now available in paperback....
BERNINI: HIS LIFE AND HIS ROME
BY FRANCO MORMANDO
The first English-language biography of the artist
Winner of Choice Magazine's "CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title" Award for 2011 (Choice 49.5, Jan. 2012)
Available online through Amazon and Barnes & Noble
For more about the biography, see the Facebook page,
"BERNINI BY MORMANDO" & MY OWN FACEBOOK PAGE
& BERFROIS (online journal)
For videotaped interviews with author about the biography:
BOSTON COLLEGE FACULTY PUBLICATIONS
and
HARVARD UNIVERSITY "ROMANCE SPHERE"
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bernini in his 20s, self-portrait
Sculptor, architect, painter, playwright, urban planner, and scenographer, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) was the last of the universal geniuses of early modern Italy, placed by both contemporaries and posterity in the same exalted company as Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo. Thanks to his Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona, his statue of Saint Teresa in Ecstasy in Santa Maria della Vittoria, his grand colonnade of St. Peter's Square, and many other captivating works of art and architecture, Bernini ranks today second only to Caravaggio as the most popular celebrity-artist of Baroque Rome.
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In the history of Western art, Bernini counts as one of the most influential artists of all time. No other artist has left so large, so enduring and so delightful a mark on both the city’s physical appearance and pervasive emotional tenor. Bernini’s artistic vision remains palpably present today through the countless statues, fountains, buildings, public squares and other works of his design that transformed Rome into a dazzling Baroque theater that continues to enthrall tourists.
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Monument to Divine Wisdom (Elephant Bearing Obelisk)
by G.L. Bernini, Piazza S. Maria sopra MInerva, Rome
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During all of Bernini’s long lifetime Rome was the preeminent cultural capital of Europe; it was a period of uncontested glory that the city had not known since the fall of the Roman Empire. After its thousand-year post-imperial decline, Rome had resurrected once again, magnificently rebuilt and lavishly embellished by its papal princes. Today's Rome, so beloved by millions of tourists from the world over, is essentially a Baroque city and as such is to a large extent the handiwork of Bernini and his many disciples: one cannot truly know Rome of the twenty-first century without coming to know Bernini and Rome of the seventeenth.
from bernini's church, sant'andrea al quirinale
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For the latest updates on my published research on Bernini (including my annotated translation of Domenico Bernini's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Penn State Univ. Press, 2011) and my Bernini: His Life and Rome), see the page entitled, "Bernini Updates."