Giovanni Lorenzo bernini

(1598-1680)

(2) Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini was an Italian sculptor, architect, and painter, and probably the most important artist of the 17th century. He founded the Baroque style, noted for its high spirits and grandness, which it combined with attention to harmony and balance. Few of Bernini's paintings have survived; most of his sculp­tures are in Rome.

(1) Bernini was born in Naples, son of the Flo­rentine sculptor Pietro Bernini, but he moved to Rome early in his career and worked there for most of his life. Much of his work was com­missioned by members of the Borghese family, including three popes, Urban VIII, Innocent X, and Alexander VII. Many of his sculptures are in Rome's Villa Borghese, among them his first large sculpture, Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius. This was commissioned by Scipione Borghese in 1619. Three other masterpieces, also in the Villa Borghese and representing a new realistic form of sculpture, are Pluto and Persephone, David, and Apollo and Daphne. Neptune and Triton, from this same period, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

(3) For Urban VIII, Bernini did his first architectural work, the entrance facade of the church of San Bibiana in Rome, and carved his first major religious sculpture. This led to more commissions, including what was his greatest architectural work. This was a huge canopy, or baldachino, over the site of the tomb of St. Peter. It is regarded as one of the richest monuments of Baroque art. Pope Inno­cent X then invited Bernini to build the Foun­tain of the Four Rivers in the Piazza Navona. The fountain supported an ancient Egyptian obelisk, and was surrounded by four marble figures symbolizing the four major rivers of the 17th-century world: Danube, Nile, Plate, and Ganges. Bernini's last major architectural piece was his grandest: the piazza in front of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

(5) Bernini spent a brief period in Paris (1665-1666) at the invitation of King Louis XIV, who wanted him to design a new facade for the Louvre gallery. The work was never finished, though he did complete a portrait bust of the king, which is in the Louvre, before returning to Rome. By this time Bernini was old and frail, and the papacy was poorer and could no longer pay for large-scale commissions. He was not very productive in his latter years.

(4) Bernini was a very charming man, greatly respected by his contemporaries. The English diarist, John Evelyn, summed up his gifts in his description of an opera given by Bernini “wherein he painted the scenes, cut the stat­ues, invented the engines, composed the music, writ the comedy, built the theatre”.

Part V. The Enlightenment

STEP 1: Understanding the Information

Picture 10

b) Bach.

Karl Phillip Emmanuel Bach, the son of Johann Sebastian Bach, served as head musician at Frederick’s court. His father also performed before Frederick and composed music for the King to play. Frederick, a talented flute player, was instrumental in bringing chamber music into fashion.

Picture 11

b) Versailles.

The great palace of Versailles, near Paris, was built during the late 1600s to display the wealth and power of Louis XIV of France. Louis XIV expanded the palace and the gardens. The Versailles palace was widely imitated by other rulers and noble families all over Europe.

Picture 12

d) the horizon.

The angles of the swinger’s arm, the waver’s arm, and the bluff in the distance all point the eye toward the horizon. The visual effect is similar to going up in a swing. Such elegant, witty use of artistic conventions characterized rococo art.

STEP 2: Vocabulary and Spelling

Exercise 1: Pronounce the words below. Match a word with a picture (not all the pictures have their names!)

Plate 5

The Rococo Art 9-13 Rococo wall 9 ornamental moulding 12 table in Louis Seize style (Louis Seize table) 14 neoclassical building 15 Empire table 16 Biedermeier sofa 17 Art Nouveau easy chair 18

The Types of Arch 19-37 round arch 27 segmental arch 28 parabolic arch 29 horseshoe arch 30 lancet arch 31 trefoil arch 32 shouldered arch 33

Plate 6

Historical Costumes

1. 61 gentleman [ca. 1700]

2. 62 three-cornered hat

3. 63 dress sword

4. 64 lady [ca. 1700]

5. 66 lace-trimmed loose-hanging gown

6. 67 band of embroidery

7. 77 pigtail wig

8. 78 ribbon (bow)

9. 79 ladies in court dress [ca. 1780]

10. 80 train

11. 81 upswept Rococo coiffure

12. 82 hair decoration

Exercise 2: Developing spelling skills. Fill in the blanks with missing letters. Remember the spelling and the pronunciation.

Vesalius, Madam de Pompadour, Benjamin Franklin, Watteau, Fragonard, Chardin, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Marie Antoinette, Johann Sebastian Bach, Thomas Jefferson, Maison Carree, Jacques-Louis David, John Locke, Voltaire, Baron de Montesquieu, Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Immanuel Kant.

Exercise 5:

• The Age of Enlightenment, which began around 1715, was characterized by debate and thought about the issues of equality, freedom, and individual rights.

• It was the age that inspired America’s Declaration of Independence.

• The Scientific Revolution that began in the 1500s brought new inventions to Europe.

• Eventually these fueled the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s, which brought millions of people from the farms to the cities.

• In general, the rich got much richer, the poor got much poorer, and a new middle class began to form.

• In some ways, the Romantics were reacting in an emotional way to the overbearing logic of the Enlightenment; but, in truth, both rationalism and emotionalism usually co-exist in society.

• After America had inspired the French Revolution, France and England became the centers of Europe’s Romantic movement.

• Above all, Romanticism was the overflow of emotions. Even madmen became subjects of portraiture.