Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini

ARCH 3112Professor Tony RizzutoYanqiao Yang10/22/2010Giovanni Lorenzo BerniniHe's probably the greatest artists of the 17th century with the distinguished architect; he is Italian artists - Bernini, who created the sculpture of the Baroque style, and its development so large so that other artists in this area can’t be compared with him.Bernini 's career under the influence of his father at the beginning, his father Pietro Bernini is a very talented sculptor in Florence, and later to Rome as they are, the young Bernini work very hard, he obtained the painter Annibale Carracci's appreciation for the assistance with the Pope Paul, and soon after he had fully developed into an independent sculptor, he learned the classical Greek marble effect with the Vatican in Rome, he also has a high level of 16th-century Renaissance paintings knowledge. Bernini 's earlier works has captured the eyes of Cardinal Scipione Borghese and he is a member of the Pope family, under his funding Bernini carved out his own kind, the most important sculpture group, "Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius" (1619), "The Rape of Proserpina", (1621-22), "Apollo and Daphne" (1622-25), "David" (1623-24). These marble statues show unprecedented consummate skill that to make these stubborn marble can make detailed texture looks like bronze statue, Bernini for the physical surface of the skin texture of the root hair has a break, he put aside Michelangelo era style, and created a new era of Western sculpture. With the sponsor of Urban VIII, Bernini increased production capacity, and making fast progress, Urban VIII inspire him and his disciples design buildings. His first architectural projects were the façade and refurbishment of the church of Santa Bibiana (1624-1626) and the St. Peter's baldachin (1624-1633), the bronze columned canopy over the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica. In 1629 and before the Baldacchino was complete, Urban VIII put him in charge of all the ongoing architectural works at St Peter's. However, due to political reasons and miscalculations in his design of the bell-towers for St. Peter's, Bernini fell out of favor during the Pamphili papacy of Innocent X. Never wholly without patronage, Bernini then regained a major role in the decoration of St. Peter's with the Pope Alexander VII Chigi, leading to his design of the piazza and colonnade in front of St. Peter's.Further significant works by Bernini at the Vatican include the Scala Regia, (1663-6) the monumental grand stairway entrance to the Vatican Palace and the Cathedra Petri, the Chair of Saint Peter, in the apse of St. Peter's. Bernini did not build many churches from scratch, rather his efforts were concentrated on pre-existing structures, and in particular St. Peter's. He fulfilled three commissions for new churches; his stature allowed him the freedom to design the structure and decorate the interiors in a consistant manner. Best known is the small oval baroque church of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, a work which Bernini's son, Domenico, reports his father was very pleased with. Bernini also designed churches in Castelgandolfo (San Tommaso da Villanova, 1658-61) and Ariccia (Santa Maria Assunta, 1662-4).When Bernini was invited to Paris in 1665 to make works for Louis XIV, he presented designs for the east facade of the Louvre Palace but his adventurous concave-convex façades were ultimately turned down in favour of the more stern and classic proposals of the French architect Claude Perrault, signalling the waning influence of Italian artistic hegemony in France. Perrault's final design did, however, include Bernini's feature of a flat roof behind a Palladian balustrade.In 1639, Bernini bought property on the corner of the via Mercede and the via del Collegio di Propoganda Fide. On this site he built himself a palace, the Palazzo Bernini, at what are now Nos 11 and 12 via della Mercede. He lived at No. 11 but this was extensively changed in the nineteenth century. It has been noted how very galling it must have been for Bernini to witness through the windows of his dwelling, the construction of the tower and dome of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte by his rival, Borromini, and also the demolition of the chapel that he, Bernini, had designed at the Collegio di Propoganda Fide to see it replaced by Borromini's chapel.。