The Power of Art Bernini complete episode

she's an ecstasy all right her head is thrown back her mouth open her heavy-lidded eyes are half closed an angelic hand is delicately uncovering her breasts you have to look you don't know where to look a century after Bernini created the sculpture a French art lover doing the tour of Rome came into this church peered at the spectacle and said well if that's divine love I know all about it so what is this surely not an erotic trance not from the most devout sculptor in Rome no one who was the bosom friend of Pope's the pillar of the Catholic establishment could possibly want us to see a nun in the throes of orgasm could he it's no good pretending that ecstasy isn't a physical as well as a spiritual experience the passion doesn't work through the body as well as the soul Bernini knew all about passion that's what his art was about it was this physical intensity that would transform sculpture no one before Bernini had managed to make Marvel so carnal in his nimble hands it would flutter and stream quiver and sweat his figures weep and shout their torsos twist and run and arched themselves in spasms of intense sensation he could like an alchemist change one material into another marble into trees leaves hair and of course flesh the whole point of classical sculpture was to make humans less so to give mortal flesh the heavy weight smoothness of immortality so many of them end up looking divine but bloodless but then along comes Bernini and suddenly even Michelangelo's David looks eMobile beside bony knees whirling twisting tornado his sculpture was supposed to convey gravity Bernini would defy it his figures break loose from their plinth flying away into space for as long as anyone could remember jan lorenzo bernini had startled the people who mattered brought before the Pope when he was just 8 he did a lightning sketch of Saint Paul's head that prompted the astonished Pope to tip the little boy the next Michelangelo his father Pietro was a sculptor from Florence seldom better than competent and sometimes worse but in his son he knew a good thing when he saw Moretti watch out signore Bernini an admiring Cardinal said the boy will surpass his master so fast out of the starting blocks our little prodigy here's a playful tour de force two little angels embrace in wide-eyed innocence Bernini did this in his teens he kept it on display on the landing of his house throughout his life and this is his goat I'm Althea and the infant Jupiter a standard bit of Mythology transformed into a romp with a shaggy ascend a knee goat in sculpture what makes these little figures burst from their dull mythological subject matter they have the hot breath of life in them lusty mischievous nursery school naughtiness Bernini arrived in Rome in 1605 just at the time Caravaggio's punchy Street dramas Quay electrifying the church giving it a new vision of how to move the flock no more remote Saints instead the shock theater of the earthy passions salvation in the guts so how do you top Caravaggio answer you can't but in sculpture this is some Lawrence being barbecued alive for his Christian beliefs Bernini was 16 when he did this he's trying to catch the moment of transcendent pain when if we believe the legends son Lawrence turns his executioner's and says in a moment of McCobb drollery right turn me over boys the sides done no wonder he became the patron saint of cooks but there's something serious going on here as Lawrence's hand touches the flame a mysterious transformation takes place the chronicler said the smell of scorched flesh turned fragrant pain and sweetness become one torment becomes ecstasy a rehearsal perhaps for a sweet ordeal to come he loved playing with fire and it boni me couldn't stop himself here he is as a damn soul it's a self-portrait Bernini has scorched his own arm in a naked flame screaming in a mirror to get the expression just right an extremist for his art then but also perhaps someone capable of impulsive acts of violence still it's a drama of the flesh no one not even Michelangelo obeyed quite so gripping it was enough to make one big wig on the Roman scene card Marsha peony Borghese one to adopt Jan Lorenzo as his personal star property someone who'd make his fabulous new villa up here on the Pyncheon Hill the place to see great art how the other red hats would gnash their teeth in Envy there was something larger-than-life about sugar unit Borghese the bull like neck and head sat atop a jumbo body sly Bernini using a button that can't quite make it through its hole to give us a feeling for the flesh tight packed into the satin the holy man of the church is above all a physical presence he looks more like a chef than His Eminence what he was after Bernini said was a speaking likeness because he thought that people gave themselves away most characteristically either just before or after they spoke so he works his magic on Shiva yoni the little fringe poking out from the Cardinals hat the chipmunk cheeks the fleshy blubbery lips shippi owners nose catching the light in such a way as to suggest a film of sweat the natural effusion of a big man in a hot city Rome the holy metropolis buzzing with worldly ambition for the church aristocracy it's because the money you've got that counts it's also the art painters sculptors and architects are angling for patrons and the Rothschilds and the Sarge's are their day the Pope's and Cardinals are gambling on the next prize genius Benigni of course has everything it takes to succeed he's witty charming extremely well-connected frightening ly cultured ferociously disciplined always delivers when he says he will and he doesn't drink in other words the opposite of Caravaggio and how do we know all this well someone had noted Bernie knees every move Phillipa Baldino chi minor painter gossip and our critic not that important in himself but someone who had collected everything he could from those who knew Bernini and turned it into his first proper biography quando passage Ovid elegida totally persona la guayaba well what dita von Lula suport amento era regale cuando que debe Porco Sakuni so luckily ueshiba de tener Aquino Kabuli this is Apollo and Daphne it's a story of sexual hunting Apollo wants the nymph Daphne she definitely doesn't want him he runs after her and just as he's about to grab her the gods answer her prayers by turning her into a laurel tree it's all action sculpture Apolo breaking his breathless run his cape and his hair still flying in the wind Daphne who's cornered isn't rooted to the spot except botanically and seems to be climbing into the air a mouth opened wide in a scream hair and fingers already metamorphosing into leafy twigs but the tease of the drama is the silky nude the Bernini is made available to us exactly as she disappears inside her protective casing of tree bark a painfully sported consummation it's not just me a French Cardinal said he wouldn't have it in his house because such a beautiful nude would be sure to arouse anybody who saw him Bernini has said have been really pleased when he heard that Bernini is in his early twenties a superstar someone on whom the mighty and the powerful almost form one Pope Gregory the 15th makes him a knight so Bernini is known ever after as the Cavalier a the next pope urban Yeats makes him his best friend there's a story that when Cardinal Barberini became Pope Urban II AIDS he called Bernini into his apartment and said for niganda for to America contracted Popham affable man a photo tank or a pilgrim focus cabal Bernini de Soto - Pontifical a Papa indeed a Bernini Liberace Shi apartamento sensitive a catering company so lacera another converse our Iqaluit a finitary a non siamo arranged allagadda family primary male 1 okay focus on persona Castle we and we compatible tennis wha Bernini is Rome's supreme virtuoso the Emperor of the Arts and not just in sculpture he's also a painter a master builder and a playwright and he has everything charisma swarthy good looks money status and enemies this is Francesco Borromini taciturn neurotic introverted depressive a man of absolutely no social graces whatsoever for good and for real bar emini would play a pivotal role in burning his life the two of them would trip over each other's ambitions spur each other on to ever greater heights ever greater risks bar emini was a brilliant architect he made walls and balconies curved and Bausch where they had no right to ceilings that sings throb here he is exaggerating perspective making the columns at the back much smaller than they should be in order to make space much deeper than it really is it's all I was a dream if two men were responsible for creating the look of baroque Rome for making Rome Rome those two men were Bar emini and Bernini and they hated each other at first it was a one-way rivalry bimini resented burning his popularity his hogging of the limelight it's a bit like Mozart and Salieri and if there's no Salieri here no weaker talent that both geniuses look at these two churches just two hundred yards away from each other in Rome one by Bernini the other by borough Meany here's the borrow Meany church San Carlo della Quattro Fontane a it's the work of an architect chess master pure and austere just brick and stucco no color or sculpture allowed just mind-blowing designs worked out from the higher geometry the heavenly order of shapes and numbers now here's the Bernini Church loads of color troweled on as if it were a stage set with full theatrical lighting it's all look at me razzle dazzle showy visceral and sexy just like him the rivalry between Bernini amparo meanies started in earnest in 1624 when someone had to be appointed the new architect for some Peters and get to build the Baldacchino the enormous canopy over the tomb of st. Peter located directly under Michelangelo's great dome it's the plumy s job in town now at this stage burrow Meany was far more qualified than Bernini he trained as an architect and was the obvious candidate for the job but guess who got it mr. charming jan lorenzo bernini what the biggest job in rome and he gives it him and not me just because he's the Pope's best friend I mean the man knows damn all about buildings borough Meany must have been furious of course the engineering problems of forging the great canopy raising this twisty gilt bronze monster were a serious stretch for Beninese competence so wisely he gets help he turns to burrow Meany who had no choice but to help it was for the greater good of the church after all architecture has always been a collaborative exercise so it's not surprising to find that virtually all the drawings for the Baldacchino are by Laura Meany does he get the credit he deserves does he hell that Francesco bought emini neither forgive nor forget it's an unappealing trade this ungenerous instinct for monopolizing the glory and it will come back to bite there Neely it's not just by Remini who feels it the assistant who did that fine leaf work on Daphne's leaves so angry are not getting his due that he walked out of the project in a rage but then the Cavalier Bernini always did have a Cavalier way with his assistants pencil yessiree Bob Donovan mando his own mother complained so he took what he needed technical expertise grinding toil and in the case of one of his assistants Mattie Urbana Rayleigh his wife her name is Costanza Constance - chiumbo Nini have a laugh in bed about that here she is in 1637 at the height of their affair you can see he can't get enough of her and from the intensity of all this brimming desire comes an entirely new kind of European sculpture before Costanza busts have been entirely respectable and they were usually reserved for tombs only the Romans a long time before had used sculpture for informal portraits but informal doesn't quite do it for Costanza does it how about Intimus for this is a portrait of a woman whose passion has written on her face and her body whose flaring temper just adds fuel to her lover's fire this is what we mean by lovingly carved it's as though Bernini was reliving his caresses with his chisel the falling away of the blouse perhaps the single sexiest invitation in all European sculpture there's something else unique about this sculpture it's the celebration of a Spitfire Costanza bonner le may have been the wife of a lowly assistant sculptor but she came from a proud old family the pica nominee so her jaw is firm the Rosebud mouth is in the act of speaking and not deferentially everything that was supposed to define womanhood demure chaise serenity is jumped for Costanza she's a wild thing and the sculptor is hooked on her temper but it's not Costanza's temper the would end up undoing Bernini it was his own despite all the genteel charm Oh Nene was known to have a low boiling point underneath all those social graces was the bloodthirsty temper of a Neapolitan gangster and in one unbelievably shocking episode he lets it rip it started with a rumor Costanza it's whispered was not so constant after all seems she has a thing about the Bernini boys since she's sleeping not just with John Lorenzo but with his younger brother Luigi Luigi Bernini de piedra Bernini bonds Kultura automarketer - excellente Mathematica oh it's hard to believe if I know that anyone would want to get their hands on anyone except mr. fabulous himself but could the rumors be true the trap is set that evening tram Lorenzo says breezily how he has to go off to the country the next day so he won't be in town but he doesn't go into the country does he instead early next morning he goes to Costanza's house and waits Luigi emerges so does Costanza that swelling breasts Bernini had lovingly carved flattened against Luigi's chest and a passionate embrace there's a chase through the streets across the piazzas over the bridges right into some Peter's itself where it's official architect does his best to murder his own brother gentleman sir grabs an iron bar and smashes it against Luigi's body breaking two ribs his famous as a miracle worker this time the miracle is that he hasn't killed his own brother it takes a message from their mother to the papal cops to separate them arrabiata peso control o sensei respect oni confront a video entertain k zakone saucepan and that's not the end of it that afternoon jam Lorenzo sends a servant to Costanza's house he doesn't cut a throat instead he slashes her perfect face to ribbons so the man who has cut stone to create beauty has cut flesh to destroy it and what do you suppose is burning is punishment for grievous bodily harm and attempted murder Oh a really stiff sentence a three thousand scooty fine except that his pal a pope waives it naughty-naughty says the Pope this mustn't happen again so I sentence you to be married and by the way she just happens to be the most beautiful girl in Rome that should keep you out of mischief papal wink papal nudge so Bernini is married off to Catalina ezio daughter of a Roman lawyer for his part in the fight brother luigi is banished to bologna everyone else goes to jail the servant who did the razor job and insult added her injury Costanza herself convicted of fornication and adultery and what happened to the bust well Bernie knees new wife wouldn't have it in the house which is just as well since Jan Lorenzo couldn't bear to look at it either he might I suppose have smashed it but luckily a made that you buyer from Florence snap to dab which is why we're looking at it here in the Bargello Museum in Florence the Costanza that once was and for us always will be and you're thinking I don't care how good his sculpture is I don't care how important his art is what an absolute bastard please tell me he doesn't get off scot-free well strangely enough it's exactly from this moment of the crime against Costanza that things go swiftly downhill for the Cavalier a untouchable and it all went wrong in the place that mattered most for Bernini the place that made or broke artists and architects the cathedral of some Peters this is the facade of the piece as we all know but the aggressively confident 17th century Pope's didn't want to stop with this they wanted to great bell towers of each corner above where we now see the clocks it was those bells after all that would summon the faithful for papal blessings and make the Christian dream real but in the middle of course was Michelangelo's great dome so the first designs for the towers made them respectfully low safe squat one-story affairs then along comes Bernini constitutionally incapable of deference my towers are going to be taller than your dome he says three stories tall in fact almost 70 meters above the original pedestals six times heavier than the original towers problem was there were ninis towers were about to be built on swampy ground it's not a Bernini didn't know about this before he got started it's just that he's surrounded by yes men you tell him what he wants to hear the building tall towers on dodgy ground is no real problem what needs our brutally honest advisors who aren't afraid of spelling out the risks he's taking there was one person who knew that building at all heavy tower on unstable foundations was asking for trouble and that person was burrow meanie but it seemed to be beneath burning his dignity to ask his rival for advice so without the benefit of borromini's criticism Benigni sails straight into disaster in July 16 41 Bernini unveiled his first tower to the public two months later cracks start to appear Bernini takes to his bed won't eat get so ill he's reported near-death it gets worse the cracks arm just in the foundation of the bell tower they've spread to the facade of the main church itself well acara no contradiction below catenary canoe sierra no my senti DiPrima Lecce von Ohain Campanile a sierra moso a questo debbik rato deli crepin en la fecha de esto era el resultado de facto kato Tequesta papi Abeba no Commission Attila Borya done solo como conquested a captive Ariana a par la a chocobo nany coalition our individual power then in 1644 disaster Pope Urban II 8th Bernini's friend and the staunch supporter of the bell tower dies there's a new pope innocent the tenth and he sees it as his job to get rid of all the old favorites like Bernini after all he has a new favorite Francesco Borromini so after 15 years in Bernini shadow borromini's moment for revenge as at last arrived an inquiry is set up to deal with Bernini Stowers a Remini submits detailed evidence a lovingly rendered drawing of Bernini's disaster well what do you expect so Spiro meanie the towers too tall it's too heavy for its face supports it's too unwieldy it's built recklessly on swampy ground it's amazing actually it hasn't collapsed already it's all very well going digging beneath the tower after the event see how serious the damage is if he'd have asked me since I had know a bit about building I would have told him but he didn't on the 23rd of February 16:46 a meeting was held on the Vatican to discuss the fate of bony ms South Tower but the Pope had already made his decision demolish it the demolition takes 11 months if Bernini had been anywhere near some Peters he would have seen it and heard it the winch is the pulleys the column stacked on the roof down came the bell tower and down with it came jan lorenzo bernini from the heights of Fame and reputation to something like a laughingstock it's 1648 Bernini is 50 old by the standards of the time so how did he survive the humiliation one visiting English student has him collapsing into despair others have him buckling down to work he still does get Commission's but not from the biggest hitters in Rome not anymore it would take a miracle now for him to redeem himself and then that miracle arrived a moment of mind-boggling trauma a moment the wavers between mystery and indecency the body of a saint penetrated the arrow withdrawn from its passage poised to strike again a pain indistinguishable from pleasure gasping woman levitating defying gravity on rippling cushions of stone so who was it that that gave Bernie me the chance to portray a saint in a way no one else had ever dared you can't imagine a more respectable patron than Cardinal Federigo Cornaro who came from an old aristocratic clan that wanted to build a family chapel in the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria he would have known about some Teresa of ávila everyone did she died in her native Spain in 1582 but there was something many things actually which made Teresa an awkward fit for sainthood not least her levitations a rupture came over me so suddenly it almost lifted me out of myself I heard these words now I want you to speak not with men but with angels it's not surprising them that of all the modern Saints it was Teresa who still had no Chapel devoted to her the qunari dynasty who were patrons of her austere order of nuns the barefoot Carmelites jumped in and presented Bernini with the biggest challenge of his career but also the chance for a spectacular comeback it was the most daring drama of the body that he or any other sculptor in the history of art had ever conceived much less executed bernini would certainly have known about some Teresa her autobiography was a best-seller in Catholic Rome like everyone else he would have been startled by the earthy directness of her story but above all he would have been electrified by those moments in which Teresa in the most graphic words imaginable describes what happens to her very close to me an angel appeared in human form in his hands I saw a large golden spear and added iron tip there seemed to be a point of fire I felt as if he plunged these into my heart several times so that it penetrated all the way to my entrance when he drew it out he seemed to throw them out with it and it left me totally inflamed with the great love for God the pain was so severe that it made me moan several times now if there was one thing that Bernini was not it was crude he understood perfectly well that went to razor wrote of her raptures she meant the longing of her soul for a consummated union with God it was the way she wrote about it that made it seem as if her soul and her body are the same thing all of Boerne knees greatest body dramas had featured figures twisting in assent for subpoenas flight from Pluto Daphne rising to the sky as if to escape stony doom now it was time for him to make Teresa levitate this time not in escape from penetration but in craving for it it was time to forget about euphemisms the only way that Bernini could possibly communicate the flood of her sensation was to make visible what he knew of bodily ecstasy the face of a woman at the height of sexual euphoria it's as if he's turning his own intimate knowledge of carnal sin into carnal blessing so of course this isn't the real Teresa middle-aged nun rising up her cell wall with sisters hanging onto her habit no this woman is unforgettably beautiful a match for the exquisite serif angel lover they are in their way a couple smiley faces pointing his arrow not at her breasts at all but rather lower down the torso but how to make visible both their union and the tide of engulfing feeling washing through Theresa and here Bernini has the crucial insight of the whole piece he turns her body inside out so that her covering her habit the symbol of chastity and containment becomes a representation of what's going on inside her it's the accomplice of a helpless dissolution into a liquid bliss it is in fact the climax itself a storm surge of churning sensation cresting and falling as if the marble had been molten and these billows pour themselves from the smiling angel directly into Theresa's robe where they join an ocean of heaving waves that folds into hollows and crevices like surf breaking on ashore there's nothing furtive about any of this Bernini wants us to look and look hard so much that he surrounds the performance with an audience members of the corneria family some watching the show some chatting about what it might mean there's every kind of show lighting fake sunbeams hidden lights at the bag and as Teresa climbs to her Heights the earth really does move look down here the ground is opening and out pop the dead everything is shaking and quaking even the columns of the little chapel and here Bernini adds the coup de Grasse to all those critics who said he couldn't do architecture but bees burrow meanie who specialized in weird counterintuitive bulges and curves Right Said Bernini I'll build you a temple that not just curves and bulges but actually explodes through its columns from the sheer uncontainable force of the drama going on inside the most ambitious thing he'd ever attempted the belltower of some Peters had come crashing down in ignominious failure now it was time for Teresa to rise up and carry with her the resurrected reputation of the disgraced Cavalier a Bernini and you feel him when he's done standing back and saying right told that no one ever could the Cornero love their chapel 12,000 Scootie no problem worth every sciutto word got round the dazzla was back even the sour old Pope Innocent the tenth began to sweeten on Bernini as borromini's skulk unhappily through the Vatican corridors it's not that burro meanie never gets Commission's from the Pope again it's just that it was Bernini who triumphed so wherever you go in Rome now you really in the Cavalier City as you approach some Peters over the Ponte Santangelo you're in the company of Bernini angels and even though he was denied his belt ours are some Peters he did something much better the colonnades which lead us towards the great church its arms gathering believers to the bosom of the faith inside the church past the Baldacchino you're drawn towards there Nene's great light the Holy Spirit at the seat of some Peter hopes came and went but Bernini endured he gave up sinning became a model Christian fathered eleven children never strayed again they said and were told that when he was troubled he'd be found at the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria praying before his shrine to Saint Teresa and what are the others in this story Costanza with a cut-up face eventually got out of jail with the help of her long-suffering husband bah Remini went on to become the great master builder of ever more eccentric and brilliant judges but in the end he never really felt he got true recognition and he never got over bony knees come back eaten up by jealousy and disappointment he ended up by committing suicide and what of brother Luigi well he returned to Rome after his exile and deep into his sixties he was at it again this time caught in flagrante delicto in guess where the precincts of the Holy Church of some Peters where according to court records he was arrested for acts of violent sodomy to clear the family name and secure a papal pardon for his brother Bernini created this the Blessed Ludovico Alba Tony

Channel: Andrea Gherpelli

Views: 69,730

Keywords: Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Architect), Simon Schama's Power Of Art (TV Program), Episode (Award Discipline), Documentary (TV Genre), Documentario, History Channell

Id: dJsD8mmWjM8

Length: 54min 9sec (3249 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 11 2014