Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini was an Italian sculptor and architect. A major figure in the world of architecture, he was the leading sculptor of his age, credited with creating the Baroque style of sculpture. As one scholar has commented, What Shakespeare is to drama, Bernini may be to sculpture the first panEuropean sculptor whose name is instantaneously identifiable with a particular manner and vision, and whose influence was inordinately powerful... In addition, he was a painter and a man of the theater he wrote, directed and acted in plays , also designing stage sets and theatrical machinery, as well as a wide variety of decorative art objects including lamps, tables, mirrors, and even coaches. As architect and city planner, he designed both secular buildings and churches and chapels, as well as massive works combining both architecture and sculpture, especially elaborate public fountains and funerary monuments and a whole series of temporary structures for funerals and festivals.

Bernini was born in Naples in 1598 to Angelica Galante and Mannerist sculptor Pietro Bernini, originally from Florence. He was the sixth of their thirteen children. Bernini would not marry until May 1639, at age fortyone, when he wed a twentytwoyearold Roman woman, Caterina Tezio, in an arranged marriage. She bore him eleven children including youngest son Domenico Bernini, who became his first biographer. In 1606, at the age of eight, he accompanied his father to Rome, where Pietro was involved in several high profile projects. There, as a boy, Gian Lorenzos skill was soon noticed by the painter Annibale Carracci and by Pope Paul V, and he soon gained the important patronage of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the papal nephew. His first works were inspired by antique classical sculpture.

Source: Wikipedia