The Rome Index
Bernini in Rome
One artist shaped more of Rome's public space than any other — a guide to his work.
Who Bernini was
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) was the dominant figure in Roman art and architecture for over fifty years — sculptor, architect, painter, and theatre designer who effectively worked for every pope from Paul V to Clement X. His productivity was extraordinary: Apollo and Daphne was carved when he was 24.
The sculptures
Galleria Borghese holds his greatest concentration: Apollo and Daphne, The Rape of Proserpina, David, and Aeneas and Anchises — all early works that established his reputation. The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa at Santa Maria della Vittoria is his most theatrically complex later work.
The public spaces
The Piazza Navona Fountain of the Four Rivers. The colonnade of St Peter's Square. The Triton Fountain at Piazza Barberini. The elephant obelisk at Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Bernini's fingerprints are on more of Rome's public life than any other single artist.
A sculptor who also built
Unusually for the era, Bernini worked fluidly across sculpture, architecture and even theatrical stage design — his ability to think across these disciplines simultaneously (using theatrical lighting effects in sculptural installations, for instance) was genuinely unusual and central to his distinctive Baroque style.
Papal favour across multiple pontificates
Bernini maintained the favour of successive popes across an unusually long career (working under eight different pontiffs), a rare feat of professional survival through the shifting politics and personal tastes of Rome's changing papal administrations.
