Bernini

BERNINI & THE BAROQUE IN ST. PETER'S CATHEDRAL

Gian Lorenzo Bernini Baldichinno Gilt bronze St. Peter's Cathedral, Vatican, Rome (1624-33 CE)

Gian Lorenzo Bernini Cathedra Petri Gilt bronze, marble, and stucco St. Peter's Cathedral, Vatican, Rome (1657-66 CE)

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) was recognized as the foremost artist of his day. The contemporary measures of his distinction -- the patronage and pleasure of princes, popes, and kings -- were reflected in an unequalled European reputation. To the vast majority of those who lived in his time, Bernini's art realized the ends dictated by the humanist theory of art that had been fashioned from ancient aesthetics. The two major characteristics that permeate Bernini's art are:

the naturalism of the forms
the use of emotion at any price

Bernini's Baldacchino (1624-33), for example, which rises at the cross-section of the Latin cross in St. Peter's basilica, is an enormous cast-bronze canopy for the main altar. It stands about 100 feet high reaching dramatically toward the latern at the top of the dome designed by Michelangelo. The Baldacchino's twisted columns decorated with spiraling parallel grooves and winding bronze vines were derived from Early Christian remains of the fourth-century church known as Old Saint Peter's.

Visible through the Baldacchino's columns on the back wall of the church is the gilded stone, bronze, and stucco encasement known as The Chair of Peter, or Cathedra Petri. It was made by Bernini between 1657 and 1666. It symbolized the direct descent of Christian authority from Peter to the current pope, a belief rejected by the Protestant Reformation. The chair is carried by four theologians and lifted further by a surge of gilded clouds moving upward toward an explosion of angels, putti, and gilt-bronze rays of light bursting forth from a stained-glass panel depicting a dove (representing the Holy Spirit).

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