Chapter I: An Estimate of Bernini (2)

In one portion of the group Bernini certainly did fail, and in a way that is surprising. Usually his figures of angels are successful, but the one standing over Saint Theresa is assuredly very bad. Its figure is unconvincing, and its face, with tilted nose and silly smile, is more that of a Greek _paniskos_ than of a heavenly messenger. But notwithstanding this blemish, no work by Michael Angelo or any other sculptor ever made the beholder forget so completely the substance out of which it is carved, and think only of the scene represented as Bernini has done here. He has given the softness of life to the snow-white stone. His hand and mind worked in perfect accord and produced a work unrivalled in technique and of very great beauty.

Another statue of similar character is the Beata Albertona. It is a little less delicate in treatment and more emphatic in expression than the Saint Theresa, but is, none the less, of very great beauty and power.

Were a man’s failures as worth study as his successes, I could mention works by Bernini which are distinctly bad. The Maria di Magdala is one. Though full of feeling, the figure of the Saint is coarse and clumsy. But though a man’s defeats show, of course, the principles for which he stood, his victories are more worth considering and are the fairest test of him. A very false estimate of Michael Angelo would result if one considered the Rondanini Pietà, the David, or the Christ in Santa Maria sopra Minerva as of equal importance with his other works.

It was not only in works in marble that Bernini showed his power as a sculptor. He handled dark, impressive bronze with the same complete understanding of its qualities and possibilities that he showed in carving the gleaming Carrara marble. Such a work as the _Baldacchino_ in St. Peter’s is beyond any words to praise. It is enormous, but not clumsy, and sumptuous without being ornate. The most stupendous of his bronze works is not, however, the _Baldacchino_, but the Throne, the _Cattedra_ in the apse of St. Peter’s. It was in 1657, during the pontificate of Alexander VII, that Bernini was ordered to carry out his design for this work, and eight years later it was finished and uncovered to the admiration of all Rome.

This monument is too well known to need detailed description here, but it is well here to recall its purpose, which was not for actual ceremonial use by the Popes, but to serve as a frame, or strong-box, for the ancient chair of carved ivory on which tradition said, and the whole Catholic world then believed, St. Peter had himself sat. There in the heart of the greatest Christian Church, raised above the soiling earth, high in air for the thronging worshippers to behold, was to be the visible and material sign of infallibility. Bernini alone had the feeling that made him capable of such a task. Four magnificent figures of Doctors of the Church support the chair—two of the Western church, Saint Augustine and Saint Ambrose, and two of the Eastern, Saint Chrysostom and Saint Athanasius. Stately great figures; on their outstretched hands they hold the Throne with the ease that comes of perfect faith, raising it up even as sixteen hundred years before the Apostles had raised up this earth for the glory of God.

In all these religious works by Bernini there is beside the expression of the faith that begot them the expression of a decorative sense, something dramatic. He delighted in movement and expression for the mere sake of beauty of active form, and this feeling of joy in life, in the spirit of movement, whether in Nature or in Man, Bernini reproduced in a series of works which by themselves would make him unique among all sculptors and which give Rome a distinction and character far more decisive than her ruins or palaces and set her alone and apart from all other cities. These are the fountains.

The list of fountains is of amazing length. The Barcaccia in the Piazza di Spagna, one in the Villa Mattei, one in the Vatican Gardens, another in the Barberini Gardens, the Triton in the Piazza Barberini; the lovely shell which used to be on the corner of the Via Sistina, but has been destroyed to make way for modern improvements so called; in the courtyard of the Palazzo Antamoro, in the Piazza Navona, and the broad pool of the Fountain of Trevi. They have the infinite variety and infinite pleasantness of Nature herself. By the side of the placid pool whence the _ciociaras_ draw the water for their flowers, or where the sparkling stream of the Triton shoots heavenward from the gray pavements like a white crocus from the frosty ground in Spring; where the Nile, the Ganges, the Plata and the Danube pour forth their incessant floods, or where Neptune shepherds his foaming steeds over the rocks as they dash down into the pool that if we once drink from our hearts evermore yearn for the Eternal City—by each and all of his fountains our ears are filled with the pleasant voices of the waters and our eyes with the sight of the nymphs and nereids who gambolled among the watercourses when the world was young.

What the secret of their charm? No one ever understood the artistic value of water as Bernini did. No one else ever held in check the full stream and gave it back again the ripples, and spurts and sudden rushes of its upper course and of its source. The angels must have washed his spirit in the fountain of eternal youth to enable him to express the joy which flowed through his veins in the undying music of the waves, moulding and combining them to his intention as a musician makes the rough strings of his instrument sing of the life that lies hidden in them till his knowing touch gives them voice.[14]

I have spoken of the groups representing classic myths, of the innumerable statues motived by religion and of the fountains, but even this huge mass of work does not come near completing the list of Bernini’s output. The numerous portraits remain to be considered. Some, such as the Constantine in St. Peter’s, were ideal, but most were of his patrons and friends and were of very varied types. There were colossal equestrian statues, ordinary busts, full-length figures and groups for tombs, and they show that he possessed just as great skill in direct portraiture as in more purely imaginative work.

To carve or paint a successful portrait, two powers are absolutely essential to the artist. On the one hand he must have the sympathy that will enable him to comprehend the sitter’s character, and to see what lines and expressions of the face express that character most clearly; on the other he must have the power of suppressing his own individuality and of lending his hand and eye, as it were, to the sitter to make the portrait himself. If the artist lacks sympathy, he will produce a work which may be correct in all detail of colour, line and modelling, but it will only be a sort of mask; if he lacks the power of self-suppression, the work will be unlike the sitter, even though true in detail, because it will show not his character, but that of the artist. Bernini illustrates these points with perfect precision, and as a result his portraits are unsurpassed by those of any other artist of the Renaissance and are far finer than the quaint efforts of the earlier sculptors which many students of art admire with the enthusiasm of decadence and a fatuous misunderstanding of both the value of art and the aim of the artist.

Just as it was fortunate for Turner that in his early years he was forced to draw with painstaking accuracy, so was Fate kind to the young Bernini in giving him to do, when he was but fourteen or fifteen years old, the portraits of two well-known Prelates. Success in these meant fame and an assured future for the boy. Like every genius he must have felt, with perfect simplicity, with no conceit, his power; but what must have been his feelings of tremulous satisfaction when, the busts unveiled, the crowd of Cardinals and Prelates who were gathered to see his work, broke into enthusiastic applause? The cheering words of those long since silent voices echo again in our hearts as we look at these busts of the Bishop Santoni and of Monsignor Montoya, for two more perfect portraits can hardly be found.

A mere child made them; a boy whom one could more easily think of playing at marbles in the sunlit street; but instead his playground is the Temple of the Lord and his toys the souls of men. The mere knowledge of anatomy and the technical skill they show is most unusual for one so young, but what shall be said of the spiritual insight of the artist who carved these two bowed heads with their sweet, strong, grave faces? The excellence of the ancient Greek, in certain forms of sculpture, has given us his name as an adjective to express one kind of superlative merit and these two busts can, with perfect accuracy, be called Greek. They are as like as can be to the bronze bust by some unknown Grecian sculptor which in the Museo dei Conservatori bears the name of Brutus.

As in his other work, so in the making of portraits Bernini soon broke away from traditional methods and gave his own spirit full sway. This is evident in the bust of Costanza Buonavelli, his mistress, which is one of the treasures of the National Museum in Florence. It is not only the technical skill with which he gave the different qualities of the pleated dress, the round soft neck and cheeks and the blown tresses of waving hair that make this portrait so remarkable, but beyond this one sees in it the artist’s own human love for the actual woman and his delight in her as a suggestion of a beautiful work of art. This bust is unique among his works, for the woman who inspired it then, with thoughtless animal selfishness, killed the inspiration she had begotten. The bust is the tombstone for the most sensitive part of Bernini’s heart.

Among the other busts of his early years are one of his great patron Paul V (Borghese) and two of his steadfast friend Cardinal Scipio Borghese.[15] They are all of them noteworthy, but the finest is the first one he made of the Cardinal. In this the growth of Bernini’s dramatic feeling is very plain and is shown in a technical way which he repeated many times thereafter. It is this. He carves not alone the head and a small portion of the breast, but he gives the whole upper part of the torso and arms and skilfully suggests by the turn and position of this part the action of the whole body, so that as one looks at this bust of Scipio Borghese, one has the feeling of seeing not his head alone but his whole figure. The wonderful realism with which Bernini has rendered the crinkly silk cape and the rolling flesh of the fat face with the lips just parted as though the burly Cardinal were whistling for breath is obvious to the most casual observation; but realistic though the bust is, Bernini was skilful enough to give chief emphasis to the character of the sitter so that the impression that one takes away with one is not of the external appearance of the figure so much as of his nature and quality as a man. In many ways it closely resembles the portrait of Pope Innocent by Velasquez.

Other portraits are to be seen not only in Rome, but in Modena, at Versailles and even at Windsor; for, as Bernini’s fame spread, the great people all sought him and even Louis XIV and Charles I were delighted to have the artist give them that immortality which neither their deeds nor position could assure them. One of the quieter and less dramatic works is the beautiful bust of Monsignor Francesco Barberini. It is realistic like the Cardinal Borghese, but the realism is made subordinate to a higher aim and only used to emphasise the ideal character of the work.

Numerous as are these effigies by Bernini of Popes and lesser men, there are two which stand out above all the rest as unsurpassed in art and as combining and illustrating more fully than any others the character of the time, of the sitter and of the artist which, all together, made them possible. They are of Francis I of Este, now in Modena, and of Louis XIV (Plate X), at Versailles. The first was made in 1651, the second during Bernini’s visit to Paris in 1665. Only Bernini was capable of representing these two proud princes in all their splendour of ornamental wig, and lace and armour. It demanded technique such as his to make anything but a great lump of complex and ugly form out of such settings for the head as these; and he succeeded, to the unquestioned admiration of all time.

That was an epoch when men liked theatrical display of all sorts, when what in these colder days seems exaggerated expression was natural and pleasing to people. Bernini knew and understood this, had often himself been employed in writing plays or arranging stage scenery, and has represented the two rulers just as they delighted to show and think of themselves, adorned with all that was rich and splendid, haughty and disdainful as was the nature of those endowed with the divine right of Kings. Even more than in the case of the portrait of Cardinal Borghese do these two busts seem to make us see the whole figure and yet they have an appearance of lightness that is most surprising. Not to be made again such busts—nor such men. Democracy, and a belief in equality as absurd as that in Kingship was overweening, have snuffed out all such pretensions, and have snuffed out the art too. But thanks to Bernini we have the record of them. We see them in their moment of splendid satisfaction and self-confidence, and made beautiful through mere enjoyment of their bubble reputation.

The final value of portraiture is that it should be characteristic of the person depicted. No matter how great the skill shown in giving Napoleon the appearance of a Greek athlete or Washington that of Olympian Zeus, such works are only folly and waste. Bernini made no such mistake, but with deep insight and unrivalled skill proved himself one of the greatest portraitists of all time.

I have spoken of Bernini’s versatility. I have considered in some detail the sculpture by which he is best remembered. Of his painting not much is left, and what remains is naturally not of any great value as art. Still less is left of his work as an organiser of plays and arranger of processions or carnival displays. A few drawings and engravings and some slight accounts by contemporaries give us an idea of this work of his, but it was the occupation of his more idle hours and is of little moment. Of his architectural work a good deal is still to be seen, though in many instances later workmen have added to or altered the original structure, which was almost always skilful and big in conception, though occasionally he made a mistake, as when he put the towers—asses’ ears his contemporaries called them—on the Pantheon.

The structure by which Bernini is best known is the double colonnade of the Piazza of St. Peter’s. Of this his original sketch book still exists.[16] It is an intensely interesting record of the different schemes and plans which Bernini worked at till in the end he produced the splendid simple and grand design which gives Rome the finest public square in the world.

There are several sheets of drawings in the book, some showing Leonardesque studies of the relations between the proportions of the human figure and those of architecture, others show views down the Borgo from the church or looking up towards St. Peter’s with plans for the rearrangement of the district, and some are views and designs of various types of colonnade showing deep study of their perspective appearance. But of all these sketches, there is one of far greater interest than all the others, for it shows that insight into the deeper meaning of things which made Bernini the supreme genius he was (Plate XXX).

On this sheet are two similar drawings showing St. Peter’s and the colonnade. Over these, as though they formed the head and arms of a cross, is drawn a bearded figure, his head crowned by the dome of the church, his arms outstretched on the colonnades and with his feet crossed slightly one above the other and resting just where, at the beginning of the Borgo, Bernini intended, as another of the sketches makes plain, to put a building. There can be no doubt, after seeing this drawing, that Bernini’s intention was to make the Piazza symbolic of Christ and the Crucifixion. Evidently not a mere builder of houses this man Gian Lorenzo Bernini, but somehow, and somewhence, he has got a poet’s vision and he makes his mark in the world not merely by moulded clay and shaped stones, but by shaping men’s hearts and moulding their ideas.

Such was Bernini, one of the great artists of the world. It is true that he was revolutionary, but he destroyed not through ignorance or envy. He destroyed merely that he might then create. The arts in his day were strangled by academic rules and had become cold and lifeless. The intensity with which he felt things gave him strength to break these bonds and to make sculpture once more a means of conveying living thoughts and emotions. He was like the butterfly which tears away the stiff-plated chrysalis before it can spread its wings in the free air. It is useless to try to explain his technical skill; he was born with it, just as others are born with a keen sense of colour or a musical ear, but it is certain that without it he could never have carved such figures as the Saint Theresa or the portrait of Fonseca[17] which show intense emotion brought on by loss of all sense of self in the contemplation of the mystical meaning of the Passion. Such feeling could not be shown by restrained action and quiet faces. Much movement was necessary and the works are successful and beautiful because the feeling shown is perfectly simple and natural and not forced and put on for the sake of effect.

Bernini’s technical power made him, however, a bad master for others to imitate. Not that the work of his followers is any more inane than that of the copiers of Michael Angelo or of those of any other great man, but his peculiarities were such as are at least superficially easy to see. Where he quite easily and simply distinguished between the appearance of silk or flesh, his imitators wasted their energies on elaborate arrangements, the only object of which was to show technical dexterity. Where he carved figures that are racked and torn with feeling, the imitators gave forms that are contorted and as unemotional as gymnasts. But he is not to be blamed for their work. By no means was he one of the blind leading the blind. He was the seer, the prophet, by odd chance honoured in his own home, whose visions were so believed by his followers that they vainly tried to see the like. What their eyes strained towards and failed to see, his heart yearned for and gained. To them praise was a prize to win, to him it was a spur to renewed effort and further advance. He had faults, as who has not, but they were due to his being a pathbreaker and having to find out for himself ways to carve and show figures such as no sculptor before him had ever dreamed of; they were not the faults of ignorance or stupidity. If it be well for us that we judge not lest we be judged, so too is it well, should we judge Bernini or other men, to judge not what there is in him of weakness or failure, but what there may be of noble intention and high endeavour. Doing this we shall see that Bernini, working always with bowed heart, but with uplifted spirit, broke down the middle wall of partition between art and life.