The artist who first met this new demand upon sculpture, and may be called the founder of a new style, was Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), a very gifted man. When but ten years old this remarkable genius was known as a prodigy in art, and it was at this early age that his father took him to Rome. Pope Paul V. was soon interested in him, and Cardinal Barberini assisted him in his studies; from this fortunate beginning all through his life good fortune attended his steps. He lived through the pontificate of nine popes, and was always in favor with the reigning head of the Church. This gave him the opportunity to fill Rome with his works, and he imprinted himself upon the art of the Eternal City; no artist since the time of Michael Angelo held such sway, and Bernini acquired his power easily, while the grand Michael Angelo was disputed at every step, and fought a long, hard battle before he was allowed to take the place which was so clearly his by right.
The fame of Bernini extended to other lands, and he was invited to France, where he went when sixty-eight years old, accompanied by one of his sons and a numerous retinue. He was loaded with favors, and received large sums of money and many valuable presents. In Rome, too, he was much favored; he held several church benefices, and his son was made a Canon of Santa Maria Maggiore; and it was in this church that Bernini was buried with great magnificence, as became his position and his wealth, for he left the immense fortune of four hundred thousand Roman crowns.
Bernini had great versatility of talent, a remarkable imagination and power of conceiving his subjects clearly, and, more than all, he had marvellous power of execution and compelling his marble to show forth his thought. 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; and it is true that in his struggle for effect he was an injury rather than a benefit to the art of his own day and the succeeding years.
The worst defect in the sculpture of Bernini is his treatment of the human body. At times he exaggerates the muscular power beyond all resemblance to nature, and again he seems to leave out all anatomy and soften the body to a point that far exceeds possibility. This softness is seen in his Apollo and Daphne, which shows the moment when she is suddenly changed into a laurel-tree in order to escape the pursuit of the young god. This group is in the Villa Borghese, at Rome; it was executed when Bernini was but eighteen years old, and near the close of his life he declared that he had made little progress after its production.
But he reached the height of this objectionable manner in his representation of the Rape of Proserpine, which is in the Villa Ludovisi. The Pluto is a rough, repulsive man, with whom no association of a god can be made, and the Proserpine is made a soulless, sensual figure, so far from attractive in a pure sense that we are almost willing that Pluto should carry her to some region from which she is not likely to come back. At the same time we are sorry not to provide her with an ointment for the blue marks which the big hands of Pluto are making on her soft flesh. The plain truth is, that this work makes a low and common thing of a subject which could be so treated as to be a "thing of beauty" in a charming sense. (Fig. 111.)
Fig. 111.—Rape of Proserpine.
By Bernini.
Bernini executed a statue of St. Bibiana for the church of that saint at Rome, and one of St. Longinus in one of the niches to the dome of St. Peter's; he also made the designs for the one hundred and sixty-two statues in the colonnades of St. Peter's, and for the decorations of the bridge of St. Angelo; in such works, almost without exception, he chose some moment in the lives of the persons represented that called for a striking attitude and gave an opportunity for an effect that is often theatrical. As a mere decoration such statues have a certain value of an inferior sort; but as works of art, as intellectual efforts, they are worthless. However, this decorative effect, as it is seen on the façade of the Lateran, where the figures stand out against the sky, or on the bridge of St. Angelo, is not by any means to be despised; only we cannot call a sculptor a great artist when he can do nothing finer than this.
Some of Bernini's works in which he shows intense suffering have more genuine feeling, and are finer in artistic qualities. One of these is Pietà, in the chapel of St. Andreas Corsini in the Lateran. But he frequently goes beyond the bounds of good taste, as, for example, on the monument to Pope Urban VIII., in St. Peter's, where he represents Death with his bony hand writing the inscription on the panel; this is truly terrible, and not less so is another Death upon the monument of Alexander VII., raising the marble curtain before the entrance to the vault, as if he were inviting one to walk in. Many objections can be made to his draperies. He exaggerated the small curtains seen on some ancient tombs until they were huge objects of ugliness; the drapery upon his figures is so prominently treated that instead of being a minor object it sometimes seems like the principal one; it no longer serves to conceal forms, and at the same time show their grace and motion, but it is inflated, fluttering, grotesque in form and quite absurd when compared with statues in which it answers its true purpose.
Charles I. of England heard so much of Bernini that he desired to have a statue of himself executed by this sculptor; three of Vandyck's portraits of the king were sent to him, and the likeness of the statue was so satisfactory to the monarch that he sent the artist six thousand crowns and a ring worth as much more.