My Muse #2

.I feel like it's time for another installment of "My Muse".

I wanted to save this one until a later date, but I'm on a kick right now and want to talk about it. Anyone more knowledgeable than me is more than welcome to jump in and correct me or whatever.

Today's muse is: 

Self portrait (1623)

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598 - 1680), 17th-century Italian sculptor.

A Faun Teased by Children (1616-17)
Attributed to both Pietro and Lorenzo

Bernini was born on December 7th, 1598 in Naples, Italy. His father, Pietro Bernini, was also a sculptor. He never quite reached the same fame as his son, but he was still incredibly talented. As much as he may have denied it, Lorenzo learned a great deal from his father. Also, a lot of his collabourations with his father were more like "Here, now you try!" sorts of things until Lorenzo got the hang of it.

Since I'm not going to be talking about Pietro anymore, I'm going to go back to calling Lorenzo "Bernini". 

Bust of  Cardinal Richelieu (1641)

Bernini spent pretty much all of his adult life living in Rome, which is where you'll find most of his works. I believe he only ever left Rome once in his life, and that was to go to France in order to do a portrait bust of King Louis XIV. He really never had any desire to leave Rome, and would often require international patrons to send him portraits so that he could do the portrait bust in Rome, and then send it on out to whatever non-Roman destination it needed to reach.

As a person, Bernini was...interesting. He had what's known as a choleric temperament. For those who don't know what that means (like me pre-google), it's basically means that he was very energetic, liked to give orders, and was generally kind of high maintenance. He had a sizable sweet tooth, and he also really liked fruit. The biography I read on him really stressed his love of fruit.
So you don't understand just how much this man loved fruit.

Apparently Bernini also suffered from chronic migraines. That's the exact thing you want to have when you're a sculptor working in a loud studio with glorious sunshine reflecting off the bright, white marble. He apparently had a bit of a temper on him. I can't, for the life of me, figure out why this man would have a short fuse. Just give the poor thing an Excedrin and an apple. However, since such miraculous drugs didn't exist back in Bernini's time, I feel like his next hobby probably helped him with those migraines:

He had a healthy libido.

Bust of Costanza Bonarelli (1636-37)

His most famous lover was a woman by the name of Costanza Bonarelli. She even got her own portrait bust, which remained in the Bernini household long after their fling came to a (bloody) end. Costanza was the wife of one of the workers in Bernini's work shop. So really, Bernini had no business sleeping with her. Neither did Luigi, his brother, which is how the entire thing came to an end. When Bernini found out those two were sleeping together, he took that "I'M GOING TO KILL YOU." thing siblings typically do a little too seriously and almost killed his brother. Costanza's face got slashed as was apparently not too out of the norm for adulterous women...? The pope had enough of the nonsense and forced Bernini to grow up and get married.

Now, aside from the general public, Bernini had a rival. Borromini was an architect at the time, also competing for work in Rome. Normally, sculptors and architects don't really cross paths too often. However, Bernini didn't just sculpt (he dabbled in architecture amongst other things), and therefore was competition for Borromini. It wasn't the sort of rivalry where they'd duke it out in the middle of Rome, but they certainly took their turns taking shots at one another.

"The Ecstasy of St. Theresa" (1647-52)
...I mean, just look at how crappy it is.

Bernini also had a habit of being super critical of his own work. In response to what is probably one of his most famous pieces, "The Ecstasy of St. Teresa", he regarded it as the "least bad" work he'd done.

Least bad.

Not "this is good."

Least.

Bad.

Because it wasn't complete crap, but it was still crap. 

Hopefully I didn't lose anyone there with my sarcasm.

It's getting to be much later than I thought it was, so I'm going to round up this post. I belive, just by looking at the few things I showed you, why he's one of my muses.

Even though I'm not entirely sure how well I'd get along with him as a person, I still really admire his talent and the hard work he put into making all these things.

He's just absolutely ridiculous and I'm obsessed.

I could honestly gush for days, which is why I was kind of sparse on the images. There are just far too many good ones to choose from.