Gian Lorenzo Bernini

“ Colouring the eyes always has a bad effect in sculpture; they form too violent a contrast with the other features, which remain of the natural colour of the marble. When the eyes are enamelled, it is requisite that all the face should be painted, to produce the agreeable harmony of life.
The Faun dandling an infant Bacchus, is one of the gayest figures that can be imagined.
In this Villa, there are also some highly esteemed pieces by Bernini. Æneas carrying his father; David slinging the stone at Goliah; and Apollo pursuing Daphne: the last is generally reckoned Bernini’s master-piece ”

“ There was hardly an artist or a literary man in Rome, or a student of science or a musician, who did not regularly pay his court to her, and dedicate to her something of his best work. Not rarely, too, she gave her advice; Bernini should finish his last statue in such and such a way, Guidi should avoid one rhyme and introduce another, on pain of her displeasure. Bernini yielded politely, because of all Italy's artists of genius he was the most thoroughly cynical in following the fashion of his time ”

“ Then the fall was sudden, years elapsed before the advent of Caravaggio with power of colour and modelling, all that the science of painting could achieve when bereft of genius. And afterwards the decline continued until Bernini was reached—Bernini, the real creator of the Rome of the present popes, the prodigal child who at twenty could already show a galaxy of colossal marble wenches, the universal architect who with fearful activity finished the facade, built the colonnade, decorated the interior of St. Peter's, and raised fountains, churches, and palaces innumerable. ”

“ A crowd of undistinguished names followed the dissolution of the great Tuscan school. And when at length an artist of decided talent appeared, instead of retracing the steps of his predecessors, he struck into a new path, conducting still more pronely to error. Bernini, born at Naples in 1598, though immeasurably inferior to the mighty master of the last century in majesty and energy of mind, possessed most of the requisites for becoming one of the greatest of modern sculptors. Unfortunately, he neglected, or was ignorant of, the species of invention which belongs to an imitative art ”

“ The fountain of Bernini shone curiously luminous in the sunshine, as if the dolphins and the Triton with his conch-shell had, by some interrupted metamorphose transformed themselves into a more diaphanous material—not stone, nor yet quite crystal. The noise of the building of new Rome filled all the piazza and the adjoining streets; country children ran in and out between the carts and horses offering violets for sale. ”

“ It has been said that marble was like wax or clay beneath his hand. He was subject to no rules; indeed, he believed that an artist must set aside all rules if he would excel. This sounds very fascinating, but a study of Bernini's works will show that it is a deceitful maxim. A man of small talent could do nothing in this way, and even Bernini, who without doubt had great gifts, often failed to make up in any way for the sins against rules of which he was guilty. Westmacott, in his writing upon sculpture, says it would have been better for art if Bernini had never lived ”

“ Above all, [Pg 200] intellectual life was entirely divorced from national feeling. Politics—“the art of leading the majority, not where they wish, but where they ought to go”—interested the individual, not, as in the earlier age, the mass of the people.
We have then at our hand the key to the problem. A picture of Italy between 1527 and 1580 will give us the source of the characteristics of the art of Cellini and Giovanni Bologna. A sketch of the political and social consequences of the Catholic Reaction will explain the popularity of Bernini, the typical sculptor of our second period. ”

“ In estimating his [Pg 218] genius we are not compelled to rely entirely upon the long series of colossal groups packed with half-draped nudes in wildly fluttering draperies which issued from his studio. His early work, “Apollo and Daphne,” is an effort of extraordinary ability. The design was wonderfully graceful, and the technical skill with which it was worked out promised more abundant result than Bernini’s life’s work eventually showed. For the rest the admirer of Bernini can point to the magnificent series of fountains which he designed and erected. ”

“ Willing to live and let live, with a never-failing fund of drollery, and with a sincere dislike for work of any sort, he lounged through existence, an agreeable, genial and witty member of society. If this were all we should not need to write about him now. But with this easy-going temperament he combined a genius for poetry so peculiar and delicate, that his few works mark an epoch in Italian literature.
The best description of Berni is contained in the burlesque portrait of himself, which forms part of his Boiardo Innamorato. ”

“ Perhaps nothing brings out in greater relief the accomplishment of the sculptors of this period than the deep decadence of the art in the succeeding century. The only name that stands out with any prominence during the seventeenth century is that of Bernini, a man of undoubted talent, who, in a better period of art, might have been a sculptor of the first rank. ”

“ The cardinal, however, did nothing for him, and he was obliged to accept a situation as clerk or secretary to Ghiberti, datary to Clement VII. The duties of his office, for which Berni was in every way unfit, were exceedingly irksome to the poet, who, however, made himself celebrated at Rome as the most witty and inventive of a certain club of literary men, who devoted themselves to light and sparkling effusions. So strong was the admiration for Berni’s verses, that mocking or burlesque poems have since been called poesie bernesca. ”

“ When Innocent saw the great work completed, and the water of the four rivers for the first time gushing from it, he declared to Bernini he had given him pleasure great enough to add ten years to his life; and he sent over to Donna Olimpia for a hundred ‘Doppie’10 to distribute among the workmen. Subsequently he had a medal struck with the inscription Agonalium cruore abluto Aqua Vergine, in allusion to the games of which Piazza Navona is supposed11 to have been the scene, and the ‘Vergine’ aqueduct from which the fountains were supplied. ”

“ Peter’s, and raised fountains, churches, and palaces innumerable. And that was the end of all, for since then Rome has little by little withdrawn from life, from the modern world, as though she, who always lived on what she derived from others, were dying of her inability to take anything more from them in order to convert it to her own glory.
“Ah! Bernini, that delightful Bernini!” continued Narcisse with his rapturous air. “He is both powerful and exquisite, his verve always ready, his ingenuity invariably awake, his fecundity full of grace and magnificence. ”

“ Throughout the succeeding century the dominant influence was still Italian, but its effect was as deleterious as it had been formerly beneficent.
By 1700 the decorative arts were well on the downward path. Bernini had been dead twenty years, but his influence, together with that of Borromini, was still a living thing, and was still working irreparable mischief. Sir M. Digby Wyatt, in a powerful article written for Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament, referring to Borromini, says: ‘From his fervid imagination and rare facility as a draughtsman and designer, he soon obtained ample employment ”

“ But Romans are not like other people.
In a few days all is cleared away again, and Bernini's great fountain faces Borromini's big Church of Saint Agnes, in the silence; and the officious guide tells the credulous foreigner how the figure of the Nile in the group is veiling his head to hide the sight of the hideous architecture, and how the face of the Danube expresses the River God's terror lest the tower should fall upon him; and how the architect retorted upon the sculptor by placing Saint Agnes on the summit of the church, in the act of reassuring the Romans as to the safety of her shrine ”

“ The owner of the pocket-book was Sir Edward Walpole; and the only present the honest and gentlemanly pride of the artist would allow him to receive was a fat buck annually.
BERNINI.
On Roubiliac’s return from Rome he paid a visit to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and expressed himself in raptures on what he had seen on the continent,—on the exquisite beauty of the works of antiquity,—and the captivating and luxuriant splendour of Bernini. “It is natural to suppose,” said he, “that I was infinitely impatient till I had taken a survey of my own performances in Westminster Abbey ”

“ Of the Palladian, or reformed school, Bernini was the last disciple of genius; his circular colonnade, in front of St Peter's, is worthy of its site. With him, and the conceits of Borromini, Italian architecture may almost be said to have ceased. In France, the two Mansards, during the building reign of Louis XIV., have left heavy imitations of the Michael-Angelesque style; still, to the artist writers of that country, the art owes much. It is there more regularly studied than in any other country in Europe ”

“ Berni's theory of poetry revealed a common-sense and insight which were no less rare than commendable in that age of artificial literature. He refused to write at command, pleading that spontaneity of inspiration is essential to art, and quoting Vida's dictum:
Notwithstanding his avoidance of publication and parsimony of production, Berni won an almost unique reputation during his lifetime, and after his death was worshiped as a saint by the lovers of burlesque. ”

“ Another cause of misconception, to which I have already alluded, has probably more misled the mob of readers of Italian poetry, natives as well as foreigners. I mean the language of Berni; and as to this, certainly few very few, are capable of appreciating his skill, or even of making out his track. There is indeed, I believe, no poet of any country, who has attempted so difficult a flight ”

“ Well, but St. Peter's? Alas, Bernini has filled it with sculpture!
No one can cavil, I grant, at the size of the great Coliseum.
Doubtless the notion of grand and capacious and massive amusement,
This the old Romans had; but tell me, is this an idea?
Yet of solidity much, but of splendor little is extant:
"Brickwork I found thee, and marble I left thee!" their Emperor vaunted;
"Marble I thought thee, and brickwork I find thee!" the Tourist may answer
III.—Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ⸻. ”

“ This society, which numbered Molza, Mauro, La Casa, Lelio Capilupi, Firenzuola, and Francesco Bini among its members, gave the tone to polite literature at the Courts of Leo and Clement.
Berni survived the sack of 1527, which proved so disastrous to Italian scholars; but he lost everything he possessed. [452] Monsignor Giberti employed him on various missions of minor importance, involving journeys to Venice, Padua, Nice, Florence, and the Abruzzi. ”

“ Better reasons may seem to palliate such a mistake of the real poetical character of Berni, than of that of Ariosto. Some of these are of a general description, and others of a nature more peculiarly applicable to his case. We may observe, as to the first, that whoever indulges his wit, in whatever species of composition, is usually misjudged; for wit, in the sight of the world, overlays all the other qualities of an author, in whatever act or pursuit he may be engaged. ”

“ And let me whisper you a secret, girls,—for even now Bernice does not seem to know,—as she grew older, the rough lines mellowed and softened, the short figure stretched upward, till she was beautiful as ever her dearest wish had pictured. Was it not lovely spirit within, for Bernice was a Christian, molding and modeling the clay into a fit dwelling-place for itself? That is a beauty that never quite withers away. Its roots are planted in the soul beautiful, and a beautiful soul can never die. ”

“ Francesco Berni (1496?-1535) 265 is important here chiefly because of his rifacimento, or revision, of Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato. In accomplishing this task he completely made over Boiardo’s romance by refining the style, polishing the verse-structure, inserting lengthy digressions of his own and following a scheme instituted by Ariosto, prefacing each canto with a sort of essay in verse. Berni’s purpose, indeed, was to make the Innamorato worthy of the Furioso. ”

“ BERNARDI, JOHN (1667–1736) , major, a suspected conspirator in the 'assassination plot' against William III, was the son of Count Francis Bernardi, a Genoese nobleman who, after representing the republic of Genoa for some years in London, took up a permanent residence in Worcestershire. The chief authority for the son's life is a narrative written by himself, which, although inaccurate in certain particulars, and pervaded throughout by a tone of exaggeration and boastfulness, must in its main outlines be accepted as trustworthy. ”

“ Though Berni is almost always sprightly, he is not, in this romance, a burlesque or buffoon poet. [775] I once heard Foscolo prefer him to Ariosto. A foreigner, not so familiar with the peculiarities of language, would probably think his style less brilliant and less pellucid; and it is in execution alone that he claims to be considered as an original poet. The Orlando Innamorato was also remoulded by Domenichi in 1545; but the excellence of Berni has caused this feeble production to be nearly passed over by the Italian critics. ”