Unique among early modern artists, the Baroque painter, sculptor, and architect Gianlorenzo Bernini was the subject of two monographic biographies published shortly after his death in 1680: one by the Florentine connoisseur and writer Filippo Baldinucci (1682), and the second by Bernini’s son, Domenico (1713).
This interdisciplinary collection of essays by historians of art and literature marks the first sustained examination of the two biographies, first and foremost as texts. A substantial introductory essay considers each biography’s author, genesis, and foundational role in the study of Bernini. Nine essays combining art-historical research with insights from philology, literary history, and art and literary theory offer major new insights into the multifarious connections between biography, art history, and aesthetics, inviting readers to rethink Bernini’s life, art, and milieu.
Contributors are Eraldo Bellini, Heiko Damm, John D. Lyons, Sarah McPhee, Tomaso Montanari, Rudolf Preimesberger, Robert Williams, and the editors.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Prolegomena to the Interdisciplinary Study of Bernini’s Biographies
Maarten Delbeke, Evonne Levy, and Steven F. Ostrow
1 At the Margins of the Historiography of Art: The Vite of Bernini Between Autobiography and Apologia
Tomaso Montanari
2 Bernini’s Voice: From Chantelou’s Journal to the Vite
Steven F. Ostrow
3 Plotting Bernini: A Triumph over Time
John D. Lyons
4 Chapter 2 of Domenico Bernini’s Vita of His Father: Mimeses
Evonne Levy
5 “Always Like Himself”: Character and Genius in Bernini’s Biographies
Robert Williams
6 Bernini Portraits, Stolen and Nonstolen, in Chantelou’s Journal and the Bernini Vite
Rudolf Preimesberger
7 Gianlorenzo on the Grill: The Birth of the Artist in His “Primo Parto di Divozione”
Heiko Damm
8 Gianlorenzo Bernini’s Bel Composto: The Unification of Life and Work in Biography and Historiography
Maarten Delbeke
9 From Mascardi to Pallavicino: The Biographies of Bernini and Seventeenth-Century Roman Culture
Eraldo Bellini
10 Costanza Bonarelli: Biography Versus Archive
Sarah McPhee
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
“As an edited volume of scholarly essays, this collection sets a new standard for excellence. The quality of all contributions is uniformly high—something that can rarely be said of such collections.”
