it seems to most observers unpleasant, this is mainly because it does
not conform to the conventional and uncharacteristic way they are
accustomed to see Jerome represented. As a subject for artists he has
been treated far more often by painters than by sculptors, and in the
paintings the mere beauty of colour and of surroundings adds charms
which are uncharacteristic of, and distract from, the real interest of
the figure. When carved by Bernini, there is nothing but the figure to
consider—whether it be suggestive of the real man as we know him by his
writings or not. Probably most people if asked what image the name of
the saint brought to their minds would recall the print by Dürer or some
painting such as that by Catena in the National Gallery. But splendid as
the print and the painting are, it is only by a pleasant fiction and by
refusing to regard the truth that they can be thought to represent in
any way the Saint as he was among men. They show a very gentle old man
in the neatest and quietest of surroundings, peacefully writing his
comments on the scriptures.
It can hardly be supposed that his contemporaries regarded Jerome
primarily as a peaceful and abstracted scholar. Surely Bernini did not,
but instead shows us the unhappy wanderer and ascetic monk. Scholarship
was only one phase, and among the people with whom he lived scarcely the
most important phase of St. Jerome’s life. To his contemporaries he
showed himself chiefly as an acrid controversialist taking a leading
part in the “strife of tongues.” Unhappy in his Pannonian home, he spent
a restless youth wandering over Europe, but instead of peace found only
momentary forgetfulness in pleasures, the remembrance of which brought
deep sorrow in his later years. Then he turned to asceticism and sought
by living as an anchorite in the desert to conform himself to the
teachings of his Lord. But the degradation of such a life, the unnatural
and disgusting view it took of the image of his Maker and the temple of
his soul, the morbid introspection and sterility of selfish
self-mortification, brought him trouble and pain, not calm, till, at
last, an old man, he died in Bethlehem thoroughly disheartened with the
iniquity of the world and the horrors resultant on the destruction of
Rome by the barbarians.
Such is the man Bernini sets before us. The battered, wayworn feet; the
strong, coarse body; the ragged, unkempt hair show the life he led. The
face bending with closed eyes dreamily over the figure of the crucified
Christ betrays his holy, misdirected zeal. What he was, and what he
stood for, could not be shown more clearly than our sculptor has shown
it here.
Equally fine, and in certain ways more beautiful, is the statue of
Daniel in the lions’ den, which Bernini made in 1656 for Cardinal Chigi,
who placed it with the Habakkuk in Santa Maria del Popolo. The youthful
and splendidly built figure rests on one knee, his hands upraised in
attitude of prayer, his head bent back with eyes wide open gazing
upwards. From one shoulder, beside his body and over his legs, falls in
wind-blown folds a single heavy mantle. A great lion crouches behind
him, licking his foot. In its perfect physical beauty, in its not
over-emphasised anatomy and in its entirely successful composition, by
which great movement is given the appearance of completeness and
stability, the figure is more closely allied to Bernini’s earlier works
than to the mystical passionate figures such as the Jerome or Mary of
Magdala or others of this period. It is unnecessary to dwell on the
beauty of the figure and the technical skill it displays, for these can
be seen by anyone whose eye and hand have been trained at all.
There is one less obvious point, however, to which I wish to draw
attention, for it is as good an example as could be of what I have
mentioned above. I refer to the way the legs show through the heavy
drapery that covers them. The mantle does actually clothe the leg. It is
not a mere addition. It takes its shape and movement from the leg
beneath it. The one cannot be thought of without the other. Were the
statue destroyed, and did only the right hip or left knee remain, one
would instantly recognise what parts of the figure these were. But
classic though the figure is in general appearance—it might almost be
one of the Niobids—the feeling of absolute ecstatic faith is very
clearly given in the upturned face and the reaching arms.[11] Now there
have been times—great and noble times—when men did believe that God
would send angels to shut the mouths of lions, and when men felt no
fear, but only a carefree trust in His help if true innocency could be
found in them.
Such work is not baroque, nor decadent, nor over-emotional, as it is
commonly and thoughtlessly said to be, but it is a very adequate and
convincing representation of a powerful and uplifting spiritual
condition. It is just as fine as the graver and more sombre figures of
Greece, or as the sad and ponderous figures of Michael Angelo.
Of all the figures of this period in Bernini’s development the most
famous is the Saint Theresa (Plate IX). It is hopeless to express in
words the great beauty of this figure. This can no more be done than the
full perfection of any great poem can be rendered in a translation. The
work is perfect in itself, and what of this kind can be shown in
sculpture is here expressed with complete and ultimate adequacy. That
most people are startled and shocked when they first see the figure is
due to the fact that they do not think of what the scene really means,
and they are not accustomed to seeing scenes of divine significance
treated with perfect simplicity and pure faith.
[Illustration: PLATE IX.]
Not that such scenes ought not to be so treated, but few are the artists
who feel deeply enough or whose technique is finished enough to enable
them to represent a scene of this sort so clearly and beautifully. As a
result, the artist falls back on forms which have been repeated so often
that they have become conventional and no longer can give the beholder
the full impression of their meaning. No one is offended on seeing the
Son of God bleeding on the cross around which surges a host of idle
spectators, or at seeing Him in the manger before which all the nobles
of Florence kneel in various theatric attitudes. But Saint Theresa is a
figure new to them, and to have her shown in the crisis of her ecstasy
with other figures looking on from the walls of the chapel, offends
their “sense of propriety” and seems “paradoxical,” “perfervid” and
“inconsequent.”[12]
Were this a fair criticism, a large number of the most beautiful works
of Christian art would fall under the same condemnation. Far more
paradoxical than Bernini’s figure are the representations of the
Marriage of Saint Catharine, and they are quite as unpleasing if thought
of in their literal sense. As for the figures looking at the Saint from
the “opera boxes” at the sides of the chapel, it must be remembered that
at this time most of the drama in Italy was founded on religious
subjects, and such dramatic representation made a very deep appeal to
men’s minds. The critics who find the Saint Theresa in bad taste do not
hesitate to form part of the audience when Christ’s Passion is played
among the hills of Oberammergau, and they will no longer be afraid to
render Bernini the homage that is his due when they cease lazily to
measure his work by conservative standards. The glory of a comet is not
measured by the Eddystone Light nor a miracle by the conventions of
ordinary society.
One other point concerning this statue remains to be considered. A
recent critic[13] says that “there are many ecstasies, and Bernini has
chosen something that borders closely on the most displeasing.” In this
he expresses a common opinion, based, I believe, on a misconception, and
on ugly, puritanical prudishness. Possibly there are many ecstasies, but
religious ecstasy, the ecstasy of the Saint in joining herself to the
spiritual existence of Christ, and the pure and natural ecstasy of love
when self is lost in the future of the race, are as nearly as possible
identical. The Venus de Medici is far more displeasing than the Saint
Theresa.
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.
[Illustration: PLATE X.]
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).