Bernini - Franco Mormando

Sculptor, architect, painter, playwright, and scenographer, Gian
Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) was the last of the great universal artistic
geniuses of early modern Italy, placed by both contemporaries and
posterity in the same exalted company as Leonardo, Raphael, and
Michelangelo. And his artistic vision remains palpably present today,
through the countless statues, fountains, and buildings that transformed
Rome into the Baroque theater that continues to enthrall tourists
today.

It is perhaps not surprising that this artist who
defined the Baroque should have a personal life that itself was, well,
baroque. As Franco Mormando's dazzling biography reveals, Bernini was a
man driven by many passions, possessed of an explosive temper and a
hearty sex drive, and he lived a life as dramatic as any of his
creations. Drawing on archival sources, letters, diaries, and-with a
suitable skepticism-a hagiographic account written by Bernini's son (who
portrays his father as a paragon of virtue and piety), Mormando leads
us through Bernini's many feuds and love affairs, scandals and sins. He
sets Bernini's raucous life against a vivid backdrop of Baroque Rome,
bustling and wealthy, and peopled by churchmen and bureaucrats, popes
and politicians, schemes and secrets.

The result is a
seductively readable biography, stuffed with stories and teeming with
life-as wild and unforgettable as Bernini's art. No one who has been
bewitched by the Baroque should miss it.