Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Apollo and Daphne, 1622 X 1625

Rome, Galleria Borghese

This image: Alvesgaspar - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, via https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43509294

Jan Lorenzo Bernini. Was ever a name so completely associated with a particular city at a particular time? That city would be Rome in the seventeenth century. The Rome of the saints - full of a new vitality in the wake of the Counter-Reformation.

It was a city engaged in a frenzy of building and beautification, heralding an exuberant baroque style which would soon spread all over Europe. Popes and cardinals were famed for their taste and patronage: Borghese, Barbarini, Chigi… these family names are now inseparable from their art collections and palazzos. And yet the name Bernini surpasses them all.

In 1644, the diarist John Evelyn visited the theatre in Rome, where, he later recalled, Bernini had ‘painted the scenes, cut the statues, invented the engines, composed the music, written the comedy, and built the theatre’.

With such a prolific genius at the heart of Rome’s artistic life, one might wonder that there was room for anyone else. But rivals there indeed were, not least the mighty figure of Borromini. We will enjoy their work too, as we marvel at the sculpture and painting, churches and palazzos, and fountains and gardens of Bernini’s Rome.

RJW F2519 Online (via Zoom)

3 weeks, Monday 30 June - Monday 14 July.

£45 (individual registration); £80 (for two people sharing one screen).