The Anatomy of Baroque Biography: Domenico Bernini's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini Baroque studies having come into their own in the last generation, the literature on Bernini has become so vast that it is increasingly difficult to keep a check on it. The editor of a textual source is always faced with the problem of how far to go in his commentary; he has to incorporate all new research without making his commentary too heavy and cumbersome. -Rudolph Wittkower, 1949 1. Reading Domenico in the Twenty-first Century This is the first English translation, unabridged, of Domenico Bernini's biography of his famous artist-father, originally published in Rome, 1713, under the title Vita def Cavalier Cio. Lorenzo Bernino descritta da Domenico Bernino suo figlio. It is, in fact, the first translation from the Italian into any language and represents the first new edition of Domenico's work in any form since 1713, apart from simple facsimile reprints issued in recent decades.a1 Given the historical importance of its subject and his celebrity status today-among the general public, Bernini is, after Caravaggio, perhaps the best-known and most apopular Italian Baroque artist-one might woander why it has taken nearly three hundred years for this unique and indispensable primary source to make a more widely accessible reappearance in print. After all, Filippo Baldinucci's Life efBemini, first published in 1682 and written by a "foreigner" from Florence who had never even met Bernini, was reedited twice in the twentieth century and received its English translation (recently reprinted) over forty years ago.2 Why the neglect of a biography written by the artist's own son? The reasons for this seemingly strange state of affairs will be described in the pages that follow: the vicissitudes of Domenico's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini is, one could say, the case of a literary "ugly duckling" transformed into a handsome swan. Also conveyed in these introductory pages is the most important background information necessary for a more profitable reading of this Baroque biography by a twenty-first-century audience.3 In contrast, the individual notes appended to the text will comment on the specific data and assertions encountered in Domenico's narrative, completing, correcting, or corroborating his information by means of reliable contemporary documentation, as well as offering more recent alternative interpretations of the facts and events.4 Regarding those facts and events, at the beginning of chapter r, Domenico makes what appears to be a reassuringly modern claim about historical accuracy: It is our intention, therefore, to record in the present work the life of this illustrious personage, whom talent [virtu] alone rendered glorious and celebrated throughout the world. It is, furthermore, our intention to do so with that accuracy demanded of all those who describe events to which almost everyone still alive today has been an eyewitness. Such eyewitnesses could easily contradict an author each time he, in order to garner more admiration for his writing, embellishes the facts and departs from the truth, for truth is the sole merit of history and history is truth alone.5 However, as this Introduction and subsequent notes to the text will make clear, what Domenico considers historical accuracy at times turns out to be something quite less than that. This is occasionally because of the sheer lack of information on his part, but even more frequently, because of his pious need to cast Bernini in the best light possible. No less determinant in the shaping of Domenico's account of his father's life is the fundamental nature of all early modern biography, especially art biography: as modern scholarship has by now amply demonstrated, a good deal of such biography in fact represents not "truth alone" but, rather, the more or less fictionalized recasting of the historical data in accordance to the dictates of literary-rhetorical convention and with recourse to an abundant supply of time-honored thematic commonplaces. Why all of this recasting and manipulation? To make the biographical narrative conform to contemporary expectations of how the life of (in this case) an artist should unfold and how that artist, especially a great one like Bernini, should think, feel, and act. As Philip Sohm reminds us, "Early modern biographies elide the boundaries between fact and fiction in order to conceptualize the category of artist and to mythologize individual artists."6 In this, literary biography was similar to the sculpted portraiture of the age: not only must the sculptor capture the likeness of the sitter as he was as an individual, but the artist must also confer upon the bust those qualities pertaining to the sitter's official state in life-pope, king, prince, or prelatewhether he genuinely possessed them or not. As Bernini says in Paris about the challenge of creating his portrait of Louis XIV, "[I]n this kind of head one must bring out the qualities of a hero as well as make a good likeness." Equally deterrninant of the content and tone of early modern art biography is its essential nature as a form of the rhetorical genre of panegyric: accordingly, the fundamental purpose of the artist's vita is to praise its subject and to offer to the reader inspiring examples of exceptional human achievement.7 Nonetheless, as Sohm also observes, "Historical truth can coexist with mythologized biography." And so it does in the present Life of Gian Lorenzo Bemini, even if Domenico's principal goal is by no means to furnish a complete, detailed account of the basic historical facts regarding his father's life and works.a8 The Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini is an engaging, at times even entertaining, story that is for the most part intelligently composed and skillfully written with the goal of informing, delighting, and capturing the allegiance of the reader.9 Despite the mythologizing to which Bernini's curriculum vitae and personality have been subjected by Domenico, his narrative, nonetheless, conveys much correct information, as we find confirmed by other primary sources. It is, furthermore, an extensive record of what were most likely often-repeated anecdotes and assertions-valid or otherwise-from the mouth of Gian Lorenzo himself, all or most of which no doubt were heard by the author at the family dinner table and other household gatherings. It thus represents a valuable source of information and insight for us today. Yet Domenico's text requires a careful, discerning approach by modern readers: as in his father's art, so too in Domenico's biography, appearances can often be deceiving, and not all that he says can be taken at face value. Indeed, what Domenico describes as a central characteristic of his father's theatricalartistic talent is at times the case with his own editorial comportment, that is, it sometimes "consist[s] in making what is, in fact, artificial [finto], appear real" (Domenico, 57). Again, Domenico's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, like all Baroque biographies, is a product of a specific, now remote, age and "mentality," constructed upon philosophical premises, literary conventions, and rhetorical mechanisms alien, if not inimical, to our own practice of the art of history and its subsidiary genre, biography. This Introduction will spell out the most important of those principles and practices, but first a word is in order about the biography of our biographer, Domenico Bernini. 2. Domenico Bernini (1657-1723): The Known Facts of His Life In the annual Easter census (the so-called stati de/le anime) of their Roman parish of Sant' Andrea delle Fratte, Domenico first appears as a member of the Bernini family in 1658, described there as a putto, an infant.o10 He was born on August 3, 1657, named after his paternal uncle, who had died of plague the year before his birth, a year that earlier saw Gian Lorenzo himself seriously ill with a protracted case ofifehbri terzane doppie, double tertian fevers, presumably a form of malaria. Baptized at home on the same day of his birth because of grave illness, Domenico Stefano-or Stefano Domenico, as also named in the documentation-was the last of the eleven children of Gian Lorenzo and his Roman wife, Caterina Tezio, who had married in 1639.11 Ironically enough for the son of an artist-father celebrated for his many portraits, we possess no visual (or even verbal) record of Domenico's likeness. The only Bernini sibling for whom a certifiable portrait exists is Domenico's oldest brother, Monsignor Pietro Filippo (1640-1698), who made for himself-or, rather, had one made for him by his father-a respectable career in the upper echelons of the Roman ecclesiastical bureaucracy. 12 Bernini's progeny may have been large in size, but it proved small in talent, none of the children even remotely approaching the level of achievement and worldly renown, in any field, of the pate,jamilias. Primacy, such as it is, in this case in fact goes to our Domenico on the basis of his several published works of ecclesiastical history and devotional biography: albeit not exactly enduring classics in their genres, Domenico's writings are, nonetheless, respectable enough in terms of the informed intelligence of their conception, execution, and content. These several volumes (discussed below) gained him the attention and esteem of his contemporaries, even if the preface of the Venice 1737 edition of Domenico's Historia di tutte l'heresie exaggerates in calling him "one of the famous writers of our century."13 Like his older brother Pietro Filippo, Domenico too had first envisionedor, as is quite possible, was obliged by his father to envision-a priestly vocation as his life's work: in the summer of 1671, at the tender age of fourteen, he entered the Jesuit novitiate, not long before his father began his involvement in the great enterprise of the decoration of the vault and cupola of the Jesuit mother church of the Gesu. 14 Three texts document this event. First, the notarized legal instrument of July 1671, first made known by Stanislao Fraschetti, by which Domenico transferred to his father all his earthly possessions, in preparation for his entrance into the novitiate. Second, in the Jesuit archives, the lngressus Novitiorum, a register of those who entered the Jesuit novitiate in Rome in this period: this register officially confirms that the boy, "Stefano Domenico Bernino," arrived on July 1, bringing with him a scant supply of basic clothing, duly listed, a list to which Domenico affixed his own clear, elegant, confidently written, and surprisingly mature signature. 15 And, third, his mother's will, dated September 30, 1672, which mentions that "Stefano Domenico has become a Jesuit, and is today known as 'Father Don1enico."'a16 Domenico's religious vocation, however, was only temporary, as he himself explains in The Life of Gia11 Lorenzo Bernini (52-5 3): "Domenico was likewise called to the ranks of the Roman prelature, but by mysterious disposition of the heavens, having fallen in love with a respectable and well-bred Roman maiden,ajoined and is still joined in holy matrimony with her." The statement calls for two comments. First, to describe one's vocation in the Society of Jesus-if that were, indeed, to which he here refers-as "a call to the prelature" (that is, to the privileged upper echelons of the Roman clergy holding the more important curial offices) would betray a profound lack of synchronicity with the fundamental reform spirit of the Jesuit order, whose members, as per explicit mandate from their founder, Saint Ignatius Loyola, were to shun all ecclesiastical honors. In reality, as we shall see, Domenico is not referring to his entrance into the Society of Jesus. Second, as extant documentation obliges us to conclude, the onset of marital love was not what put to an end Domenico's Jesuit vocation: his father's last will and testament, drawn up in November 1680, refers to Domenico at all times as Signore, a lay, not clerical, title, thus indicating that by that date Signor Domenico had already left clerical life and was thus a layman once again. He was, furthermore, still unmarried, with no immediate prospects in sight, as one infers from the clause in that will, "should Domenico take a wife and have children."17 As we shall shortly see, it was a second religious vocation on Domenico's part that wasaterminated by "the mysterious disposition of the heavens," calling him instead to matrimony. Domenico's departure from the Society of Jesus must have occurred before January 1, 1674, since the boy's name is missing from the membership list in the catalogue of the Roman Jesuit Province, compiled "sub fine 1674," that is, at the end of that year. The further fact that his name is not included even in the Dimissi list of that same catalogue, recording all those who had left the Society (voluntarily or involuntarily) during the calendar year 1674, suggests that he had departed in the previous year, 1673. He probably left at the end of his twoyear novitiate sometime in the late su111111er, as a result of the formal discernment process that normally takes place before official approval for the taking of vows in August.18 However, upon leaving the order, the young, financially dependent man presumably would have returned home to his own family on the Via della Mercede-unless his notoriously choleric father had punished him by banishing him from the family fold, but that seems unlikely given the boy's tender age and his lack of culpability in simply coming to the realization that a Jesuit vocation was not for him. There is certainly no indication whatsoever of rancor or resentment toward Domenico in Gian Lorenzo's will of November 1680; that will, in fact, expresses the desire that all the Bernini sons live together under the same roof 19 Yet the fact is that, absent from the annual parish census since 1672, Domenico does not reappear on that list as resident of the Bernini household until 1681.20 The question now becomes: Where was Domenico living and what was he doing in the nine-year period between his departure from the Jesuit novitiate and his return to the family fold? The July 22, 1686, last will and testament of longtime, faithful Bernini maggiordomo, Cosimo Scarlatti-a document drawn up, as it states, right in the Bernini home-suggests an answer. In that document, Scarlatti appoints Domenico as his universal heir and, in so doing, refers to him with the clerical title of Abbate: "Ill.o Sig.r Abb.e."i21 The appellation abbate (in modern Italian spelled abate) is in this case to be translated not as "abbot" (the head of an abbey), but rather, as we do in English, with the French term abbe, designating a member of the secular clergy who may only be in minor orders and without formal ecclesiastical duties, whether living on his own or in the. family household. Given the formal, legal status of Scarlatti's will, it is unlikely that his use of this clerical title is simply a mistake or represents some sort of domestic nickname. Recall, as we heard, that Domenico himself said that he had been called to the "prelature," a term normally reserved for, again, the secular clergy (as opposed to those in religious orders, such as the Jesuits, Franciscans, or Dominicans, who pronounce vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience). This detail would lead us to conclude that, upon leaving the Jesuit novitiate, Domenico embarked on another and likewise temporary career in the secular clergy with the hopes of entering the exalted higher ranks of the clergy holding the more important and more lucrative offices in the papal administration.o22 In so doing, he was presumably living in one of the residential colleges ofoRome, if not outside the city, until returning to the family residence. The fact that his father's will makes no reference to Domenico's clerical state again suggests that, after his several years of residential college study ( of presumably the usual curriculum of philosophy, theology, or canon law), the young man had given up on the idea of a clerical vocation and returned home by November 1680 (when the will was drawn up). At the same time, however, the Scarlatti will leads us to conclude that Domenico had, subsequently and once again, pursued and successfully attained this clerical goal sometime before 1686 (the date of the Scarlatti will referring to him as abbate). Domenico's status in the late 1680s is further confirmed by another legal document relating to the Bernini family, dated January 1687, in which he again is given the title of abbate. 23 It would have been sometime after January 1687 that, as Domenico tells us in The Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, "Providence" struck, causing him to fall in love with and marry his "respectable and well-bred Ron1an maiden."24 Be that as it may, having mentioned this supposedly heaven-sent love and marriage, Domenico does not bother to even supply us with the name of his wife. He specifies only that he is father of one son and two daughters, one of whom, Caterina, was a nun in the monastery of Santa Rufina in Rome, together with two of her paternal aunts (Domenico, 53). Apart from an amusing but not terribly self-revealing anecdote regarding his flustered behavior as a boy during a visit to the Bernini home by Pope Alexander VII (Domenico, 105-6), Domenico tells us nothing further about his personal life. He does point out with pride the fact of his authorship of several published works, these representing, as he declares (Domenico, 53), "the more noble (offspring] of his mind," more noble, that is, than the offspring of his body, a remark that strikes our modern ears as rather disparaging of his own flesh-and-blood children and their nameless mother. 3. Domenico's Career as Professional Author: Works, Recurrent Themes, Ideology His Published Works Since a considerable financial inheritance from his millionaire father afforded him (and his brothers) a life of leisure, Domenico took up the profession of a gentleman writer and went on to produce six literarily respectable tomes, which gained him some notoriety in the cultured circles of early eighteenthcentury Italy. He inaugurated his writing career with the Memorie historiche di cio che hanno operato Ii Sommi Pontefici nelle guerre contro i Titrchi (vol. 1, 1685; vol. 2, 1695), composed, he says in its preface, "in si fresca eta" (at such a "fresh," tender, age), and documenting the military campaigns undertaken or encouraged by the popes to oppose Turkish expansion into Europe.i25 Several years later came the four-volume Historia di tutte l'heresie (rst ed., 1705-9), a monumental work, issued with special papal privilege, which had been twenty years in the making, as he informs us in its preface. These four densely packed volumes describe in detailed fashion and chronological order the entire series of heresies that struck the Roman Church from its foundation onward, all of which, however, the author would have us believe, were successfully refuted and repelled. Declaring in his dedicatory letter to Pope Clement XI that he had always had an appetite for ecclesiastical history "sin dalla mia piu fresca eta" (from the time of my earliest youth), Domenico gives demonstration of his erudition and mastery over a daunting amount of primary and secondary sources synthesized in clear, methodical, if not always accurate (and never nonpartisan) fashion. Domenico's efforts were rewarded with the subsequent, three-time republication of Historia di tutte l'heresie and its appearance in abridged form, an edition that also went through several printings. This pro-papal, staunchly apologetic publication, followed others of similar ilk, probably earned Domenico from a grateful Holy See the later title of Conte (Count), a title that passed on to his son, Giovanni Lorenzo.i26 Domenico's next literary production, II Tribunale della S. Rota Romana (1717), is much less ambitious in its scope: a scrupulously documented history of one single but august papal judicial institution. Though soon superseded as a work of reference, this volume, nonetheless, we are told, has the merit of being one of the very first systematic histories of any branch of the ancient and complex Roman curial bureaucracy.27 Earlier, in 1713, the same year that saw the publication of the present biography of his father Gian Lorenzo, Domenico had been asked by Pope Clement XI to compile information on the life and character of the saintly Cardinal Giuseppe Maria Tomasi for the purposes of his future canonization. In 1722, Domenico's initial succinct "report," the Ragguaglio della vita del venerabile D. Giuseppe Maria Tomasi, written (as the author's preface reveals) in only thirty-four days, was expanded into a full-size biography and published as the Vita del venerabile D. Giuseppe Maria Tomasi. In that same year, 1722, Domenico also published his final work, another pious biography, the Vita del venerabile Giuseppe da Copertino, this too written in order to gratify the wishes of the reigning pope, Innocent XIII, in whose former episcopal diocese the Venerable Giuseppe (famous for his feats ofilevitation) had long labored.28 Domenico died the following year, 1723; his only other known literary effort is a long Latin poem, included in his Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini (15a1-52), composed in polished dactylic hexameters, in honor of his father's equestrian statue of Louis XIV, perhaps written in 1677 (the year the statue was completed). Three Conclusions About Domenico: Historian, Apologist, Hagiographer Closer study of Domenico's published works would undoubtedly reveal more about the man and his modus operandi as historian and biographer. However, just from this quick survey and brief description of Domenico's works, one can draw certain useful cor:clusions about his authorial practice and ideology that appear to have been constants in his adult life and are, thus, directly relevant to our reading of his Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. First, by the time of the final redaction of that biography ( undertaken in 171 1), Domenico was an accomplished writer and professional historian who appears reasonably well acquainted with the theory and praxis of his trade. He had had significant practice in the difficult task of reconstructing the past from its remaining fragments, using primary as well as secondary sources. He knew precisely how he wished to consatruct, shape, and color his various historical-biographical narratives, including that of his father's career and teachings. As is evident in the passage quoted above from the exordium of The Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Domenico was specifically aware of the important question of historical accuracy and authorial point of view and "objectivity," even if, in actual practice, within the vita of his father, he most often chooses to set objectivity aside. In another work, Domenico's abandonment of authorial objectivity is explicit and conscious, as he confesses in the preface to his Memorie historiche di cio che hanno operato Ii Sommi Pontefici: "In order to secure the confidence of their readers, historians are wont, at the very beginning of their works, to declare that they are completely free of any form of bias with respect to those subjects and those issues they are about to discuss. I myself, in contrast, declare that I am so personally invested in the present history that I could perhaps be carried away by an excess of adulation [for the revered Vicars ofaChrist)."29 Even ifhe admits himselfa"carried away" by personal allegiance (in this case, to the Roman pontiffs), what is important to note is Domenico's conscious awareness of the principles of his trade, that is, he knows that historians should be editorially impartial. Hence, in The Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, we are not dealing with the simple, literarily, or historically naive reminiscences of an amateur son, but rather the deliberately, self-consciously constructed narrative of a professional man ofletters. It is as such that we can and will interrogate Domenico's work in the pages that follow. A second conclusion that one can safely draw from an examination of Domenico's professional career concerns its ideological allegiance: not only does Domenico prove to be devoutly, faithfully, and exclusively Roman Catholic in the choice of the subjects of his books, but his religious politics are decidedly and consistently pro-papal in the most rigidly partisan, apologetic fashion. This political alJegiance, by the time of Domenico's adulthood, was probably a firmly entrenched feature of the psyche and modus operandi of the Bernini family. The Bernini heirs would have been welJ aware that the family's fortunes had had their origins in the patronage of a pope, that is, in the r6o6 summoning of Pietro Bernini from Naples to Rome by the Borghese pope Paul V to work on the Cappella Paolina in Santa Maria Maggiorea. Pietro's descendents would have also been aware of the fact that thereafter, throughout the lives and careers of Gian Lorenzo and some of his siblings (such as Luigi and Vincenzo) and sons (such as Pietro Filippo), the Bernini family had derived much of its continued employment, financial enrichment (not the least in the form of numerous benefices and other papal sinecures), and social status, directly and indirectly, from the papacy. All of this came as a result not only of Gian Lorenzo's artistic talent and celebrity status but also the clan's unwavering political allegiance. The sincerity of his religious beliefs aside (which, in any case, at this point one cannot either prove or disprove), Domenico knew, like his father, on what side his bread was buttered. We have already heard Domenico speak of his adulation for the popes, "adorati Vicari di Cristo," in his work on the Turkish wars: in that same volume, he signs his dedicatory letter to Pope Innocent XIII with the self-description "Your Most Humble, Most Obedient, and Most Obligated Subject" (Humilissimo Ubbidientissimo Obbligatissimo Suddito), a fulsome display of obeisance, even by the groveling Baroque standards of the day. The ardent pro-papalism characteristic of Domenico's other published works is a trait of his Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini as well. This is especially evident when one compares it to its 1682 counterpart, Baldinucci's Life of Bernini: Domenico devotes much more attention than Baldinucci to the institution of the papacy and to the personalities and gesta of the pontiffs, especially with regard to their efforts for the greater glory of the city of Rome (through, of course, the indispensable instrument of Bernini's genius). Not only does Domenico have much more to say about the popes, but what he does say is also, when not openly encomiastic, then certainly free from any shadow of criticism. Indeed, this represents one of the major goals of The Life of Gia11 Lorenzo Bernini, namely, to praise the popes at-the same time it praises Bernini. Domenico says as much in a statement made in 1722, at the end of his career, when summarizing the subjects of his published works: [T]he practice of our profession, we have never, over the span of fiftyofive years and up through the present day, taken up pen in hand except in order to sanctify it in accounts of ecclesiastical matters, be they clamorous as in the wars waged against the Turks, or laborious as in the toilsome rebuttal of heretics, or honorably pleasurable as in the descriptions given of the embellishments, both sacred and profane, made to the city of Rome of which the sacred primacy of the Roman papacy can boast no less than the august magnificence of the Roman principate.30 Among the several volumes of Domenico's authorship, the book here in question containing those "honorably pleasurable descriptions" of the embellishment of Rome by the popes and "princes" (above all, Cardinal Nephews and other cardinal patrons) can only be The Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. At first glance, this might strike one as a curious way to describe the contents or goal of the biography of his father, but amid all the data and commentary referring to Gian Lorenzo in Domenico's narrative, this is indeed what we find there-a highly flattering portrayal of papal enterprise for the greater glory of God and the Eternal City. Even outside the topic of their efforts on behalf of Rome, Domenico's tone in describing the character and behavior of the popes is ever respectful of their persons. His interpretation of their behavior is, accordingly, always favorable and, where need be, diplomatically whitewashed. This is so even in the face of abundant evidence to the contrary that would have been certainly known to both him and his contemporaries (such as the perilous exhaustion of the papal treasury caused by that monumental "embellishment" program); it is so even in the case of those popes who treated Bernini with less regard than he deserved, namely, Innocent X (initially), Clement X, and Innocent XI. In Domenico's eyes, it seems, popes (and cardinals too, especially the Bernini patrons among them) could do no wrong. Also included under the same umbrella of infallibility, in Domenico's eye, was the notorious Holy Office of the Inquisition. This we hear, most notably, in his commentary on the fate of Galileo Galilei: [B]ut we, to whom every decree of the Holy Inquisition is venerable, whether it be promulgated or merely described, submit to [those decrees], without critique constructed upon subtleties and distinctionmaking; Pope Urban, who kept watch over the preservation of the purity of our religion, on earth and in heaven, had Galileo incarcerated in the prisons of the Holy Office and held him there for five years, that is, until, both in writing and by his spoken word, he recanted of his error, thus dying in communion with the Church, at nearly eighty years of age, as a good Catholic and a great astrologer [Astrologo], had he not attempted to arrest the sun in its grand movement.31 Now, as far as Domenico's Life if Gian Lorenzo Bernini is concerned, it is true that one of the conventions governing Baroque biography was its conscious and deliberate aim of offering examples of active virtue to praise and emulate, rather than displays of vice to avoid or error and foolishness to condemn. But again, even by the standards of the day, the degree of Domenico's wholesale deference to his papal-and, in general, ecclesiastical-subjects goes beyond the pale, as I shall have further occasion to point out in the notes to the text. A third and final conclusion pertinent to our reading of The Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini that can be drawn from Domenico's publication record is his obvious taste and talent for hagiography, that is, the recounting of the edifying lives of the heroically virtuous, whether canonized or not. True, Domenico's published works of hagiography all postdate his Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, but I daresay that when Pope Clement XI first called upon Domenico in 1713 to compose the life of the Venerable Tomasi, the pontiff had good reason to expect that our author had both the literary skills and proper ideological credentials for such a genre ofaliterature.32 Certainly, in reading The Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the pope (or whoever of his advisers reconunended Domenico for the Tomasi assignment) would have understood that Domenico indeed possessed the necessary qualifications not only of a biographer, but more specifically of a hagiographer. That is to say, an author who could properly identify and persuasively describe-according to the acceptable conventions of the day-the moral virtues of an individual in the myriad ways, small and large, obvious and not so obvious, in which such virtues manifested themselves in his or her life. Of course, not just any kind of moral virtue was necessary, but virtue that conformed to and confirmed official Roman Catholic orthodoxy. This took an eye trained in and faithful to that orthodoxy, as well as steeped in the rhetorical conventions of such literature. In The Life if Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Domenico's goal is as much as that of illustarating, proving, and praising the moral virtue of the man as that of demonstrating the talent and accomplishments of the artist. Thus, when Domenico terminates the biography with the proclamation, printed in emphatic capital letters, that his father, in every aspect of his life, was "A GREAT MAN," Domenico is making a spiritualmoral claim about Bernini, as well as an artistaic-professional one. Given the tenor of his family life, Domenico was likelya" to have received in childhood a solid serving of hagiographic literature of all varieties (biographies, sermons, theatrical plays, poetry). This initial training would have been subsequently reinforced by his two years of Jesuit novitaiate since such works of edifying piety and moral exhortation typically represented a large part of the novices' education. Hence, by the time he came to write or definitively redact his Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Domenico would have been thoroughly conversant with the theory and praxis of the genre of hagiography. To be sure, whatever his previous schooling, it is no surprise that in the account of his father's life, Domenico's tone is "hagiographical," that is, idealizing and idolizing. Contemporary notions of filial piety would not have permitted otherwise. Furthermore, even in secular biography, one of the primary goals was to offer readers "useful" examples of eminent virtue with which to inspire in the reader a sense of awe and a desire for emulation. This represents the very first guideline offered to would-be writers of vite by Agostino Mascardi, author of De arte historica, one of the most widely disseminated, influential manuals on the art of historaiography of seventeenth-century Italy. It is not difficult to see how such advice would encourage a hagiographic approach to the writing of biographies.33 Furthermore, at that time, of all forms of contemporary biography, as Rubin reminds us, "Saint's Lives were the most common"; hence their influence on biographers was pervasive, if not inescapable, in early modern Italian culture, especially to someone as piously predisposed as Domenico.34 One need not be an expert in hagiographic literature to readily recognize in Domenico's text some of the classic recurrent themes (or variataions thereupon) that are staples of traditaional lives of the saints, such as, most famously (especially in seventeenth-century Rome), those of Francis of Assisi and Ignatius Loyola. Among the topoi in question are the following:35 (a) the future saints' coming into the world was decreed by the will of Providence for the benefit of humankind (Domenico, 1-2); (b) eschewing the usual childish pursuits of play and pleasure, they exhibit in their youth adultlike maturity (the puer-senex topos) and astounding display(s) of their future heroic virtue (Domenico, chapters I and 2, passim); (c) their future greatness is heralded by the prophecies of elder authoritative figures, such as those uttered by Pope Paul V (Domenico, 9) and Annibale Carracci (Domenico, 9-10, 37-38); (d) a prolonged, near-fatal illness or some such traumatic event leads to a major change in the direction of their life, putting an end to the carefree, often dissolute ways of youth, if not indeed occasioning an outright dramatic spiritual conversion (Domenico, 48);36 (e) they patiently suffer unjust, severe persecution in the process of realizing their divinely ordained mission (Domenico, So), protected along the way by God, who quietly disposes people and circumstances in their favor (Domenico, II, 93); (f) they work miracles as proof of their special status (Domenico, passim, in the form of works of art); (g) they exhibit at times superhuman degrees of physical strength and endurance (Domenico, 12-13, 15, 178); (h) their work ultimately (if not immediately) serves to enhance the status of the ecclesiastical orthodoxy and authority (Domenico, passim); and, finally, (i) they experience a piously edifying final illness and death, as further confirmation of the genuine holiness of their life (Domenico, chapter 23). So much does Domenico cast his father in the guise of the traditional Catholic saint that it is almost as if our author wishes in the end to move his readers to exclaim, "San Gian Lorenzo, prega per noi!" Saint Gian Lorenzo, pray for us! 4. The Genesis and Critical Fortune of Domenico's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini The Publisher's Testimony In his letter to the reader prefacing Domenico's Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Roman publisher Rocco Bernabo informs us how he came to produce the volume:37 On the occasion of the publication of the History efAll Heresies Recounted by the fllustrious Signor Domenico Bernini, in the course of my frequent examination of the manuscripts accumulated by that indefatigable and erudite individual, I was fortunate to come upon The Life of the Cavalier Gian Lorenzo Bernini his father, composed by him as well, many years previous, in his most florid youth, that is to say, before he undertook that great labor of the four volumes of the aforementioned history of heresy. I requested this work from him, in order that I might once again ennoble my presses with another of his fine compositions; he graciously granted my request, making some corrections as well as additions to the text. The account seems plausible enough, but, in light of the many other manipulations of fact that we find in The Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, we are obliged to wonder: Is it true? Might it instead be a smoke screen? That is, was it instead Domenico himself who had taken the initiative to ask Bernabo to publish the biography, but, out of modesty or editorial uncertainty, wanted to hide the fact behind the cloak of this "official" tale told by his publisher? The latter suspicion is impossible to prove, but not beyond the realm of the possible. In any case, if the title page is to be believed, it was Bernabo who published the volume at his own expense (a spese di), and not Domenico-nor presumably Cardinal Pico della Mirandola, to whom the volume is dedicated. Given what other evidence the text affords us, the publication chronology here indicated by Bernabo would appear correct: the decision to publish The Life of Gian Lorenzo Bemini was made shortly after the publication of the qrtattro tomi, the four volumes, of the Historia di tutte l'heresie, the last volume of that work appearing in 1709.38 We know-for it is printed on the "Imprimatur" page of the biography-that the formal judgment of the ecclesiastical censor of Domenico's text, Jesuit Father Francesco Maria Guelfi, was dated January 16, 1712. The manuscript was thus probably submitted to the censor sometime in 1711, after Domenico had had sufficient time to revise the text. Indeed, Domenico tells us, in his catalogue of Bernini's children given in chapter 7, that he, the author of the present work, is writing (in reality, revising) it "at the still vigorous age of fifty-four" (Domenico, 53), namely, 1711. In the same preface to the reader, publisher Bernabo also happens to mention that Domenico composed this biography "in the full flower of his youth ['nella sua piu florida eta'], that is to say, even before he undertook his great labor of the four aforementioned volumes on heresy." Albeit vague, this is an important piece of information. But how to evaluate that absolute superlative, "nella sua piu florida eta" (literally, "in his most florid age"), in terms of actual chronology? In the preface to his work on heresy, Domenico tells us that he began that historical enterprise twenty years before the publication of its first volume (1705): this would take us to 1685. In that same year of 1685, Domenico published his first work, the Memorie istoriche, and in its preface uses a similar expression to refer to his age at the time of publication: "in si fresca eta" (at such a fresh [young] age). Bernabo's decidedly more emphatic expression, "nella sua piu florida eta"-which may have come directly from Domenico-would seem to indicate that the composition of The Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini predated even his 1685 volume on the popes and the Turks, perhaps by several full years. This could thus take us back to the same period in which Filippo Baldinucci was composing his Life of Bernini, published in 1682. If correct, this chronology lends significant support to the now-current assumption that not only was Baldinucci's Life efBernini based upon extensive materials supplied to the Florentine historian by Bernini's sons, but that these latter materials also may have included a rather well-elaborated biographical narrative written by Domenico, possibly some earlier version of his Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, comprising a great deal of the same text found in the 1713 edition. Filippo Baldinucci and His Life of Bernini (1682) But why would Domenico have supplied Baldinucci with such an elaborate text in the early 1680s? Why did Domenico not simply publish his own work under his own name at that time? In order to answer those questions, we need to take up the story of the origins of the Baldinucci biography.39 The "official" account of the early history of Baldinucci's biography of Bernini is to be found, with significantly differing details, in two sources: first, Baldinucci's preface to the later, abridged version of the vita of Bernini included in one of the posthumously published volumes of his collection of artists' lives, Notizie dei professori de/ disegno da Cimabue in qua (6 vols., 1681-1728), and, second, the biography of the same Filippo Baldinucci (1625a-1696) written by his son, Francesco Saverio (1663a-1738).40 In the original 1682 edition of the Bernini biography, let us note, the Florentine author is virtually silent about the issue of its origins, except to the extent that he gives the reader-in his letter of dedication-the distinct impression that the publication was occasioned by the direct and sole request of Queen Christina of Sweden. As we shall see shortly, this silence was in fact meant to help perpetrate a diplomatic lie. The official story in any case is simple: according to the posthumously published preface to Baldinucci's Notizie, in 1681, the year following Bernini's death, Christina (known to all as a great friend and defender of Bernini) asked Filippo through an unidentified ecclesiasatical intermediary ("per mezzo di degnissimo prelato") to compose the story of the artist's life and to dedicate the volume to her.41 Baldinucci next mentions a subsequent trip to Rome, undertaken, he says, "almost expressly" (quasi apposta [ emphasis added]) for the purpose of receiving this commission directly from Christina herself, of examining the artist's works firsthand, and of collecting the necessary information from persons in a position to dispense such information, especially Bernini's disciple and assistant of twenty-five years, Mattia de' Rossi. In the later biography of his father, Francesco Saverio instead tells a different story: there is no mention of the initial, indirect commission through the aforementioned anonymous prelate. Rather, according to Francesco Saverio, the commission came, first and only, in the course of a visit by Filippo to the Roman residence of Queen Christina. Furthermore, the primary motivation for Filippo's journey to Rome had nothing to do with Bernini; it was instead undertaken to escort his fifteen-year-old son Antonio to the Jesuit novitiate there. (We know from other sources that the trip to Rome took place in April and May of the same year reported by Filippo, 1681.)42 Learning that Filippo was in Rome, Francesco Saverio then tells us, Queen Christina invited him to her residence. This first visit to Palazzo Riario was occupied by long "various and erudite conversations about all the beautiful and noble things found in Florence and Rome." Then came a guided tour of her extensive art collection, with no mention of a Bernini biography during any of this lengthy visit. This initial visit was followed, some unspecified time later, by a second one by Filippo to Christina's home. Francesco Saverio does not note whether this second visit was also the result of the queen's summons or Filippo's request. He simply observes: "Having returned, thereafter, one day to the queen, he was received by her in the same welcoming manner." On that occasion, the queen "immediately led" Baldinucci to see her prized treasure, Bernini's bust of the Savior, "his most beautiful and final work," and after having discoursed at length about that work and its creator, only then did the queen pronounce her desire that Baldinucci write Bernini's biography, promising to procure for him "an abundance of reliable information." Why was Baldinucci chosen for this task? Because, according to Francesco Saverio, the queen "knew that he had already composed the lives of other artists." Although he had not previously visited Rome to see Bernini's works, Baldinucci presumably would have already had some contact with them in the form of prints and the Bernini drawings in the famous collection of Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici. (The latter collection, let us note, was under the care of the same Baldinucci who had also published an inventory of its contents in 1673). 43 Among the sources of the "reliable information" promised by Christina were the sons of Bernini themselves, who, summoned at that point by the queen, were persuaded to assist in this biographical project ("tanto fece •À?a regina] che avendo a se i virtuosi figli del Bernino"). Baldinucci accepted and began his work immediately in Rome. A large part of his work at that point consisted in interviewing "prominent architects" in order to refute the calumny spread (beginning in April 1680) against Bernini over the infamous affair of the cracks in the cupola of Saint Peter's, supposedly caused by his work on the four piers susataining that imposing structure, during the pontificate of Urban VIIl.a44 At the end of his Roman visit-which included two audiences with Pope Innocent XI-Baldinucci took his leave from the queen and from certain other Roman acquaintances, "who had become very fond of him." The latter acquaintances included Cardinal Girolamo Casanate ( 1620 1700, after whom Rome's Biblioteca Casanatense is named) and Monsignor Pietro Filippo Bernini, "with whom he had spent many hours together." Returning to Florence, Baldinucci finished the biography "with the greatest concentration and in a few months," dedicating it to Christina. This "official account" of the origins of the Baldinucci biography, wherein Christina is prime mover, seems to have been universally accepted and unquestioned until relatively recent times. This is the case despite the discrepancies between the two sources, which were either not noticed or were minimized as to their implications. Thus, to uncritical readers, uninformed of the true facts, Domenico's own biography, published thirty-one years later, from the pen of a pious son and without the cachet of a royal seal of approval, could only be judged a derivative, highly partisan, less reliable, and therefore far less valuable version of the same facts. Furthermore, the same readers, seeing significant portions of the "earlier" Baldinucci biography repeated verbatim or nearly verbatim in Domenico's text, could only consider the latter a gross example of plagiarism, whether or not they attached to the act of plagiarism the same stigma of moral culpability that our society does today. To tell the truth, however, between the time these two biographies were published and the year 1900-the publication date of Stanislao Fraschetti's monumental Il Bernini, which marks the beginning of modern Bernini biographical scholarship-we know little or nothing about the response to either Baldinucci's or Domenico's biography.45 Until well into the twentieth century, there seems to have been scarce interest in the intimate biographical data and thus documentary sources of Bernini's life, especially in the wake of the precipitous, long-term decline in the artist's reputation, itself part of the European-wide repudiation of the Baroque. Nonetheless, the disdainful, dismissive treatment ofaDomenico's text by eminent Italian art historian Adolfo Venturi (1856a-1941), in his preface to the 1900 Fraschetti biography, undoubtedly echoes the sentiments of many readers who had enough interest in Bernini's life to read both biographies but not enough to then ask the proper critical historical and philological questions. True, Venturi's judgment of Baldinucci's "hastily written" biography, "filled with errors and uncertainties," is also disparaging, but far less so than his treatment of Domenico, who is simply made to appear ridiculous: Domenico represents merely a "beadle," says Venturi, in comparison to Baldinucci, "the Florentine scholar dressed in his august academic robes." 1966: The "Ugly Duckling" Turns into a Handsome Swan Such was the editorial situation that prevailed until 1966, a situation in which Baldinucci's biography was accorded absolute priority over that of Domenico's by virtue of its presumed far earlier birth and royal seal of approval. Even the better-informed and more critical Sergio Samek Ludovici, responsible for the 1948 annotated edition of Filippo Ba]dinucci's Life of Bernini (published together with Francesco Saverio's biography of Filippo), declared that Domenico's text represents "for the most part, a plagiarized version of the present [vita] by BaJdinucci." In the same work, Samek Ludovici also completely disrnisses as "unsustainable" (ne appar sostenibile) the "Domenicocame-first" thesis advanced in 1919 by the eminent art historian Erwin Panofsky, who appears to have been the lone voice defending Domenico in the pre-1966 period.46 That year, 1966, marks the critical turning point in the fortunes of Domenico's biography-the beginning of the transformation of this "ugly duckling" of a text into a handsome swan-brought about by the publication of Cesare D'Onofrio's seminal article, "Priorita della biografia di Domenico Bernini su quella de] Baldinucci."o47 Popular historian of the city of Rome and assiduous frequenter of the local archives, D'Onofrio did what no other previous scholar (except possibly Panofsky) seems to have done. That is to say, he read both Baldinucci's and Domenico's texts with a truly (though not infallibly) critical eye and asked some fundamental, really, commonsense questions: Why would Domenico, in publishing an account of his father's life, have ever done the "absurd" thing of simply "slavishly" copying large portions of the Florentine author's text, "without, furthermore, worrying about appearing in public as a brazen and foolish plagiarist"? Why, D'Onofrio further asks, would Domenico, a well-known, competent, professional historian, who had just published four "formidable" volumes on the history of heresy, and so was capable of doing his own research and writing, have had to plunder an equally well-known biography written by another distinguished author about a person who was no less than his own father? And why in doing so would Domenico then dare dedicate it to such an eminent, respected personage of contemporary Rome, Cardinal Lodovico Pico della Mirandola?48 Troubled by such questions, D'Onofrio was able to find archival documentation that confirmed his suspicions about the veracity of the "official" Baldinucci story. These included, above all, unpublished letters from Baldinucci in Florence to Mons. Pietro Filippo in Rome, both dating from well before the April-May 1681 visit to Rome-indeed, one was written barely two weeks after Bernini's death in 1680. This correspondence attests to the fact that the Florentine author was already firmly engaged, before April 1681, in writing the life (a memoria, Baldinucci calls it) of the recently deceased artist. It also reveals that the Bernini sons were actively and intimately involved in its preparation, supplying what was likely much more than just skeletal notes about their father's life and works: given the amount of textual overlap between Baldinucci's 1682 vita and Domenico's 1713 volume, it is assumed that in fact the family supplied some form of extensively elaborated manuscript account composed by Domenico. At the same time, D'Onofrio was able to show that as a matter of course this represented common editorial practice for Baldinucci in composing the vite of the artists for his Notizie dei professori de/ disegno, namely, to simply copy (either verbatim or closely so) and weave together the disparate memoranda, reports, descriptions, and other (at times rather lengthy) texts prepared at his request by family and friends of the artist in question and publish them instead under his own name, with no acknowledgment of his sources.o49 In reconstructing the circumstances in which Domenico's biography came to be, D'Onofrio made mistakes (such as misreading the date of one ofoBaldinucci's letters)5å¡ and did not uncover all the pieces of the puzzle (and as a result, for example, still believed that Christina had taken the initiative in commissioning Baldinucci to write the full-fledged biography of Bernini). Nonetheless, to him goes the credit of first deconstructing the mendacious official story given by the two Baldinucci men (Filippo and son Francesco Saverio) and thus beginning the process of Domenico's rehabilitation. Consequently, as Delbeke, Levy, and Ostrow explain, "D'Onofrio's radical assessment of Domenico's priority was understood as a judgment on the truth value of his text. Baldinucci's biography lost its authenticity, historical accuracy, and coherence. Thus, the critical condemnation that had befallen Domenico was simply reversed."51 This is not to say, however, that scholars immediately learned arid fully absorbed the lesson ofoD'Onofrio's article and thus ceased to consult or cite Baldinucci's story: this is not at all the case; but it did mean from then on that Domenico's version of his father's life could no longer be ignored. But why would both Filippo and Francesco Saverio Baldinucci falsify the story of the origins of the 1682 Bernini biography? Why would Queen Christina lend her name to this deception?52 And why would Domenico, in printing his own biography in 1713, remain completely silent on the issue? It took thirty more years after the publication of D'Onofrio's 1966 article to arrive at a satisfactory answer-or, at least, a reasonable, persuasive conjectureand that answer was supplied by Tomaso Montanari's 1998 essay "Bernini e Cristina da Svezia: AJle origini della storiografia berniniana."53 As important and as revelatory as D'Onofrio's essay was, it seems neither to have garnered great attention nor inspired a big, immediate rush to explore the issue further, for there was still insufficient interest in the problem of the biographical sources of Bernini's life. That interest slowly developed over the years, along with the gradual rekindling and eventual full reflowering of Bernini's artistic reputation, provoked in part by the anniversaries of his death (1980) and birth (1998), which brought much new attention to his accomplishments in the form of numerous exhibitions, conferences, and other public events before, during, and right after the actual anniversary dates. The resurgence of Bernini's popularity also came as a result in a significant change in the zeitgeist of late twentieth-century Western society, which once again found the Baroque aesthetic and mentality both highly appealing and directly relevant to the spirit and concerns of the contemporary world. Certainly the 2002 international conference in Rome, Bernini's Biographies, organized by Delbeke, Levy, and Ostrow, was a clear sign that the study of the Bernini biographical sources as literary texts unto themselves had come of age and now occupied a secure, recognized niche of its own within the larger edifice of Bernini scholarship. The Bernini Family Biographical "Workshop " of the Early 1670s Be that as it may, in 1998, having uncovered significant new documentation and reevaluated previously known sources, Montanari was able to confirm and expand D'Onofrio's case against the Baldinucci official story, arguing persuasively that indeed the Bernini clan (under the direction of Mons. Pietro Filippo) had been actively engaged in the production of its own, familysponsored biography of the artist, from at least 1674. These new (or newly analyzed) archival sources attest to the fact that Pietro Filippo's efforts were directed at establishing a basic catalogue of his father's works, a chronological narrative of the essential facts of his life (interspersed with illustrative anecdotes and entertaining hons mots) and an anthology of the flattering published notices of the artist's works by eruditi and other prominent contemporaries. The new documentation also led to the conclusion that both Christina and Baldinucci came into the picture only after what Montanari calls the Bernini family biographical "workshop" (cfficina) had initiated its activity: Bernini's longtime ally Christina was recruited perhaps sometime in late 1675 or 1676, and the apparently equally pro-Bernini Baldinucci in 1678. Both were recruited-the one, as the fictitious initiator of the project; the other, as the supposedly autonomous, sole author of the biography-to cover up the compromising fact of the direct connection between the adulatory, apologetic biography and the machinations of the Bernini family.54 Bernini himself, we note, is nowhere to be seen in any of the extant documentation as an active, front-stage participant. But certainly some form of contribution on his part to this initiative is not to be excluded: How could he-who for his entire life had maintained an anxious, imperious control over all his affairs, professional and domestic-keep silent and passive in this matter, living, let us recall, in the same house as the would-be biographers, his sons? There is nothing in the documentation to warrant Bernini's exclusion from this enterprise, as perhaps its behind-the-scenes instigator and orchestrator, who was careful, however, to leave no direct paper trail pointing to his role. If this is true, that Bernini played some sort of active role in the compiling of an official biography, then the inevitable conclusion is that both the Baldinucci and Domenico texts could be read in a certain sense as quasi-autobiographies. As for Domenico's role, the newly uncovered documentation (like the older, already known texts) nowhere gives mention of his name. Nonetheless, Montanari reaffirmed the D'Onofrio thesis that he, the youngest of the Bernini boys, was ultimately and in large part (if not solely) responsible for supplying Baldinucci with some rather substantial biographical narrative. This thesis, again, derives from the fact of the extensive textual overlap between the Baldinucci and Domenico vite, and of what has been demonstrated about Baldinucci's usual modus operandi in composing his lives of the artists, namely, by wholesale, verbatim repetition of text supplied by friends, family members, and other contemporary eyewitnesses. Yet, as the same Montanari rightly remarks, "What is instead difficult to understand is why at this point even the very young Domenico Bernini became involved in the project; it was he who must have written out, at least in good part, the manuscript sent to Florence, given the fact that later he was able to reprint it under his own name without even mentioning that of his older brother, who had by then died."56 Montanari does not answer the question he raises, but a reasonable conjecture would be that of the entire family Domenico, with his solid education in the humanities and self-avowed passion for history, was identified as the one who most securely possessed the necessary intellectual skills for the successful completion of such a task. And equally important, being young, unmarried, and unemployed, he also had the free time in which to do so. Furthermore, and finally, as a loyal member of the Bernini clan, Domenico would have willingly accepted the conditions of complete anonymity imposed upon his authorship of the text for the greater glory of his father and his family. For the older Domenico, years later, in revising his manuscript (in 1711) for publication and supplying its preface, silence on the question of the origins of his composition remained the best option, rather than expose in enduring print all the details of his family's original cover-up. Yet, at the same time, the mere publication of his text, with its many echoes of Baldinucci's, was in itself an exposure of sorts, certain to provoke uncomfortable questions, as Domenico must have known. Let us recall the already-quoted passage from chapter 1 about historical accuracy and surviving eyewitnesses to the truth: "It is, furthermore, our intention to do so with that accuracy demanded of all those who describe events to which almost everyone still alive today has been an eyewitness. Such eyewitnesses could easily contradict an author each time he, in order to garner more adrniration for his writing, embellishes the facts and departs from the truth." Perhaps Domenico saw his defense in the fact (as we shall see below) that the 1713 version, for all its similarities to Baldinucci's biography, is, nonetheless, a significantly longer, recast presentation of the same historical data and memorable dicta included in the 1682 text, with much new material added to the mix (especially in the form of personal anecdotes). Certainly, the further fact that in his own work (168) Domenico refers the reader to Baldinucci's biography (as source of additional information about the cracks-in-the-cupola controversy) would seem to indicate that he feared no comparison with the Florentine's text. Indeed, Baldinucci makes a second appearance, by name, elsewhere in Domenico's narrative (81), as author of a long poem about Bernini's statue of Truth Uncovered by Time. Moreover, a much different attitude toward authorial originality prevailed in those days, which allowed for the wholesale, verbatim borrowing of material by one author from another, without necessarily provoking indignant cries of plagiarism or threats ofilawsuits. In the end, however, it is impossible at this point to know what was on Domenico's mind when he made the decision to publish his Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and what reaction he expected from his readers over the question of its rapport with the Baldinucci text. Among the active collaborators of the Bernini family in its biography enterprise was Carlo Cartari (1614-1697), a well-known Roman curia lawyer and erudito, who also served as archivist and librarian of the papal Altieri family. As the extant documentation indicates, Carlo gathered various materials for Pietro Filippo and, more important, for the present discussion of origins, recorded in his diary the first notice of the biographical intentions of the Bernini family: The 3rd of January 1674 Monsignor Bernini told me that he wanted to write and publish the biography of his father, and have engraved all of the statues made by his father, which amount to about seventy, all with explanatory captions, and that for this book he would spend at least 8,000 scudi; but he decided not to publish it while his father, now seventy-six years old, was living. He has just finished the equestrian statue of the King of France. He told me that his biography would be very unusual, and he recounted to me various intriguing details. As the diary entry reveals, it was initially Monsignor Pietro Filippo who was to write the biography (if Carlo's words are to be taken literally). In fact, Pietro Filippo did compose a brief, rather literarily primitive biographical sketch, extant among the Bernini family papers now in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris (Ms. italien, 2084, fols. 132-35), known since 1844, when it was first published by Paolo Mazio, and republished in a corrected version by Felicita Audisio in 1985. The sketch, copied out at least in part in the Monsignor's own hand, was evidently begun in 1674, but updated on later occasions, the last update inserted during the final year of his father's life by Pietro Filippo himself It contains many of the facts, anecdotes, and linguistic expressions that will show up in the Baldinucci and Domenico biographies, but also a small amount of material not found in either biography. Given its importance, it is included here in an appendix, translated into English for the first time. For the sake of convenience, I have titled it The Vita Brevis (see Appendix 1). Cureau de La Chambre and the First Published Bernini "Biography" Another important figure in any discussion of the earliest written accounts of Bernini's life is the Abbe Pierre Cureau de La Chambre (1641-1693), a member of some standing at the French court and Parisian intellectual milieu, whose father, Marin Cureau de La Chambre (d. 1669), was personal physician to King Louis XIV.59 La Chambre's friendship with Bernini dates back to the artist's return trip from Paris to Rome in October 1665: the young man had succeeded in gaining permission to accompany Bernini on his return trip from Paris to Rome. He remained in residence in Rome for a year, continuing his frequent and friendly contact with Bernini during that period. To date, the earliest uncovered document containing any mention of a Bernini biography project is a Roman avviso (a notice in a handwritten, publicly circulating, anonymous newsletter)/'0 dated December 1673, which states that "a certain abbe and dear friend" of the Cavaliere was writing his life. Scholars are largely in agreement that the cleric biographer in question is the same La Chambre. Several years later and shortly after Bernini's death, in I68I, La Chambre published an "Eloge de M. le Cavalier Bernin," in the February 24 issue of the prestigious journal des Savans (Sfavans). Four years later, on January 2, 1685, he then delivered before the French Academy (of which he had been a member since 1670) a discourse entitled "Preface pour servir a l'histoire de la vie et des ouvrages du Cavalier Bernin" (Preface to serve toward the history of the life and works of the Cavalier Bernini), a prospectus for his intended biography of the Italian artist. Several months later, the "Preface" was issued in print, together with a revised version of the 1681 eulogy. But the announced full-length biography never came to be. An acquaintance of the Abbe's, the well-known editor of the Melanges d'histoire e de literature, ''M. de VigneulMarville" (pseudonym of the Carthusian literary historian Dom Bonaventure d'Argonne), offered this explanation for the failure of the project: "It was [La Chambre's] plan to publish the life of this illustrious sculptor and architect, but Bernini's reputation in France, where tastes easily change, had suddenly fallen into decline, and rather than losing himself in a defense of [Bernini's life] against those envious of him, M. l'abbe de La Chambre abandoned his plan and never spoke of it again. Moreover, this abbe was lazy and not one who readily undertook great enterprises."61 Brief and preliminary as it may be, La Chambre's "Eloge" has been publicized as "the first biography of the artist ever published." In effect, it may be thus considered, even though its primary purpose, of course, is not to set forth the facts of Bernini's life and career, and indeed (at least in its original version) offers just a meager portion of the latter information.62 However, La Chambre's "Eloge" does not represent the first formal public tribute to Bernini published after the artist's death: that distinction, as far as we know, belongs to the eulogy composed by yet another Frenchman of rank within Parisian courtly circles, Jean Donneau de Vise (Vize), who printed his "Eloge du Cavalier Bernin" in the January 1681 issue of the Merrnre Ga/ant, that popular (if not especially intellectual) periodical of French court life and miscellaneous cultural-social news edited by the same Donneau de Vise.63 Significant not only for its early date-it appeared less than two months after Bernini's death-the Merwre Ga/ant eulogy is noteworthy for its entirely positive, indeed unconditionally celebratory, account of Bernini's talent and accomplishments. The eulogy does not reveal anything new about Bernini or his works (apart from a reference to his verse-making), but nonetheless it is of great interest: it comes, let us note, from a periodical that was extremely close to the French court. Thanks to its enthusiastically pro-royal editorial policy, the Mercure's offices were housed in the Louvre itself by special concession of Louis XIV, and its masthead boasted of the patronage of the king's eldest son. Hence, it would seem to provide confirmation of the continuing esteem for Bernini on the part of the French monarchy, despite the great anti-Bernini sentiment in other parts of that court, which had its origins in the Italian artist's unhappy and diplomatically unsuccessful residence there in 1665. The Mercure Galant eulogy, a text not easily accessible, is reprinted here, unabridged, in English translation for the first time (see Appendix 2). 5. What Motivated the Biography Project? Bernini's Career in the Early 1670s Although it is regrettable that La Chambre never wrote the promised fulllength biography, the two texts that he did publish are invaluable primary sources. Strangely enough, however, as Montanari points out, Domenico, who dedicates many pages to Bernini's supposed success at the French court, includes not even the briefest reference to either of La Chambre's two essays in honor of the artist. Is this an indication of less-than-warm feelings toward the Frenchman on Domenico's part? Such a suspicion arises from the fact that La Chambre had openly and emphatically announced in the "Preface" his intention of describing Bernini just as he was, a fallible human being, warts and all, not suppressing even "what was reproached in him by his enemies and by those envious of him. "64 Report of the intended tenor of this French biography is sure to have reached the Bernini family rather quickly-probably even before the formal public delivery and subsequent printing of La Chambre's January 1685 Academy discourse. As is well known, there were many points and agents of incessant contact between Rome and Paris (with a reasonably efficient postal system between the two capitals). Furthermore, with the fate of the Louis Equestrian statue still up in the air (only in March 1685 did it finally arrive in Paris), the Bernini sons maintained a vested interest in their father's reputation at the French court. Indeed, if may be that, even years before Gian Lorenzo's death and La Chambre's first published eulogy, the Bernini family had had some role in actively recruiting a biography from the French abbe, announced in the Roman avviso of December 9, 1673. If this assumption is true, it would mean that there probably had been before that date, and continued to be thereafter, direct communication between the family (if not with Bernini himselfa) and the would-be biographer about his plans.65 Assuming La Chambre did not hide his true intentions to them, news of the French abbe's "warts-and-all" biography would have gravely troubled the artista's sons, who, in tum, must have shared their concerns with the man they eventually hired to compose a n1ore obsequious "authorized" biography, Filippo Baldinucci. It is thus tempting to see La Chambre as the anonymous target ofaBaldinucci's vitriolic condemnation inserted in the "Statement of the Author" at the conclusion of his Life of Bernini: I wish to make it clear to everyone that, before setting out to write not only of Bernini but of any celebrated man, I made a pact with my pen that it must, as if it were an amorous bee, follow the trail of the mellifluous parts of the flowers, leaving the opposite course to some poisonous spider, born in filth and nourished by garbage, who now or after I shall have published my account wants to sink his teeth into the less appetizing, from which I kept my respectful lips, and feed upon it. According to rumor, one such has already wished to do so-even as I wrote of this great artist. He struggles to draw from those same shoots from which I extracted the sweetest and gentlest substance some imperfection and then, mixing it with the sordid humor of his own substance, to vomit forth poison. His only prudence lies in not wishing to commit his own name to print (a name still unknown to me) so as not to reap the infamy that such an ugly and detestable labor merits.