Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 1598-1680
Italian sculptor, architect and painter

Born in Naples, the son of a sculptor, he went to Rome at an early age, and there attracted the attention of Cardinal Scipione Borghese who became his patron. For him he sculpted a series of life-size marble statues which established his reputation as the leading sculptor of his day (1618-25, Borghese Gallery, Rome). Under Pope Urban VIII, he designed the famous baldacchino for St Peter's, and there is much other sculptural and architectural work by him still in the Vatican. However, under the next pope, Innocent X, he fell out of favour, partly because of the structurally unsound towers on the facade of St Peter's for which he was responsible. In 1647 he designed the fountain of the four river gods in the middle of the Piazza Navona. Superseded in papal favour by the sculptor Alessandro Algardi, Bernini concentrated on private commissions, the most famous of which is the Cornaro Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. The central element of the design, the sculpture depicting The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa, is one of the great works of the Baroque period. In 1665 he travelled to Paris to design the east front of the Louvre for Louis XIV, but his designs were never executed and he returned to Rome having only completed a portrait bust of the king. The dominant figure of the Baroque period in Rome, he did his last work on the tomb of Alexander VII in St Peter's and the small Jesuit Church of San Andrea della Quirinale.

Bibliography: Filippo Baldinucci, Vita del cavaliere Gio Lorenzo Bernino (1682, Eng trans The Life of Bernini, 1966)