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180-617: Perhaps originating in the Near East , it is a feature of Late Roman architecture , which was revived in Baroque architecture , especially in the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking worlds. Two sets of columns, both in the very prestigious setting of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, were probably important in the wide diffusion of the style. The first were relatively small, and given by Constantine

360-606: A Dragon (c. 1616–17, Getty Museum , Los Angeles), the Aldobrandini Four Seasons (c. 1620, private collection), and the recently discovered Bust of the Savior (1615–16, New York, private collection). Sometime after the arrival of the Bernini family in Rome, word about the great talent of the boy Gian Lorenzo spread throughout the city and he soon caught the attention of Cardinal Scipione Borghese , nephew to

540-470: A European Power was a probable event. The threat that caused Gordon, diplomat and military officer, to publish the article was resumption of work on a railway from Russia to the Persian Gulf. Gordon, a published author, had not used the term previously, but he was to use it from then on. A second strategic personality from American diplomatic and military circles, Alfred Thayer Mahan , concerned about

720-528: A Ripa , whose façade was designed by Bernini's disciple, Mattia de' Rossi . In his last two years, Bernini also carved (supposedly for Queen Christina ) the bust of the Savior (Basilica of San Sebastiano fuori le Mura , Rome) and supervised the restoration of the historic Palazzo della Cancelleria , a direct commission from Pope Innocent XI. The latter commission is an outstanding confirmation of both Bernini's continuing professional reputation and good health of mind and body even in advanced old age, inasmuch as

900-537: A bust of her (now in the Bargello, Florence) during the height of their romance. However, at some point, Costanza began at the same time an affair also with Bernini's younger brother, Luigi , who was Bernini's right-hand man in his studio. When Bernini found out about Costanza and his brother, in a fit of mad fury, he chased Luigi through the streets of Rome and into the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, almost ending his life. To punish his unfaithful mistress, Bernini had

1080-475: A coherent conceptual and visual whole has been termed by the late art historian Irving Lavin the "unity of the visual arts". Bernini was born on 7 December 1598 in Naples to Angelica Galante, a Neapolitan, and Mannerist sculptor Pietro Bernini , originally from Florence . He was the sixth of their thirteen children. Gian Lorenzo Bernini was "recognized as a prodigy when he was only eight years old, [and] he

1260-591: A commission for a papal portrait, the Bust of Pope Paul V , now in the J. Paul Getty Museum . Bernini's reputation, however, was definitively established by four masterpieces, executed between 1619 and 1625, all now displayed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. To the art historian Rudolf Wittkower these four works— Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius (1619), The Rape of Proserpina (1621–22), Apollo and Daphne (1622–1625), and David (1623–24)—"inaugurated

1440-653: A complete list. The columns became popular in Catholic Europe including southern Germany . The Solomonic column spread to Spain at about the same time as Bernini was making his new columns, and from Spain to Spanish colonies in the Americas, where the salomónica was often used in churches as an indispensable element of the Churrigueresque style. The design was most infrequently used in Britain ,

1620-571: A famous work of antiquity, the Sleeping Hermaphroditus owned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese ( Galleria Borghese , Rome) and later (circa 1622) restored the so-called Ludovisi Ares ( Museo Nazionale Romano , Rome). Also dating to this early period are the so-called Damned Soul and Blessed Soul of circa 1619, two small marble busts which may have been influenced by a set of prints by Pieter de Jode I or Karel van Mallery , but which were in fact unambiguously catalogued in

1800-565: A five-month stay in Paris in the service of King Louis XIV and brief trips to nearby towns (including Civitavecchia , Tivoli and Castelgandolfo ), mostly for work-related reasons. Rome was Bernini's city: "You are made for Rome," said Pope Urban VIII to him, "and Rome for you." It was in this world of 17th-century Rome and the international religious-political power which resided there that Bernini created his greatest works. Bernini's works are therefore often characterized as perfect expressions of

1980-474: A fourth was about to fall to revolution, and two more, the British and French, were forced to yield in revolutions started under the aegis of their own ideologies. By 1916, when millions of Europeans were becoming casualties of imperial war in the trenches of eastern and western Europe over "the eastern question", Arnold J. Toynbee , Hegelesque historian of civilization at large, was becoming metaphysical about

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2160-468: A greater concern for representing physical details. The tousled hair of Pluto, the pliant flesh of Proserpina , or the forest of leaves beginning to envelop Daphne all demonstrate Bernini's exactitude and delight for representing complex real world textures in marble form. In 1621 Pope Paul V Borghese was succeeded on the throne of St. Peter by another admiring friend of Bernini's, Cardinal Alessandro Ludovisi, who became Pope Gregory XV : although his reign

2340-505: A heavy ancient obelisk placed over a void created by a cavelike rock formation placed in the centre of an ocean of exotic sea creatures. Bernini continued to receive commissions from Pope Innocent X and other senior members of Rome's clergy and aristocracy, as well as from exalted patrons outside of Rome, such as Francesco d'Este . Recovering quickly from the humiliation of the bell towers, Bernini's boundless creativity continued as before. New types of funerary monument were designed, such as, in

2520-530: A late reference (1675) as a Bernini work by Joachim von Sandrart, a German visitor to Rome, an attribution that was given no credence until the twentieth century. Indeed, the official 2022 Catalogo generale (vol. 1, Sculture moderne , cat. 41) of the Galleria Borghese, edited by Anna Coliva (former director of the gallery) formally removes the attribution to Bernini completely, on the basis of both stylistic, technical, and historical (documentary) grounds. Instead, among Bernini's earliest and securely documented work

2700-481: A magnificent world capital by means of systematic, bold (and costly) urban planning. In so doing, he brought to fruition the long, slow recreation of the urban glory of Rome—the deliberate campaign for the " renovatio Romae "—that had begun in the fifteenth century under the Renaissance popes. Over the course of his pontificate, Alexander commissioned many large-scale architectural changes in the city—indeed, some of

2880-521: A member of his court to serve as Bernini's translator, tourist guide, and overall companion, Paul Fréart de Chantelou , who kept a Journal of Bernini's visit that records much of Bernini's behaviour and utterances in Paris. The writer Charles Perrault , who was serving at this time as an assistant to the French Controller-General of Finances Jean-Baptiste Colbert , also provided a first-hand account of Bernini's visit. Bernini

3060-412: A minuscule percentage have survived from what must have been a great multitude. The single largest sub-group of his sculptural production is represented by his portrait busts (either free-standing or incorporated into larger funerary monuments), mostly of his papal patrons or other ecclesiastical personages, as well as those few secular potentates who could afford the extraordinary expense of commissioning

3240-655: A new era in the history of European sculpture." It is a view repeated by other scholars, such as Howard Hibbard who proclaimed that, in all of the seventeenth century, "there were no sculptors or architects comparable to Bernini." Adapting the classical grandeur of Renaissance sculpture and the dynamic energy of the Mannerist period, Bernini forged a new, distinctly Baroque conception for religious and historical sculpture, powerfully imbued with dramatic realism, stirring emotion and dynamic, theatrical compositions. Bernini's early sculpture groups and portraits manifest "a command of

3420-549: A painting from Raphael 's workshop, shows these columns in their original location. According to tradition, these columns came from the " Temple of Solomon ", even though Solomon's temple was the First Temple , built in the 10th century BC and destroyed in 586 BC, not the Second Temple , destroyed in 70 AD. These columns, now considered to have been made in the 2nd century AD, became known as "Solomonic". In actuality,

3600-436: A pair based on the opposites of far and near, suggesting that they were innovated together. They appear together in the journals of the mid-19th century. Both terms were used before then with local British and American meanings: the near or far east of a field, village or shire. There was a linguistic predisposition to use such terms. The Romans had used them in near Gaul / far Gaul, near Spain / far Spain and others. Before them

3780-577: A papal commission (to contribute a marble relief to the Cappella Paolina of Santa Maria Maggiore ) and so moved from Naples to Rome, taking his entire family with him and continuing in earnest the training of his son Gian Lorenzo. Several extant works, dating circa 1615–1620, are by general scholarly consensus, collaborative efforts by both father and son: they include the Faun Teased by Putti (c. 1615, Metropolitan Museum , NYC), Boy with

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3960-408: A portrait from Bernini (e.g., King Louis XIV , 1665, Palace of Versailles). Other large groups are represented by his religious works – statues of Biblical figures, angels, saints of the church, the crucified Christ, etc. – and his mythological figures either free-standing (such as his earliest masterpieces in the Galleria Borghese, Rome) or serving as ornaments in his complex fountain designs (such as

4140-602: A reprint of a letter earlier sent to The Times appeared in Littell's Living Age . Its author, an "official Chinese interpreter of 10 years' active service" and a member of the Oriental Club , Thomas Taylor Meadows, was replying to the suggestion by another interpreter that the British Empire was wasting its resources on a false threat from Russia against China. Toward the end of the letter he said: To support

4320-403: A sculptor. He was trained from his earliest youth in that profession by his sculptor father, Pietro. The most recent and most comprehensive catalogue raisonné of his works of sculpture compiled by Maria Grazia Bernardini ( Bernini: Catalogo delle sculture ; Turin: Allemandi, 2022, 2 vols.) comprises 143 entries (not including those of debated attribution): they span Bernini's entire productive life,

4500-439: A semi-prostrate position with her mouth open and her legs splayed-apart, her wimple coming undone, with prominently displayed bare feet (Discalced Carmelites , for modesty, always wore sandals with heavy stockings) and with the seraph "undressing" her by (unnecessarily) parting her mantle to penetrate her heart with his arrow. Matters of decorum aside, Bernini's Teresa was still an artistic tour de force that incorporates all of

4680-512: A sequel, The People and Politics of the Near East , which Scribners planned to publish in 1897. Mrs. Norman, a writer herself, wrote glowing letters of the home and person of Mme. Zakki, "the wife of a Turkish cabinet minister," who, she said, was a cultivated woman living in a country home full of books. As for the natives of the Balkans, they were "a semi-civilized people". The planned book

4860-756: A servant go to the house of Costanza, where the servant slashed her face several times with a razor. The servant was later jailed, while Costanza herself was jailed for adultery. Bernini himself was exonerated by the pope, even though he had committed a crime in ordering the face-slashing. Soon after, in May 1639, at age forty-one, Bernini wed a twenty-two-year-old Roman woman, Caterina Tezio, in an arranged marriage, under orders from Pope Urban. She had eleven children, including youngest son Domenico Bernini , who would later be his father's first biographer. After his never-repeated episode of stalking and disfigurement by proxy, in his subsequent marriage Bernini turned more sincerely to

5040-616: A traditional genre upon which his influence left an enduring mark, often copied by subsequent artists. Indeed, Bernini's final and most original tomb monument, the Tomb of Pope Alexander VII , in St. Peter's Basilica, represents, according to Erwin Panofsky , the very pinnacle of European funerary art, whose creative inventiveness subsequent artists could not hope to surpass. Despite this busy engagement with large works of public architecture, Bernini

5220-555: A wall in the Cortile della Cavallerizza of the Palazzo Ducale, Mantua (1538-39). Peter Paul Rubens employed Solomonic columns in tapestry designs, ca 1626 [1] , where he provided a variant of an Ionic capital for the columns as Raphael had done, and rusticated and Solomonic columns appear in the architecture of his paintings with such consistency and in such variety that Anthony Blunt thought it would be pointless to give

5400-510: A whole series of temporary structures (in stucco and wood) for funerals and festivals. His broad technical versatility, boundless compositional inventiveness and sheer skill in manipulating marble ensured that he would be considered a worthy successor of Michelangelo , far outshining other sculptors of his generation. His talent extended beyond the confines of sculpture to a consideration of the setting in which it would be situated; his ability to synthesize sculpture, painting, and architecture into

5580-762: Is "now commonly referred to as West Asia ." Later on in 2012, the FAO defined the Near East as a subregion of the Middle East. The Near East included Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syrian Arab Republic, and Turkey while the Middle East included the Arabian Peninsula, the Caucasus, and Iran. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire included all of the Balkans , north to

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5760-408: Is India. No mention is made of the Balkans. The British archaeologist D. G. Hogarth published The Nearer East in 1902, in which he stated his view of the Near East : The Nearer East is a term of current fashion for a region which our grandfathers were content to call simply The East. Its area is generally understood to coincide with those classic lands, historically the most interesting on

5940-538: Is his collaboration on his father's commission of February 1618 from Cardinal Maffeo Barberini to create four marble putti for the Barberini family chapel in the church of Sant'Andrea della Valle , the contract stipulating that his son Gian Lorenzo would assist in the execution of the statues. Also dating to 1618 is a letter by Maffeo Barberini in Rome to his brother Carlo in Florence, which mentions that he (Maffeo)

6120-478: Is often noted by art historians, as iconic of the Baroque concern for representing fleeting movement in static artworks. To Rudolf Wittkower the "beholder feels that in the twinkle of an eye not only might the expression and attitude change but also the folds of the casually arranged mantle". Other marble portraits in this period include that of Costanza Bonarelli unusual in its more personal, intimate nature. (At

6300-620: Is the Bust of Louis XIV although he also contributed a great deal to the execution of the Christ Child Playing with a Nail marble relief (now in the Louvre) by his son Paolo as a gift to Queen Maria Theresa . Back in Rome, Bernini created a monumental equestrian statue of Louis XIV ; when it finally reached Paris (in 1685, five years after the artist's death), the French king found it extremely repugnant and wanted it destroyed; it

6480-415: Is to Bernini that is due the lion's share of responsibility for the final and enduring aesthetic appearance and emotional impact of St. Peter's. He was also allowed to continue to work on Urban VIII's tomb, despite Innocent's antipathy for the Barberini. A few months after completing Urban's tomb, in 1648 Bernini won (through furtive manoeuvring with the complicity of the pope's sister-in-law Donna Olimpia )

6660-581: The Adrianople Vilayet , which were lost in the two Balkan Wars of 1912–13. The Ottoman Empire, believed to be about to collapse, was portrayed in the press as the " sick man of Europe ". The Balkan states, with the partial exception of Bosnia and Albania , were primarily Christian, as was the majority of Lebanon . Starting in 1894, the Ottomans struck at the Armenians and Assyrians on

6840-657: The Arabian Peninsula , Cyprus , Egypt , Iraq , Iran , Israel , Jordan , Lebanon , Palestinian territories , Syria , and Turkey ". Also, Afghanistan is often included. In 1997, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations defined the region similarly, but also included Afghanistan . The part of the region that is in Asia (ie., not including Egypt , the Balkans , and Thrace )

7020-606: The Balkans , and North Africa ; it also includes the historical Fertile Crescent , the Levant , Anatolia , East Thrace and Egypt . The term was invented by modern Western geographers and was originally applied to the Ottoman Empire , but today has varying definitions within different academic circles. The term Near East was used in conjunction with the Middle East and the Far East (China and beyond), together known as

7200-521: The Balkans . The countries and regions mentioned are Greece , Bulgaria , Serbia , Bosnia-Herzegovina (which was Muslim and needed, in his view, to be suppressed), Macedonia , Montenegro , Albania , Romania . The rest of the Ottoman domain is demoted to just "the East". If Norman was apparently attempting to change British policy, it was perhaps William Miller (1864–1945), journalist and expert on

7380-671: The Dukes of Devonshire . Other projects in Paris suffered a similar fate, such as Bernini's plans for the Bourbon funerary chapel in the cathedral of Saint Denis and the main altar of the Church of Val de Grâce (done at the request of its patron the Queen Mother), as well as his idea for a fountain for Saint-Cloud, the estate of King Louis's brother, Philippe. With the exception of Chantelou, Bernini failed to forge significant friendships at

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7560-682: The Eastern Question (a diplomatic issue concerning the waning of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century) to the "Problem of the Nearer East", which he rephrased around the issue of the future of European colonialism in the Near East, writing that in regards to "the white man": Bernini Gian Lorenzo (or Gianlorenzo ) Bernini ( UK : / b ɛər ˈ n iː n i / , US : / b ər ˈ -/ ; Italian: [ˈdʒan loˈrɛntso berˈniːni] ; Italian Giovanni Lorenzo ; 7 December 1598 – 28 November 1680)

7740-599: The Habsburg monarchy by 1688. in the Great Turkish War . The Serbian Revolution , 1804–1833. created modern Serbia. The Greek War of Independence , 1821–1832, created modern Greece, which recovered most of the lands of ancient Greece, but could not gain Constantinople. The Ottoman Porte was continuously under attack from some quarter in its empire, primarily the Balkans. Also, on a number of occasions in

7920-737: The Levant , which was in the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Porte , or government. Europeans could not set foot on most of the shores of the southern and central Mediterranean from the Gulf of Sidra to Albania without permits from the Ottoman Empire. Some regions beyond the Ottoman Porte were included. One was North Africa west of Egypt. It was occupied by piratical kingdoms of the Barbary Coast , de facto -independent since

8100-553: The Madonna and Child, Carmelite Church of Saint Joseph, Paris). A further category contains those works commissioned from Bernini and fully credited to his workshop, but represent neither his direct design nor execution, only his signature stylistic inspiration (such as several of the angels on the Ponte Sant’ Angelo refurbished by Bernini, and all of the saints atop the two arms of the portico of Saint Peter's Square). In general,

8280-420: The Near East because Old Persian cuneiform had been found there. This usage did not sit well with the diplomats; India was left in an equivocal state. They needed a regional term. The use of the term Middle East as a region of international affairs apparently began in British and American diplomatic circles quite independently of each other over concern for the security of the same country: Iran, then known to

8460-544: The Saint Longinus (1629–38, St. Peter's Basilica, Rome). The majority are in marble, with other works being in bronze (most notably his various papal portrait busts and the monumental statues adorning his Baldacchino (1624–33) and Cathedra Petri (1656–66) in St. Peter's Basilica. In virtually all cases, Bernini first produced numerous clay models as preparation for the final product; these models are now treasured as works of art in themselves, though, regrettably, only

8640-758: The pendentives on each of the four piers beneath the dome. Another column can now be observed up close in the St. Peter's Treasury Museum. Other columns from this set of twelve have been lost over the course of time. If these columns really were from one of the Temples in Jerusalem , the spiral pattern may have represented the oak tree which was the first Ark of the Covenant , mentioned in Joshua 24:26. These columns have sections of twist-fluting alternating with wide bands of foliated reliefs. From Byzantine examples,

8820-540: The piazza and colonnades in front of St. Peter's Basilica and the interior decoration of the basilica. Among his secular works are a number of Roman palaces: following the death of Carlo Maderno , he took over the supervision of the building works at the Palazzo Barberini from 1630 on which he worked with Francesco Borromini ; the Palazzo Ludovisi (now Palazzo Montecitorio , started 1650); and

9000-652: The "collective wisdom" of Europe, and introducing a concept to arise many times in the decades to follow under chilling circumstances: "... no final solution of the difficulty has yet been found." Miller's final pronouncements on the topic could not be ignored by either the British or the Ottoman governments: It remains then to consider whether the Great Powers can solve the Eastern Question ;... Foreigners find it extremely difficult to understand

9180-543: The "sick man" in the Near East is an arduous and costly affair; let England, France and America too, beware how they create a "sick giant" in the Far East, for they may rest assured that, if Turkey is [a] European necessity, China is a world necessity. Much of the colonial administration belonged to this club, which had been formed by the Duke of Wellington . Meadows' terminology must represent usage by that administration. If not

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9360-466: The "three Easts"; it was a separate term from the Middle East during earlier times and official British usage. Both terms are used interchangeably to refer to the same region. Near East and Middle East are both Eurocentric terms. According to National Geographic , the terms Near East and Middle East denote the same territories and are "generally accepted as comprising the countries of

9540-540: The "unified work of art". The central focus of the Cornaro Chapel is the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa , depicting the so-called "transverberation" of the Spanish nun and saint-mystic, Teresa of Avila. Bernini presents the spectator with a theatrically vivid portrait, in gleaming white marble, of the swooning Teresa and the quietly smiling angel, who delicately grips the arrow piercing the saint's heart. On either side of

9720-418: The Balkans. Apart from the fact that he attended Oxford and played Rugby , not many biographical details have been promulgated. He was, in effect (whatever his formal associations if any), a point man of British Near Eastern intelligence. In Miller's view, the Ottoman officials were unfit to rule: The plain fact is that it is as hard for an Ottoman official to be honest as it is for a camel to enter through

9900-517: The Balkans. According to Norman now, the empire had been established by "the Moslem horde" from Asia , which was stopped by "intrepid Hungary ." Furthermore, "Greece shook off the turbaned destroyer of her people" and so on. The Russians were suddenly liberators of oppressed Balkan states. Having portrayed the Armenians as revolutionaries in the name of freedom with the expectation of being rescued by

10080-468: The Barberini pope and family. The new Pope Urban is reported to have remarked, "It is a great fortune for you, O Cavaliere, to see Cardinal Maffeo Barberini made pope, but our fortune is even greater to have Cavalier Bernini alive in our pontificate." Although he did not fare as well during the reign (1644–55) of Innocent X , under Innocent's successor, Alexander VII (reigned 1655–67), Bernini once again gained pre-eminent artistic domination and continued in

10260-505: The Bernini family's later and larger home on Via del Corso, to which they moved in the early nineteenth century, now known as the Palazzo Manfroni-Bernini.) Bernini lived at No. 11 (extensively remodelled in the 19th century), where his working studio was located, as well as a large collection of works of art, his own and those of other artists. It is imagined that it must have been galling for Bernini to witness through

10440-859: The Bible as history they said: "The primeval nations, that piled their glorious homes on the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Nile, are among us again with their archives in their hands; ..." They further defined the nations as "... the countries lying between the Caspian, the Persian Gulf, and the Mediterranean ;..." The regions in their inventory were Assyria, Chaldea, Mesopotamia, Persia, Armenia, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, Ancient Israel, Ethiopia, Caucasus, Libya, Anatolia and Abyssinia. Explicitly excluded

10620-404: The Caspian to the Pacific as India Orientalis , shortly to appear in translation as the East Indies. Elizabeth I of England , primarily interested in trade with the east, collaborated with English merchants to form the first trading companies to the far-flung regions, using their own jargon. Their goals were to obtain trading concessions by treaty. The queen chartered the Company of Merchants of

10800-427: The Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva , the seemingly floating medallion, hovering in the air as it were, for the deceased nun Maria Raggi , while chapels he designed, such as the Raimondi Chapel in the church of San Pietro in Montorio , illustrated how Bernini could use hidden lighting to help suggest divine intervention within the narratives he was depicting and to add a dramatically theatrical "spotlight" to enhance

10980-414: The Danube lands, Egypt, but not the rest of North Africa. Except for the Balkans, the region matches the later Middle East. It differs from the Ottoman Empire of the times in including Greece and Iran. Hogarth gives no evidence of being familiar with the contemporaneous initial concept of the Middle East. In the last years of the 19th century, the term Near East acquired considerable disrepute in eyes of

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11160-407: The English-speaking public as did the Ottoman Empire itself. The cause of the onus was the religiously motivated Hamidian Massacres of Christian Armenians , but it seemed to spill over into the protracted conflicts of the Balkans. For a time, Near East often included the Balkans. Robert Hichens' 1913 book The Near East is subtitled "Dalmatia, Greece and Constantinople". The change is evident in

11340-456: The Fountain of the Four Rivers, 1647–51, Piazza Navona, Rome). Bernini's vast sculptural output can also be categorized according to the degree to which Bernini himself contributed to both the design and execution of the final product: to wit, some works are entirely of his own design and execution; others, of his design and partial but still substantial execution; while others of his design but with little or no actual execution by Bernini (such as

11520-456: The French court. His frequent negative comments on various aspects of French culture, especially its art and architecture, did not go down well, particularly in juxtaposition to his praise for the art and architecture of Italy (especially Rome); he said that a painting by Guido Reni , the Annunciation altarpiece (then in the Carmelite convent, now the Louvre Museum), was "alone worth half of Paris." The sole work remaining from his time in Paris

11700-448: The Great in the 4th century. These were soon believed to have come from the Temple in Jerusalem , hence the style's naming after the biblical Solomon . The second set are those of Bernini 's St. Peter's Baldacchino , finished in 1633. Unlike the classical example of Trajan's Column of ancient Rome , which has a turned shaft decorated with a single continuous helical band of low-reliefs depicting Trajan's military might in battle,

11880-408: The Greeks had the habit, which appears in Linear B , the oldest known script of Europe, referring to the near province and the far province of the kingdom of Pylos . Usually these terms were given with reference to a geographic feature, such as a mountain range or a river. Ptolemy 's Geography divided Asia on a similar basis. In the north is "Scythia this side of the Himalayas" and "Scythia beyond

12060-410: The Hester Diamond collection in New York). Another small garden ornament work (in the Galleria Borghese since Bernini's lifetime), The Goat Amalthea with the Infant Jupiter and a Faun , was from 1926 until 2022 generally considered by scholars to be the earliest work executed entirely by the young Bernini himself, despite the fact that it is never mentioned in any of the contemporary sources, except for

12240-410: The Himalayas". To the south is "India on this side of the Ganges" and "India beyond the Ganges". Asia began on the coast of Anatolia ("land of the rising Sun"). Beyond the Ganges and Himalayas (including the Tien Shan ) were Serica and Serae (sections of China ) and some other identifiable far eastern locations known to the voyagers and geographers but not to the general European public. By

12420-412: The Levant, shortened to Levant Company , and soon known also as The Turkey Company, in 1581. In 1582, the ship The Great Susan transported the first ambassador, William Harebone, to the Ottoman Porte (government of the Ottoman Empire) at Constantinople . Compared to Anatolia, Levant also means "land of the rising sun", but where Anatolia always only meant the projection of land currently occupied by

12600-418: The Near East, who did the most in that direction. In essence, he signed the death warrant, so to speak, of the Age of Empires. The fall of the Ottoman Empire ultimately enmeshed all the others as well. In the Travel and Politics in the Near East , 1898, Miller claimed to have made four trips to the Balkans, 1894, 1896, 1897 and 1898, and to be, in essence, an expert on "the Near East", by which he primarily meant

12780-468: The Near East. Geography alone was not a sufficient explanation of the terms, he believed. If the Ottoman Empire had been a sick man, then: There has been something pathological about the history of this Near Eastern World. It has had an undue share of political misfortunes, and had lain for centuries in a kind of spiritual paralysis between East and West—belonging to neither, partaking paradoxically of both, and wholly unable to rally itself decidedly to one or

12960-598: The Near Eastern frontiers up to the desert belt of the Sahara, Nefud and Kevir. From the death of the Near East, new nations were able to rise from the ashes, notably the Republic of Turkey. Paradoxically it now aligned itself with the west rather than with the east. Mustafa Kemal , its founder, a former Ottoman high-ranking officer, was insistent on this social revolution, which, among other changes, liberated women from

13140-547: The Ottoman Empire in its struggle against the incursions of the Russian Empire. Eventually, the Ottoman Empire lost control of the Balkan region. Until about 1855, the terms Near East and Far East did not refer to any particular region. The Far East, a phrase containing a noun, East, qualified by an adjective, far, could be at any location in the "far east" of the speaker's home territory. The Ottoman Empire, for example,

13320-525: The Palazzo Chigi (now Palazzo Chigi-Odescalchi , started 1664). His first architectural projects were the creation of the new façade and refurbishment of the interior of the church of Santa Bibiana (1624–26) and the St. Peter's Baldachin (1624–33), the bronze columned canopy over the high altar of St. Peter's basilica. In 1629, and before the baldachin was complete, Urban VIII put him in charge of all

13500-666: The Pamphili years and never losing his status as "Architect of St. Peter's," after Innocent's death in 1655 Bernini regained a major role in the decoration of the basilica with the Pope Alexander VII Chigi , leading to his design of the piazza and colonnade in front of St. Peter's. Further significant works by Bernini at the Vatican include the Scala Regia (1663–66), the monumental grand stairway entrance to

13680-463: The Pamphilj commission for the prestigious Four Rivers Fountain on Piazza Navona, marking the end of his disgrace and the beginning a yet another glorious chapter in his life. If there had been doubts over Bernini's position as Rome's preeminent artist, they were definitively removed by the unqualified success of the marvellously delightful and technically ingenious Four Rivers Fountain, featuring

13860-435: The Pamphilj family in the early years of the new papacy, Bernini did not lose his former positions granted to him by previous popes. Innocent X maintained Bernini in all of the official roles given to him by Urban, including his most prestigious one as "Architect of St. Peter's." Under Bernini's design and direction, work continued on decorating the massive, recently completed but still entirely unadorned nave of St. Peter's, with

14040-640: The Republic of Turkey, Levant meant anywhere in the domain ruled by the Ottoman Porte. The East India Company (Originally charted as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies") was chartered in 1600 for trade to the East Indies. It has pleased western historians to write of a decline of the Ottoman Empire as though a stable and uncontested polity of that name once existed. The borders did expand and contract but they were always dynamic and always in "question" right from

14220-471: The Solomonic column passed to Western Romanesque architecture . In Romanesque architecture some columns also featured spiraling elements twisted round each other like hawser. Such variety adding life to an arcade is combined with Cosmatesque spiralling inlays in the cloister of St. John Lateran. These arcades were prominent in Rome and may have influenced the baroque Solomonic column. The Solomonic column

14400-755: The Turks against Russia. If the British Empire was now going to side with the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire had no choice but to cultivate a relationship with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was supported by the German Empire. In a few years these alignments became the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance (already formed in 1882), which were in part a cause of World War I . By its end in 1918 three empires were gone,

14580-578: The United States. The innovation of the term Near East to mean the holdings of the Ottoman Empire as early as the Crimean War had left a geographical gap. The East Indies, or "Far East", derived ultimately from Ptolemy 's "India Beyond the Ganges." The Ottoman Empire ended at the eastern border of Iraq. "India This Side of the Ganges" and Iran had been omitted. The archaeologists counted Iran as

14760-466: The Vatican Palace, was slightly less ostentatious in appearance but still taxed Bernini's creative powers (employing, for example, clever tricks of optical illusion) to create a seemingly uniform, totally functional, but nonetheless regally impressive stairway to connect two irregular buildings within an even more irregular space. Not all works during this era were on such a large scale. Indeed,

14940-592: The addition of Maderno's nave and facade and finally re-consecrated by Pope Urban VIII on 18 November 1626, after 100 years of planning and building. Within the basilica he was responsible for the Baldacchino , the decoration of the four piers under the cupola, the Cathedra Petri or Chair of St. Peter in the apse, the Tomb of Countess Matilda of Tuscany , the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in

15120-500: The addition of elaborate multi-coloured marble flooring, marble facing on the walls and pilasters, and scores of stuccoed statues and reliefs. It is not without reason that Pope Alexander VII once quipped, 'If one were to remove from Saint Peter's everything that had been made by the Cavalier Bernini, that temple would be stripped bare.' Indeed, given all of his many and various works within the basilica over several decades, it

15300-460: The aforementioned regions were in actuality "politically one region – in spite of the divisions into which it is academically divided." In The Conflict of Colour , Simpson argued that what united these regions was their skin color and the fact that they were all under European colonial rule . The work included a "color chart" of the world, dividing it into a spectrum of ' black ', 'brown', ' yellow ' and ' white ' races. Simpson also modified

15480-575: The already constructed foundations for Bernini's Louvre addition were inaugurated in October 1665 in an elaborate ceremony, with both Bernini and King Louis in attendance). It is often stated in the scholarship on Bernini that his Louvre designs were turned down because Louis and his finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert considered them too Italianate or too Baroque in style. In fact, as Franco Mormando points out, "aesthetics are never mentioned in any of [the] ... surviving memos" by Colbert or any of

15660-488: The anniversary of his birth, a simple plaque and small bust was affixed to the face of his home on the Via della Mercede, proclaiming "Here lived and died Gianlorenzo Bernini, a sovereign of art, before whom reverently bowed popes, princes, and a multitude of peoples." In the late 1630s, Bernini had an affair with a married woman named Costanza (wife of his workshop assistant, Matteo Bonucelli, also called Bonarelli) and sculpted

15840-447: The artist's elaborate plan, under Clement, for a new apse for the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore came to an unpleasant end in the midst of public uproar over its cost and the destruction of ancient mosaics that it entailed. The last two popes of Bernini's life, Clement X and Innocent XI , were both not especially close or sympathetic to Bernini and not particularly interested in financing works of art and architecture, especially given

16020-643: The artistic advisors at the French court. The explicit reasons for the rejections were utilitarian, namely, on the level of physical security and comfort (e.g., location of the latrines). It is also indisputable that there was an interpersonal conflict between Bernini and the young French king, each one feeling insufficiently respected by the other. Though his design for the Louvre went unbuilt, it circulated widely throughout Europe by means of engravings and its direct influence can be seen in subsequent stately residences such as Chatsworth House , Derbyshire, England, seat of

16200-438: The basis of archaeology. For example, The London Review of 1861 (Telford and Barber, unsigned) in reviewing several works by Rawlinson , Layard and others, defined themselves as making: "... an imperfect conspectus of the arrow-headed writings of the nearer east; writings which cover nearly the whole period of the postdiluvian Old Testament history ..." By arrow-headed writings they meant cuneiform texts. In defense of

16380-416: The beginning. The Ottoman Empire was created from the lands of the former eastern Roman Empire on the occasion of the latter's violent demise. The last Roman emperor died fighting hand-to-hand in the streets of his capital, Constantinople, overwhelmed by the Ottoman military, in May 1453. The victors inherited his remaining territory in the Balkans. The Hungarian lands under Turkish rule had become part of

16560-570: The chapel the artist places (in what can only strike the viewer as theatre boxes), portraits in relief of various members of the Cornaro family—the Venetian family memorialized in the chapel, including Cardinal Federico Cornaro who commissioned the chapel from Bernini—who are in animated conversation among themselves, presumably about the event taking place before them. The result is a complex but subtly orchestrated architectural environment providing

16740-780: The church of Santa Maria Assunta (1662–65) in the town of Ariccia with its circular outline, rounded dome and three-arched portico, reminiscent of the Pantheon. In Santa Maria Assunta, as in his church of St. Thomas of Villanova in Castelgandolfo (1658–61), Bernini completely eschewed the rich polychrome marble decoration dramatically seen in Sant'Andrea and the Cornaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria, in favour of an essentially white, somewhat stark interior, albeit still much adorned with stucco work and painted altarpieces. At

16920-412: The columns probably came from neither temple. Constantine is recorded as having brought them de Grecias i.e., from Greece, and they are archaeologically documented as having been cut from Greek marble. A small number of Roman examples of similar columns are known. All that can firmly be said is that they are early and, because they have no Christian iconography in the carving and their early date (before

17100-511: The commission Bernini received to build the church of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale for the Jesuits was relatively modest in physical size (though great in its interior chromatic splendour), which Bernini executed completely free of charge. Sant'Andrea shared with Piazza San Pietro—unlike the complex geometries of his rival Francesco Borromini —a focus on basic geometric shapes, circles, and ovals to create spiritually intense spaces. He also designed

17280-446: The construction of elaborate churches), are presumably reused from some non-church building. The columns have distinct sections that alternate from ridged to smooth with sculpted grape leaves. Some of these columns remained on the altar until the old structure of St. Peter's was torn down in the 16th century. While removed from the altar, eight of these columns remain part of the structure of St. Peter's. Two columns were placed below

17460-469: The continent and to the many non-Italian students of architecture who made long pilgrimages to Rome from all corners of Europe to study and be inspired by the ancient and modern masters, Bernini among them. Bernini's architectural works include sacred and secular buildings and sometimes their urban settings and interiors. He made adjustments to existing buildings and designed new constructions. Among his most well-known works are St. Peter's Square (1656–67),

17640-545: The countries of West Asia from the Mediterranean to (or including) Iran . There is, in short, no universally-understood fixed inventory of nations, languages or historical assets defined to be in it. The geographical terms Near East and Far East refer to areas of the globe in or contiguous to the former British Empire and the neighboring colonies of the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and Germans. They fit together as

17820-421: The death of Carlo Maderno . From then on, Bernini's work and artistic vision would be placed at the symbolic heart of Rome. Bernini's artistic pre-eminence under Urban VIII (and later under Alexander VII) meant he was able to secure the most important commissions in the Rome of his day, namely, the various massive embellishment projects of the newly finished St. Peter's Basilica , completed under Pope Paul V with

18000-562: The disastrous conditions of the papal treasury. The most important commission by Bernini, executed entirely by him in just six months in 1674, under Clement X was the statue of the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni , another nun-mystic. The work, reminiscent of Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, is located in the chapel dedicated to Ludovica remodelled under Bernini's supervision in the Trastevere church of San Francesco

18180-414: The disastrous project of the new bell towers for St. Peter's basilica, designed and supervised entirely by Bernini. The infamous bell tower affair was to be the biggest failure of his career, both professionally and financially. In 1636, eager to finally finish the exterior of St. Peter's, Pope Urban had ordered Bernini to design and build the two, long-intended bell towers for its facade: the foundations of

18360-428: The distinction of being only one of two artists (the other is Pietro da Cortona ) to be the proprietor of his own large palatial (though not sumptuous) residence, furnished as well with its own water supply. Bernini refurbished and expanded the existing palazzo on the Via della Mercede site, at what are now Nos. 11 and 12. (The building is sometimes referred to as "Palazzo Bernini", but that title more properly pertains to

18540-640: The early 19th century, American and British warships had to attack the Barbary pirates to stop their piracy and recover thousands of enslaved Europeans and Americans. In 1853 the Russian Empire on behalf of the Slavic Balkan states began to question the very existence of the Ottoman Empire. The result was the Crimean War , 1853–1856, in which the British Empire and the French Empire supported

18720-461: The early 21st century). "Quite simply", writes one art historian, "nothing like it had ever been seen before". Soon after the completion of the Baldacchino, Bernini undertook the whole-scale embellishment of the four massive piers at the crossing of the basilica (i.e., the structures supporting the cupola) including, most notably, four colossal, theatrically dramatic statues. Among the latter is

18900-447: The eighteenth century, formerly part of the empire at its apogee. Iran was included because it could not easily be reached except through the Ottoman Empire or neighboring Russia. In the 1890s the term tended to focus on the conflicts in the Balkan states and Armenia. The demise of "the sick man of Europe" left considerable confusion as to what was to be meant by Near East . It is now generally used only in historical contexts, to describe

19080-452: The end of April 1665, and still considered the most important artist in Rome, if indeed not in all of Europe, Bernini was forced by political pressure (from both the French court and Pope Alexander VII) to travel to Paris to work for King Louis XIV , who required an architect to complete work on the royal palace of the Louvre . Bernini would remain in Paris until mid-October. Louis XIV assigned

19260-522: The explicit grounds that they were non-Muslim peoples and as such were a potential threat to the Muslim empire within which they lived. The Hamidian Massacres , Adana Massacres and Massacres of Badr Khan targeting Assyrians and Armenians aroused the indignation of the entire Christian world. In the United States, the then aging Julia Ward Howe , author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic , leapt into

19440-399: The eye of a needle. It is not so much the fault of the men as the fault of the system, which is thoroughly bad from top to bottom... Turkish administration is synonymous with corruption, inefficiency, and sloth. These were fighting words to be coming from a country that once insisted Europe needed Turkey and was willing to spill blood over it. For his authority Miller invokes the people, citing

19620-653: The eyes of Western commentators. Bertram Lenox Simpson , a journalist who served for a period as an officer for the Chinese Maritime Customs Service , combined both terms in his 1910 work The Conflict of Colour: The Threatened Upheaval Throughout the World as "the Near and Middle East." According to Simpson, the combined region consisted of " India , Afghanistan , Persia , Arabistan , Asia Minor , and last, but not least, Egypt ", explaining that

19800-524: The facility to concentrate in force, if occasion arise, about Aden, India, and the Gulf. Apparently the sailor did not connect with the soldier, as Mahan believed he was innovating the term Middle East . It was, however, already there to be seen. Until the interwar period following the First World War , the terms Near East and Middle East co-existed, but they were not always seen as distinct in

19980-488: The first securely attributed work dating to 1610-1612 (the marble portrait bust of Bishop Giovanni Battista Santoni, for his tomb monument in Rome's Santa Prassede) and the last to 1679 (the marble Salvator Mundi bust, Basilica of San Sebastian fuori le Mura, Rome). These many works range in size from small garden pieces of his earliest years (e.g., the Boy with a Dragon , 1617, Getty Museum, Los Angeles) to colossal works such as

20160-456: The first use of the terms, the letter to the Times was certainly one of the earliest presentations of this vocabulary to the general public. They became immediately popular, supplanting "Levant" and "East Indies", which gradually receded to minor usages and then began to change meaning. Near East remained popular in diplomatic, trade and journalistic circles, but a variation soon developed among

20340-523: The foreign, and especially the Eastern policy of Great Britain, and we cannot wonder at their difficulty, for it seems a mass of contradictions to Englishmen themselves ... At one moment we are bringing about the independence of Greece by sending the Turkish fleet to the bottom of the bay of Navarino. Twenty-seven years later we are spending immense sums and wasting thousands of lives in order to protect

20520-469: The glazed doors that protected the dials of late 17th- and early 18th-century bracket and longcase clocks. English collectors and dealers sometimes call these twist-turned members " barley sugar twists" after the type of sweet traditionally sold in this shape. Near East The Near East is a transcontinental region around the East Mediterranean encompassing parts of West Asia ,

20700-440: The human form in motion and a technical sophistication rivalled only by the greatest sculptors of classical antiquity." Moreover, Bernini possessed the ability to depict highly dramatic narratives with characters showing intense psychological states, but also to organize large-scale sculptural works that convey a magnificent grandeur. Unlike sculptures done by his predecessors, these focus on specific points of narrative tension in

20880-498: The intervention of Christian Europe , he states "but her hope was vain." England had "turned her back." Norman concluded his exhortation with "In the Balkans, one learns to hate the Turk." Norman made sure that Gladstone read the article. Prince Nicolas of Montenegro wrote a letter thanking him for his article. Throughout this article, Norman uses "Near East" to mean the countries where "the eastern question" applied; that is, to all of

21060-407: The inventory of their first documented owner, Fernando de Botinete y Acevedo, as depicting a nymph and a satyr, a commonly paired duo in ancient sculpture (they were not commissioned by nor ever belonged to either Scipione Borghese or, as most scholarship erroneously claims, the Spanish cleric, Pedro Foix Montoya). By the time he was twenty-two, Bernini was considered talented enough to have been given

21240-619: The main focus of the space. One of the most accomplished and celebrated works to come from Bernini's hand in this period was the Cornaro Family Chapel in the small Carmelite church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome . The Cornaro Chapel (inaugurated in 1651) showcased Bernini's ability to integrate sculpture, architecture, fresco, stucco, and lighting into "a marvellous whole" ( bel composto , to use early biographer Filippo Baldinucci's term to describe his approach to architecture) and thus create what scholar Irving Lavin has called

21420-406: The majestic St. Longinus executed by Bernini himself (the other three are by other contemporary sculptors François Duquesnoy , Francesco Mochi , and Bernini's disciple, Andrea Bolgi ). In the basilica Bernini also began work on the tomb for Urban VIII, completed only after Urban's death in 1644, one in a long, distinguished series of tombs and funerary monuments for which Bernini is famous and

21600-483: The meticulous investigation conducted in 1680 under Pope Innocent XI . Nonetheless, Bernini's opponents in Rome succeeded in seriously damaging the reputation of Urban's artist and in persuading Pope Innocent to order (in February 1646) the complete demolition of both towers, to Bernini's great humiliation and indeed financial detriment (in the form of a substantial fine for the failure of the work). After this, one of

21780-517: The mindset and mores of Counter-Reformation Roman Catholicism. Under the patronage of the extravagantly wealthy and most powerful Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the young Bernini rapidly rose to prominence as a sculptor. Among his early works for the cardinal, as an assistant in his father's workshop, would have been small contributions to decorative pieces for the garden of the Villa Borghese , such as perhaps The Allegory of Autumn (formerly in

21960-462: The more prestigious the commission, and the earlier the commission in his career, the greater is Bernini's role in both design and execution, though notable exceptions exist to both of these general rules. Although his formal professional training was as sculptor and his entrance into the field of architecture not of his own volition but that of Pope Urban VIII, Bernini had by the end of his life reached what has proven to be his enduring status as one of

22140-441: The most influential architects of seventeenth-century Europe. He was certainly one of the most prolific over the many decades of his long, active life. Despite the fact that he rarely left the city of Rome and that all of his works of architecture were confined to the limits of the papal capital or to nearby towns, Bernini's influence was indeed European-wide: this is thanks both to the many engravings that disseminated his ideas across

22320-512: The most significant ones in the city's recent history and for years to come—choosing Bernini as his principal collaborator (though other architects, especially Pietro da Cortona , were also involved). Thus did commence another extraordinarily prolific and successful chapter in Bernini's career. Bernini's major commissions during this period include St. Peter's Square . In a previously broad, irregular, and completely unstructured space, he created two massive semi-circular colonnades, each row of which

22500-555: The multiple forms of visual art and technique that Bernini had at his disposal, including hidden lighting, thin gilded beams, recessive architectural space, secret lens, and over twenty diverse types of colored marble: these all combine to create the final artwork—"a perfected, highly dramatic and deeply satisfying seamless ensemble". Upon his accession to the Chair of St Peter, Pope Alexander VII Chigi (reigned 1655–1667) began to implement his extremely ambitious plan to transform Rome into

22680-592: The naval vulnerability of the trade routes in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean , commented in 1902: The middle East, if I may adopt a term which I have not seen, will some day need its Malta, as well as its Gibraltar; it does not follow that either will be in the Gulf. Naval force has the quality of mobility which carries with it the privilege of temporary absences; but it needs to find on every scene of operation established bases of refit, of supply, and, in case of disaster, of security. The British Navy should have

22860-463: The ongoing architectural works in the basilica, bestowing upon him the official rank of "Architect of St. Peter's." However, Bernini fell out of favour during the papacy of Innocent X Pamphili because of that pope's already-mentioned animosity towards the Barberini (and hence towards their clients including Bernini) and the above-described failure of the bell towers designed and built by Bernini for St. Peter's Basilica. Never wholly without patronage during

23040-502: The other. Having supposed that it was sick, he kills it off: "The Near East has never been more true to itself than in its lurid dissolution; past and present are fused together in the flare." To Toynbee the Near East was a spiritual being of a " Janus -character", connected to both east and west: The limits of the Near East are not easy to define. On the north-west, Vienna is the most conspicuous boundary-mark, but one might almost equally well single out Trieste or Lvov or even Prag. Towards

23220-405: The papal art collection, director of the papal foundry at Castel Sant'Angelo , commissioner of the fountains of Piazza Navona ". Such positions gave Bernini the opportunity to demonstrate his versatile skills throughout the city. To great protest from older, experienced master architects, he, with virtually no architectural training to his name, was appointed "Architect of St Peter's" in 1629, upon

23400-508: The papal treasury had been exhausted by the disastrous Wars of Castro . Knowing that Bernini could no longer depend on the protection of a favourable pope, his enemies (especially Francesco Borromini ) raised a great alarm over the cracks, predicting a disaster for the whole basilica and placing the blame entirely on Bernini. The subsequent investigations, in fact, revealed the cause of the cracks as Maderno's defective foundations and not Bernini's elaborate design, an exoneration later confirmed by

23580-405: The pope had chosen him over any number of talented younger architects plentiful in Rome, for this prestigious and most difficult assignment since, as his son Domenico points out, "deterioration of the palace had advanced to such an extent that the threat of its imminent collapse was quite apparent." Shortly after the completion of the latter project, Bernini died in his home on 28 November 1680 and

23760-562: The powerful Duke of Modena , Charles I of England and his wife, Queen Henrietta Maria . The bust of Charles I was produced in Rome from a triple portrait (oil on canvas) executed by Van Dyck , that survives today in the British Royal Collection. The bust of Charles was lost in the Whitehall Palace fire of 1698 (though its design is known through contemporary copies and drawings) and that of Henrietta Maria

23940-467: The practice of his faith, according to his early official biographers. Luigi, however, once again brought scandal to his family in 1670 by raping a young Bernini workshop assistant at the construction site of the 'Constantine' memorial in St. Peter's Basilica. During his lifetime Bernini lived in various residences throughout the city: principal among them, a palazzo right across from Santa Maria Maggiore and still extant at Via Liberiana 24, while his father

24120-544: The present day and have become indelible icons of the splendour of the papal precincts. Within the hitherto unadorned apse of the basilica, the Cathedra Petri , the symbolic throne of St Peter, was rearranged as a monumental gilded bronze extravagance that matched the Baldacchino created earlier in the century. Bernini's complete reconstruction of the Scala Regia , the stately papal stairway between St. Peters's and

24300-412: The previous generation, Rudolf Wittkower , Howard Hibbard , and Irving Lavin . As Tomaso Montanari 's recent revisionist monograph, La libertà di Bernini (Turin: Einaudi, 2016) argues and Franco Mormando 's anti-hagiographic biography, Bernini: His Life and His Rome (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), illustrates, Bernini and his artistic vision maintained a certain degree of freedom from

24480-432: The rare failures of his career, Bernini retreated into himself: according to his son, Domenico . his subsequent unfinished statue of 1647, Truth Unveiled by Time , was intended to be his self-consoling commentary on this affair, expressing his faith that eventually Time would reveal the actual Truth behind the story and exonerate him fully, as indeed did occur. Although he received no personal commissions from Innocent or

24660-422: The reigning pope, Paul V, who spoke of the boy genius to his uncle. Bernini was therefore presented before Pope Paul V, curious to see if the stories about Gian Lorenzo's talent were true. The boy improvised a sketch of Saint Paul for the marvelling pope, and this was the beginning of the pope's attention on this young talent. Once he was brought to Rome, he rarely left its walls, except (much against his will) for

24840-432: The reports of influential British travelers to the Balkans. In 1894, Sir Henry Norman, 1st Baronet , a journalist, traveled to the Far East, afterwards writing a book called The Peoples and Politics of the Far East , which came out in 1895. By "Far East" he meant Siberia , China , Japan , Korea , Siam and Malaya . As the book was a big success, he was off to the Balkan states with his wife in 1896 to develop detail for

25020-404: The right nave, and the decoration (floor, walls and arches) of the new nave. The Baldacchino immediately became the visual centrepiece of the basilica. Designed as a massive spiraling gilded bronze canopy over the tomb of St Peter, Bernini's four-columned creation reached nearly 30 m (98 ft) from the ground and cost around 200,000 Roman scudi (about 8 million US dollars in the currency of

25200-533: The scholars and the men of the cloth and their associates: the Nearer East , reverting to the classical and then more scholarly distinction of nearer and farther . They undoubtedly saw a need to separate the biblical lands from the terrain of the Ottoman Empire. The Christians saw the country as the land of the Old and New Testaments, where Christianity had developed. The scholars in the field of studies that eventually became biblical archaeology attempted to define it on

25380-509: The south porch of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford , being the only exterior example found by Robert Durman, and was still rare in English interior design, an example noted by Durman is the funerary monument for Helena, Lady Gorges (died 1635) at Salisbury perhaps the sole use. After 1660, such twist-turned columns became a familiar feature in the legs of French, Dutch and English furniture, and on

25560-582: The southeast, the boundaries are even more shadowy. It is perhaps best to equate them with the frontiers of the Arabic language, yet the genius of the Near East overrides linguistic barriers, and encroaches on the Arabicspeaking world on the one side as well as on the German-speaking world on the other. Syria is essentially a Near Eastern country, and a physical geographer would undoubtedly carry

25740-627: The southern edge of the Great Hungarian Plain . But by 1914, the empire had lost all of its territories except Constantinople and Eastern Thrace to the rise of nationalist Balkan states , which saw the independence of the Kingdom of Greece , Kingdom of Serbia , the Danubian Principalities , and the Kingdom of Bulgaria . Up until 1912, the Ottomans retained a band of territory including Albania , Macedonia and

25920-420: The spirit of the assertive, triumphal but self-defensive Counter Reformation Catholic Church. Certainly, Bernini was a man of his times and deeply religious (at least later in life), but he and his artistic production should not be reduced simply to instruments of the papacy and its political-doctrinal programs, an impression that is at times communicated by the works of the three most eminent Bernini scholars of

26100-532: The spiritual context (a heavenly setting with a hidden source of light) that suggests to viewers the ultimate nature of this miraculous event. Nonetheless, during Bernini's lifetime and in the centuries following till this very day, Bernini's Saint Teresa has been accused of crossing a line of decency by sexualizing the visual depiction of the saint's experience, to a degree that no artist, before or after Bernini, dared to do: in depicting her at an impossibly young chronological age, as an idealized delicate beauty, in

26280-403: The state of mind of the characters and therefore understands the larger story at work: Daphne's wide open mouth in fear and astonishment, David biting his lip in determined concentration, or Proserpina desperately struggling to free herself. This is shown by how Bernini portrays her braids coming undone which reveals her emotional distress. In addition to portraying psychological realism, they show

26460-423: The stories they are trying to tell: Aeneas and his family fleeing the burning Troy ; the instant that Pluto finally grasps the hunted Persephone ; the precise moment that Apollo sees his beloved Daphne begin her transformation into a tree. They are transitory but dramatic powerful moments in each story. Bernini's David is another stirring example of this. Michelangelo's motionless, idealized David shows

26640-418: The strait rules still in effect in most Arabic-speaking countries. The demise of the political Near East now left a gap where it had been, into which stepped the Middle East. The term Middle East as a noun and adjective was common in the 19th century in nearly every context except diplomacy and archaeology. An uncountable number of places appear to have had their middle easts from gardens to regions, including

26820-428: The subject holding a rock in one hand and a sling in the other, contemplating the battle; similarly immobile versions by other Renaissance artists, including Donatello 's, show the subject in his triumph after the battle with Goliath . Bernini illustrates David during his active combat with the giant, as he twists his body to catapult toward Goliath. To emphasize these moments and to ensure that they were appreciated by

27000-430: The successive pontificate to be held in high regard by Clement IX during his short reign (1667–69). Under Urban VIII's patronage, Bernini's horizons rapidly and widely broadened: he was not just producing sculpture for private residences, but playing the most significant artistic (and engineering) role on the city stage, as sculptor, architect, and urban planner. His official appointments also testify to this—"curator of

27180-475: The surface of the globe, which lie about the eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea; but few probably could say offhand where should be the limits and why. Hogarth then proceeds to say where and why in some detail, but no more mention is made of the classics. His analysis is geopolitical . His map delineates the Nearer East with regular lines as though surveyed. They include Iran, the Balkans, but not

27360-668: The time of John Seller's Atlas Maritima of 1670, "India Beyond the Ganges" had become "the East Indies " including China, Korea, southeast Asia and the islands of the Pacific in a map that was every bit as distorted as Ptolemy's, despite the lapse of approximately 1,500 years. That "east" in turn was only an English translation of Latin Oriens and Orientalis , "the land of the rising Sun", used since Roman times for "east". The world map of Jodocus Hondius of 1590 labels all of Asia from

27540-618: The time of the sculpting of the portrait, Bernini was having an affair with Costanza , wife of one of his assistants, sculptor, Matteo.) Indeed, it would appear to be the first marble portrait of a non-aristocratic woman by a major artist in European history. Beginning in the late 1630s, now known in Europe as one of the most accomplished portraitists in marble, Bernini also began to receive royal commissions from outside Rome, for subjects such as Cardinal Richelieu of France, Francesco I d'Este

27720-451: The twisted column is known to be an eastern motif taken into Byzantine architecture and decoration. Twist-fluted columns were a feature of some eastern architecture of Late Antiquity . In the 4th century, Constantine the Great brought a set of columns to Rome and gave them to the original St. Peter's Basilica for reuse in the high altar and presbytery ; The Donation of Constantine ,

27900-554: The two polities under attack were necessary for the balance of power. It therefore undertook to oppose the Russians in both places, one result being the Crimean War. During that war the administration of the British Empire began promulgating a new vocabulary, giving specific regional meaning to the Near East , the Ottoman Empire, and the Far East , the East Indies. The two terms were now compound nouns often shown hyphenated. In 1855,

28080-496: The two towers had already been designed and constructed (namely, the last bays at either extremity of the facade) by Carlo Maderno (architect of the nave and the façade) decades earlier. Once the first tower was finished in 1641, cracks began to appear in the façade but, curiously enough, work nonetheless continued on the second tower and the first storey was completed. Despite the presence of the cracks, work only stopped in July 1642 once

28260-474: The various surfaces involved: human flesh, hair, fabric of varying type, metal, etc. These portraits included a number of busts of Urban VIII himself, the family bust of Francesco Barberini and most notably, the Two Busts of Scipione Borghese —the second of which had been rapidly created by Bernini once a flaw had been found in the marble of the first. The transitory nature of the expression on Scipione's face

28440-402: The viewer, Bernini designed the sculptures with a specific viewpoint in mind, though he sculpted them fully in the round. Their original placements within the Villa Borghese were against walls so that the viewers' first view was the dramatic moment of the narrative. The result of such an approach is to invest the sculptures with greater psychological energy. The viewer finds it easier to gauge

28620-639: The war of words and joined the Red Cross . Relations of minorities within the Ottoman Empire and the disposition of former Ottoman lands became known as the " Eastern question ", as the Ottomans were on the east of Europe. It now became relevant to define the east of the eastern question. In about the middle of the nineteenth century, Near East came into use to describe that part of the east closest to Europe. The term Far East appeared contemporaneously meaning Japan , China , Korea , Indonesia and Vietnam . Near East applied to what had been mainly known as

28800-463: The west as Persia. In 1900 Thomas Edward Gordon published an article, The Problem of the Middle East , which began: It may be assumed that the most sensitive part of our external policy in the Middle East is the preservation of the independence and integrity of Persia and Afghanistan. Our active interest in Persia began with the present century, and was due to the belief that the invasion of India by

28980-479: The windows of his dwelling the construction of the tower and dome of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte by his rival, Borromini and also the demolition of the chapel that he, Bernini, had designed at the Collegio di Propaganda Fide, which was later replaced by Borromini's chapel in 1660 (because the Collegio required a much larger chapel), but there is no documentation of this belief. The construction of Sant'Andrea, however,

29160-799: The wine used in the Eucharist . In the 16th century Raphael depicted these columns in his tapestry cartoon The Healing of the Lame at the Beautiful Gate , and Anthony Blunt noticed them in Bagnocavallo 's Circumcision at the Louvre and in some Roman altars, such as one in Santo Spirito in Sassia, but their full-scale use in actual architecture was rare: Giulio Romano employed a version as half-columns decoratively superimposed against

29340-429: Was an Italian sculptor and architect. While a major figure in the world of architecture, he was more prominently the leading sculptor of his age, credited with creating the Baroque style of sculpture . As one scholar has commented, "What Shakespeare is to drama, Bernini may be to sculpture: the first pan-European sculptor whose name is instantaneously identifiable with a particular manner and vision, and whose influence

29520-488: Was buried, with little public fanfare, in the simple, unadorned Bernini family vault, along with his parents, in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore . Though an elaborate funerary monument had once been planned (documented by a single extant sketch of circa 1670 by disciple Ludovico Gimignani ), it was never built and Bernini remained with no permanent public acknowledgement of his life and career in Rome until 1898 when, on

29700-407: Was completed by Bernini's close disciple, Mattia de Rossi and it contains (to this day) the marble originals of two of Bernini's own angels executed by the master for the Ponte Sant'Angelo. Although he proved during his long lifetime to be a uomo universale , truly accomplished in so many areas of artistic production like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci before him, Bernini was first and foremost

29880-562: Was completely in harmony with the pre-existing buildings and added to the majesty of the basilica. Often likened to two arms reaching out from the church to embrace the waiting crowd, Bernini's creation extended the symbolic greatness of the Vatican area, creating an emotionally thrilling and "exhilarating expanse" that was, architecturally, an "unequivocal success". Elsewhere within the Vatican, Bernini created systematic rearrangements and majestic embellishment of either empty or aesthetically undistinguished spaces that exist as he designed them to

30060-521: Was consistently encouraged by his father, Pietro. His precocity earned him the admiration and favour of powerful patrons who hailed him as 'the Michelangelo of his century'”. More specifically, it was Pope Paul V , who after first attesting to the boy Bernini's talent, famously remarked, 'This child will be the Michelangelo of his age,' later repeating that prophecy to Cardinal Maffeo Barberini (the future Pope Urban VIII ), as Domenico Bernini reports in his biography of his father. In 1606 his father received

30240-400: Was finished in 1633, required that the original ones of Constantine be moved. During the succeeding century, Solomonic columns were commonly used in altars , furniture, and other parts of design. Sculpted vines were sometimes carved into the spiralling cavetto of the twisting columns, or made of metal, such as gilt bronze. In an ecclesiastical context such ornament may be read as symbolic of

30420-457: Was formed of four simple white Doric columns. This resulted in an oval shape that formed an inclusive arena within which any gathering of citizens, pilgrims and visitors could witness the appearance of the pope—either as he appeared on the loggia on the façade of St Peter's or at the traditional window of the neighbouring Palazzo Vaticano, to the right of the square. In addition to being logistically efficient for carriages and crowds, Bernini's design

30600-611: Was inordinately powerful ..." In addition, he was a painter (mostly small canvases in oil) and a man of the theatre: he wrote, directed and acted in plays (mostly Carnival satires), for which he designed stage sets and theatrical machinery. He produced designs as well for a wide variety of decorative art objects including lamps, tables, mirrors, and even coaches. As an architect and city planner, he designed secular buildings, churches, chapels, and public squares, as well as massive works combining both architecture and sculpture, especially elaborate public fountains and funerary monuments and

30780-421: Was instead re-carved into a representation of the ancient Roman hero Marcus Curtius . Bernini remained physically and mentally vigorous and active in his profession until just two weeks before his death which came as a result of a stroke. The pontificate of his old friend, Clement IX , was too short (barely two years) to accomplish more than the dramatic refurbishment by Bernini of the Ponte Sant'Angelo , while

30960-403: Was never published, however Norman published the gist of the book, mixed with vituperation against the Ottoman Empire, in an article in June 1896, in Scribner's Magazine. The empire had descended from an enlightened civilization ruling over barbarians for their own good to something considerably less. The difference was the Hamidian Massacres , which were being conducted even as the couple traveled

31140-426: Was not undertaken due to the outbreak of the English Civil War . In 1644, with the death of Pope Urban with whom Bernini had been so intimately connected and the ascent to power of the fierce Barberini-enemy Pope Innocent X Pamphilj , Bernini's career suffered a major, unprecedented eclipse, which was to last four years. This had not only to do with Innocent's anti-Barberini politics but also with Bernini's role in

31320-490: Was popular among the crowds who gathered wherever he stopped, which led him to compare his itinerary to the travelling exhibition of an elephant. On his walks in Paris the streets were lined with admiring crowds too. But things soon turned sour. Bernini presented finished designs for the east front (i.e., the all-important principal facade of the entire palace) of the Louvre, which were ultimately rejected, albeit not formally until 1667, well after his departure from Paris (indeed,

31500-414: Was revived as a feature of Baroque architecture . The twisted S-curve shaft gives energy and dynamism to the traditional column form which fits these qualities that are characteristically Baroque. Easily the best-known Solomonic columns are the colossal bronze Composite columns by Bernini in his Baldacchino at St. Peter's Basilica . The construction of the baldachin , actually a ciborium , which

31680-436: Was still able to devote himself to his sculpture, especially portraits in marble, but also large statues such as the life-size Saint Bibiana (1624, Church of Santa Bibiana , Rome). Bernini's portraits show his ever-increasing ability to capture the utterly distinctive personal characteristics of his sitters, as well as his ability to achieve in cold white marble almost painterly-like effects that render with convincing realism

31860-422: Was still alive; after his father died in 1629, Bernini moved the clan to the long-ago-demolished Santa Marta neighbourhood behind the apse of St. Peter's Basilica, which afforded him more convenient access to the Vatican Foundry and to his working studio also on the Vatican site. In 1639, Bernini bought property on the corner of the Via della Mercede and the Via del Collegio di Propaganda Fide in Rome. This gave him

32040-408: Was the far East as much as the East Indies. The Crimean War brought a change in vocabulary with the introduction of terms more familiar to the late 19th century. The Russian Empire had entered a more aggressive phase, becoming militarily active against the Ottoman Empire and also against China, with territorial aggrandizement explicitly in mind. Rethinking its policy the British government decided that

32220-454: Was thinking of asking the young Gian Lorenzo to finish one of the statues left incomplete by Michelangelo, then in possession of Michelangelo's grandnephew which Maffeo was hoping to purchase, a remarkable attestation of the great skill that the young Bernini was already believed to possess. Although the Michelangelo statue-completion commission came to nought, the young Bernini was shortly thereafter (in 1619) commissioned to repair and complete

32400-510: Was very short (he died in 1623), Pope Gregory commissioned portraits of himself (both in marble and bronze) by Bernini. The pontiff also bestowed upon Bernini the honorific rank of 'Cavaliere,' the title with which for the rest of his life the artist was habitually referred. In 1623 came the ascent to the papal throne of his aforementioned friend and former tutor, Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, as Pope Urban VIII , and henceforth (until Urban's death in 1644) Bernini enjoyed near monopolistic patronage from

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