Title: Bernini Architetto
Author: Franco Borsi
Publisher: Electa Editrice, 1980
Text in Italian by Franco Borsi; 377 pages, 407 illustrations in black and white and color
The 17th century sculptor and architect, Gianlorenzo Bernini, is responsible for many of the monuments in Rome, and by extension, for the transition of the city from the balanced classicism of antiquity and the Renaissance to the exaggerated dynamism of the Baroque period. Beginning in 1624 with Pope Urban VIII’s commission for the colossal Baldacchino in St. Peter’s Basilica to the Palazzo Barberini and the Palazzo Chigi, this volume explains the tumultuous biographical, political, and architectural components of Bernini’s unforgettable career. His most notable achievement was the transformation of the small piazza in front of St. Peters from an entirely insignificant space into the largest public square in the world. The square is defined by the massive double colonnade stretching out from the cathedral into the world, reinforcing the Counter-Reformation rhetoric of the Catholic Church reaching out to the public. This rare volume is exceptional for its remarkable balance of both breadth and depth in the textual and illustrative evidence it provides for Bernini’s undeniably influential and pervasive innovative architectural language.
