo Bernini: 8 works

'The leading sculptor of Baroque Italy, Gianlorenzo Bernini, reshaped the ancient city of Rome in a series of brilliant architectural and sculptural projects that affirmed its identity as the seat of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1667, Pope Clement IX appointed him to supervise the renovation of the Ponte Sant'Angelo, the ancient bridge linking the city of Rome to the Vatican.'

'At the tender age of 20, Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, one of the greatest sculptors of the Baroque, created this bust of the mother of Cardinal Maffeo Barberini (1568-1644), Camilla Barbadori. A few years later, after the cardinal was appointed Pope and took the name Urban VIII, he became Bernini's most important patron.'

'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, however, are the distinctive contribution of the young Gian Lorenzo.'

'With the needs of his patron in mind, Bernini created a noble and dignified paternal presence in the ancient Roman tradition of ancestral portraiture. He chose a bust form that includes most of the chest, and curved the truncation to echo the arch of the spreading shoulders, producing an effect both of harmony and imposing physical bulk.'

'Bernini's is a veritable portrait of the most beautiful and deadly of the Gorgons (this is, in fact, aa Bust, and not a truncated Head) at the very moment of her metamorphosis.'

'Using some blunt tool, perhaps even a thumb or finger, he softly smudged the lines to create the shadows that form the contorted pose of the god's muscular torso. Between 1652 and 1653, Bernini sent studies for fountains to Duke Francesco I d'Este for his palace.'

'Bernini made this dramatic image of a triton (a minor sea-deity of Greek mythology) grappling with a fish atop a gigantic shell as a presentation model for Pope Innocent X Pamphili, who in 1651 commissioned the artist to design a new centerpiece for the fountain at the south end of the Piazza Navona in Rome. A few years earlier, Bernini had designed the spectacular Fountain of the Four Rivers as the focal point of the refurbished piazza.'

'It only took five months for sculptor Bernini to create the bust of Louis XIV during his stay in Paris in 1665.'