Gian Lorenzo Bernini - The First Biographies of Bernini

The First Biographies of Bernini

The most important primary source for the life of Bernini is the biography written by his youngest son, Domenico, entitled Vita del Cavalier Gio. Lorenzo Bernino, published in 1713, though first compiled in the last years of his father's life (c. 1675–80). Filippo Baldinucci's Life of Bernini, was published in 1682 and a meticulous private journal, the Diary of the Cavaliere Bernini's Visit to France, was kept by the Frenchman Paul Fréart de Chantelou during the artist's four-month stay from June–October 1665 at the court of King Louis XIV. Also there is a short biographical narrative, The Vita Brevis of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, written by his eldest son, Monsignor Pietro Filippo Bernini, in the mid-1670s,

Until the late twentieth century, it was generally believed that two years after Bernini's death, Queen Christina of Sweden, then living in Rome, commissioned Filippo Baldinucci to write his biography which was published in Florence in 1682. However, recent research has suggested that it was in fact Bernini's sons (and specifically the eldest son, Mons. Pietro Filippo) who commissioned the biography from Baldinucci sometime in the late 1670s, with the intent of publishing it while their father was still alive. This would infer that firstly, that the commission did not come from Queen Christina who would have merely lent her name as patron and secondly, that Baldinucci's narrative was largely derived from Domenico Bernini's biography of his father, evidenced by the large amount of text repeated verbatim. In sum, Domenico's biography, though published later than Baldinucci's, represents the earlier and more important full-length biographical source of Bernini's life, even though it may idealize a number of facts.