AS BORROMINI WAS FINISHING THE DORMITORY wing and cloister at San Carlo, he was offered an even more important commission: the Oratorio di San Filippo Neri, which was to be built on the western side of their church, Santa Maria in Valicella, still known today as the Chiesa Nuova, the New Church. It was a plum appointment to design an impressive hall devoted to the performance of sacred music, and the Oratorians were a more visible order than the Trinitarians. Their church and other buildings were close to the Via del Papa, which at the time was one of the best-traveled streets in Rome.
Like the Trinitarians, the Oratorians (or the Filippini, as they were also called) were a relatively new order. Founded in 1561 by Filippo Neri, who had long worked with the poor of Rome, it was a loose association of like-minded men who wanted to help the city’s needy and hoped to promote learning to a wider audience. These Filippini were not cloistered as the Trinitarians were; they lived in the world but existed as simply as they could—a difficult and complicated balancing act, given the temptations posed by Rome and the worldly papal court across the Tiber. Nevertheless, Neri’s goal, according to Anthony Blunt, was to “spread among all classes of society, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, rulers and servants,” the value of the arts in disseminating the church’s teachings.
In 1575 Pope Gregory XIII gave Neri and his followers the crumbling medieval church of Santa Maria in Valicella and a Franciscan convent nearby. The church stands along what is now the crowded and busy Corso Vittorio Emanuele just west of the Pantheon, but in the sixteenth century it was surrounded by a choking warren of jumbled (and equally crowded) streets in a rough neighborhood of laborers and artisans. The Oratorians engaged Matteo di Città di Castello to design a new church for the order, which he did and which another architect, Martino Longhi the Elder, built. The foundation stone for the new church was laid on September 15, 1575, and over the next quarter century Castello’s church (including a rather grim façade designed by Fausto Rughesi and built between 1594 and 1606) rose as the Filippini established themselves in the neighborhood.
Neri died on May 27, 1595, but the order’s mission continued. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Filippini had established a firm presence in the neighborhood and had become known for their pious works and impressive collection of paintings by the likes of Caravaggio, the Cavalier d’Arpino, even Rubens. But by then they had also outgrown their cramped and old-fashioned lodgings, which hugged the walls along the east side of the church. In addition, because the order placed a great deal of importance on music as a convincing “art of persuasion”—Neri believed musical reform should go hand in hand with religious reform—the order’s leaders wanted to add more space to the west of the church to build a casa, or new residence, which would include an oratory, “where religious gatherings of a nonliturgical nature could be held,” and a library.
They focused their attention on several irregularly shaped blocks of small houses near the church—Borromini calls each of them “isola” on his site plan for the Oratory—and convinced the pope to issue a papal bull that allowed the order the opportunity to acquire the land.
In 1622 Neri was canonized by Pope Gregory XV, and Virgilio Spada, a young nobleman from Brisighella, a town in the Romagna north of Florence, joined the order. Both events proved fortuitous: Neri’s recognition as a saint brought greater attention to the Filippini, and Spada would become one of the most influential arbiters of architectural taste in Rome. His sense of what was good design—appropriate, well-proportioned, and dignified—influenced construction in Rome for the next half century. Perhaps more important, his opinion of who was a good architect would carry almost equal weight. And to Borromini’s great good fortune, Spada saw talent in the young architect.
It was not long after Spada joined the Oratorians that he became the order’s primary negotiator with the architects and builders it employed: Spada’s father had been an enthusiastic builder, and from his example the young cleric learned construction procedures and processes that were useful to the Oratorians. For more than a decade, Spada worked closely with Paolo Maruscelli, the order’s initial architect of choice for the construction of the new wing. From 1624 to 1637, they developed what became an ambitious 131-room plan for a complex that included new living quarters for the order’s members, a library, a refectory, and an oratory, which Maruscelli placed at a 90-degree angle to the church along its southwest side, where it stands today.
But Maruscelli was neither its builder nor, in the end, its architect.
There is some question as to how Borromini came to be the architect of the Oratory. According to Fra Juan de San Bonaventura, the Oratorians posted “throughout Rome and the most noble cities of Italy” declarations that they were holding a competition to choose an architect for their new quarters.
“A great number of architects entered the competition,” Bonaventura wrote, “even Signor Francesco Borromini, who was never recommended by anyone nor even known to the fathers”—a claim that may or may not be true, as they must have known of his work at San Carlino.
“All having made their designs according to the measurements and requirements given by the fathers,” Bonaventura says, “they were presented to the congregation.” The selection, by what the call for entrants had indicated would be a “secret ballot,” was Borromini, whose design “had the advantage over all the others.” Even more remarkable, Bonaventura notes, was that the architect had been chosen “without ever having been recommended by any cardinal or prince, but only by his actions and labors”—a revolutionary thought in seventeenth-century Rome.
Yet Maruscelli had been the Oratorians’ architect since 1624 and had designed an entire complex for them. So why in 1637 did they engage Borromini? The explanation is complicated.
What is undisputed is that Borromini came to work for the Oratorians in 1637 to address some of the details Maruscelli was too busy to work out, such as the altar and the credenzi in the sacristy, an oblong room west of the church’s transept that stands along the north side of a small cloister. But not long after Borromini arrived on the scene, he began to make his presence—and his ambition—felt.
He told the order’s preposito, or prior, Padre Angelo Saluzzi, that Maruscelli’s designs were riddled with defects. Particularly terrible, Borromini charged, were the designs for the Oratory and the placement of its windows.
He had a point. The Oratory was to be placed between the street and the same cloister that the sacristy opened onto, and the Oratory’s northern windows, which looked out into the courtyard it shared with the sacristy, didn’t correspond to the windows of the other room—an architectural mortal sin.
To be fair, Maruscelli didn’t cause this problem. The initial placement of the Oratory was determined by the architect Mario Arconio in his 1621 plans for the building. Maruscelli was simply trying to conceal this problem (or at least de-emphasize it) by putting an arcade between the two mismatched wings—a solution that didn’t please Borromini or, in the end, the Oratorians.
In his own Opus architectonicum, the book of Borromini’s works written by Spada with Borromini’s help, the two explain that the Oratorians “had diverse designs drawn up [for the complex, including the Oratory], both by their own architect and others. But they were little satisfied, because, as it was necessary to accord with a loggia on the inside, no way was found [in the Oratory] to order the windows so that they would have symmetry, or to locate the door conveniently. After long study, designs, and meetings, the best, or rather the least objectionable, was found to be a design by Signor Paolo Maruscelli.” This was not exactly a rousing endorsement, but it seems clear that Maruscelli won whatever competition there may have been.
Spada and Borromini continue: “In this situation I was proposed as an alternative…. And although I encountered the same difficulties of conforming to the loggia inside the building complex…nevertheless, after having labored over it for some time, I finally found a solution that satisfied everyone and which resolved all the difficulties.”
According to Paolo Portoghesi, Maruscelli never found what he calls “a rhythmic concordance” between the courtyard’s arches and the Oratory’s windows. The Oratorians consulted other architects—including Girolamo Rainaldi, with whom Borromini would clash later in his career—and perhaps held another competition, the result of which was Borromini’s appointment. On May 11, 1637, the order voted to have Borromini assist Maruscelli. According to the minutes of the meeting:
The Prior said that since the building of the Oratory had to proceed they had a number of drawings made by various architects, and since one still had to determine which was the best, to this end were asked…the Padri Marsilio Honorati Pietro Jacomo Baci and Virgilio Spada, and all the designs having been diligently studied it was unanimously concluded that the most appropriate was that by Sig. Francesco Borromini. And in order that the said building be fabricated with all the diligence and exactness possible it was decided that Sig. Paolo Maruscelli must be informed that for all that would be necessary for the building of the house he should have as associate the said Sig. Francesco Borromini, since the congregation has in effect seen his value…and if the said Sig. Maruscelli should not consent to have for associate the said Sig. Borromini, the entire care of the building should be given to Sig. Borromini.
It was a public rebuke to the elder architect. But as far as the Oratorians were concerned, his work hadn’t been satisfactory. The younger architect, as brash and opinionated as he was—and whom Spada supported so enthusiastically—would be given a chance to see what he could design.
“Partly through his brilliance at problem-solving in…small matters and partly through the amazing precision (essattezza) of his drawings,” Joseph Connors says, Borromini was the natural choice. It did not hurt his chances, of course, that Spada thought highly of his talents. He must have seen Borromini’s remarkable work at San Carlino and realized that he was an architect of unusual, even unparalleled, talent.
Spada was perhaps the only man in Rome who remained a loyal friend and supporter throughout Borromini’s difficult life. He became Borromini’s most steadfast advocate, particularly later in his life, when the architect’s professional behavior became erratic, even self-destructive.
By deciding to have two architects on the project, the Oratorians created an arrangement destined to fail. And it did. Even though Borromini’s initial duties were to execute Maruscelli’s plans, he began almost immediately to suggest alterations. Soon after Borromini’s appointment, Maruscelli resigned his post, but not before claiming that the vault Borromini was envisioning for the Oratory’s ceiling was too weak and would crack.
Writing later in Opus architectonicum, Borromini defends his critique of Maruscelli’s work, particularly his contention that Maruscelli mishandled the original sacristy: “With [Maruscelli’s] advice and design, they [the Oratorians] established for the Sacristy the form and location that is seen today…without deciding, so far as I know, the rest of the design of the building, which has caused a certain disruption in the correspondence of the windows and the levels of the entire house.” Borromini even had the audacity to reprove Maruscelli for criticizing his counterproposal, writing, “It is common for ignorant persons and copyists to blame the novel inventions of good men because, given the fact that they cannot invent new things because they are bereft of the ability to design and of real understanding of the art [i.e., architecture], they set about blaming those who are real architects and masters of the art.”
This is bombast for many reasons, not the least of which is that the Oratory as built is in large part Maruscelli’s creation. He had determined where it would stand and how the rooms around it should be arranged. What Borromini added was a greater sense of importance, of seriousness. Connors indicates that “Maruscelli’s oratory had been a simple vaulted room with a small chapel for an altar. Borromini’s was instead a daringly skeletal structure with tall slender loggias for singers at one end and space for visitors at the other.” Two rectangular cloisters—a large one placed to the north of the sacristy, a smaller one south of it, abutting the new Oratory—had the necessary rooms for comfortable domestic living (the refectory and dormitory) arranged around them. The more public rooms were to the south, closer to the street: the Oratory and several guest rooms for visitors.
Despite considerable experimentation, Borromini was forced to leave the Oratory where Maruscelli had put it, along the front of the new building, but he tried to make the wing’s façade more imposing and logical while keeping it from competing with the church next door, to which it was attached by a narrow, spinelike passageway that ran the length of the complex. And to a certain extent he succeeded. For example, the entrance that he placed in the middle of the façade appears—at least from the busy corso—to be the main entrance to the Oratory. But it isn’t. The visitor expects to enter the room and gaze down its main axis, as one does in a church. He doesn’t because he can’t. The axis of the Oratory is, in fact, 90 degrees to the left of the entrance. A visitor must turn to enter the room. It’s like entering a school auditorium from a side door: While the entrance is serviceable, the drama and impact of the room are blunted.
The Oratory itself—Portoghesi calls it “a prismatic hall”—is relatively simple and is similar in important ways to the refectory at San Carlino. It is a rectangular box of two stories, with narrow bands of pilasters organized in strange but logical rhythms that encase the room. These square, staid pilasters, which stand along the walls like shy bystanders at a public meeting, are arranged in pairs, but the central pair is set slightly wider than the others. This was Borromini’s solution to a thorny problem that had stumped Maruscelli and had contributed to the congregation asking for Borromini’s help: How can the Oratory’s windows synchronize with the arches of the courtyard just outside on its north side?
His solution was both clever and cost-effective. By adopting an understated but definite cadence of wall, pilaster, and statuary niche (large enough for a statue of San Filippo to be placed in it), Borromini succeeded in doing what Maruscelli could not: placing the Oratory’s windows in a logical, symmetrical pattern that allows them to coincide with the courtyard outside. His solution was similar to the arrangement of pilasters he created for the façade of San Carlino’s domestic wing. The Oratory’s slight strips of stucco and stone climb up the walls like vines, moving past the high windows that let in light while keeping out distractions, and meeting at the center of the ceiling in a curious oval painting (which Borromini had left empty) whose central image is a shining triangle from which rays of golden light emanate.
Borromini also borrowed ideas he had used from his refectory, using similarly solemn pilasters to dissolve the corners, thereby “smoothing the transition between the long and short walls,” Torgil Magnuson notes.
But that was only part of Borromini’s solution for the mismatched courtyard and windows. The windows that looked out into the south cortile from the sacristy—the same courtyard that the Oratory shares—were asymmetrical, and here Borromini used some architectural legerdemain to solve the problem. He placed false windows next to real ones. It was a simple but effective deception: The result was to fool the inattentive eye into seeing broader windows than are actually there. “One thinks that with a bit of perspective made of stucco, one can bring about some kind of solution,” Borromini said, and he was right.
In addition, Borromini curved the two northern corners of the courtyard outside the sacristy, creating two small, shadowy caverns, one on top of the other, which pull the eye toward the center of the wall and disguise the ungainly angle where the sacristy and courtyard meet. He understood, perhaps better than most architects, how to camouflage a building’s faults.
He also knew how to reuse materials in imaginative ways. During construction, four ancient columns had been uncovered, and it was determined that they would be appropriate for the stairway vestibule. But they were too short. To solve this, Borromini carved travertine bases of leaves for the columns. It made the columns look as if they were sprouts.
The new Oratory was completed by 1640, and almost immediately it began to be modified. A richly decorated singers’ gallery, a fantasy of polychrome marble that Borromini did not design and argued against, was added to the room’s western end, and the windows that gave out onto the courtyard were closed up, making the reason for Borromini’s neat solution irrelevant. And the longer that Borromini worked with the Oratorians, the less he and his ideas appealed to them. The monks, Magnuson explains, had always “insisted on approving the smallest details” of new construction, even after the Oratory was completed, and apparently they thought that their architect’s peculiar and unorthodox outlook could be seen by some as “an expression of frivolity and pride.” Even worse, they found him unhelpful, even disloyal. During a disagreement in 1650 with their master mason over costs for the façade of the clock tower, Borromini refused to let the Oratorians see his libri delle misure—his construction account books—which the order found insulting.
For his part, Borromini found the Oratorians equally exasperating, writing in the preface of Opus architectonicum that “I beg whoever should read these sayings of mine to reflect that I have had to serve a Congregation of souls so restrained that they have stayed my hands from applying ornament, and consequently in many places it has behooved me to obey their will rather than art.”
By the middle of 1652, the Oratorians had become so unhappy with Borromini’s manner that on August 23 they appointed Camillo Arcucci as their official architect “in place of Borromini, who has refused to serve, in the future, as architect of our congregation.” This came as a surprise to Borromini and to Spada, who by then was living in the Vatican as one of Pope Innocent X’s most trusted aides.
But this was all to come. Borromini still had to address the Oratory’s façade. Though it, too, has been modified from its original elevation, it is still one of Rome’s most refined and sophisticated buildings.
Borromini’s intent was clear: Ingannare la vista dei passaggieri. I resolve to deceive the sight of passersby. He had two main challenges: He must adhere to the monks’ dictum that the Oratory not compete with the travertine front of their church and that it be as unadorned as possible. He was up to the task, in great part because of his ability to balance a building’s practicalities with its aesthetics.
He used a flat, polished brick that could be laid with so little mortar that it was almost invisible. He was allowed a bit of travertine only for the columns around the Oratory’s center door, but the monks admonished him not to use marble, which would be insufficiently modest. Such micromanagement might have prompted Borromini to comment in part in Opus architectonicum, “How wonderful it would be if one could construct a whole façade out of a single piece of terracotta.”
Borromini saw his Oratory façade in very human terms. “In giving form to said façade,” he wrote, “I created the figure of the human body with open arms as if it embraces everyone who enters; and this open-armed figure is divided in five parts, that is, the chest in the center, and the arm, each in two sections [arm and forearm] as they open out.” It curves in subtly, carefully, giving it, Blunt says, “the springiness of a sheet of metal which has been slightly curved under pressure.”
The façade stands three stories tall and is capped by a triangular pediment bracketed at its side angles by two curving sections of a circle. As in most of Borromini’s buildings, the central section of the façade pushes away from the piazza it stands in, the walls drawing away from a visitor like a shy child into its mother’s skirts. Yet the façade is alive with incident and detail, such as the portico over the central door, which is topped by a pediment that is a miniature version of its big brother above.
Like the Oratory’s interior, the façade is dominated by two sets of six monumental pilasters, which stand between the three stories of arched windows, each story arched with a different top. They are shallow and also made of brick, their capitals almost inconsequential. The central part of the façade is concave and looks like a narrow tower of a medieval castle; but on the third story, at the level of the Oratorians’ library, Borromini defies expectations by placing a tall, concave niche that stands behind an oval balcony, which bows out over the tower below. (The balcony’s balustrade has the same bowling-pin-shaped balusters that Borromini used in the cloister balcony at San Carlino.) The niche itself resembles the niche he installed in the refectory at San Carlino, but here, instead of making room for a serving table, he places a large wooden door, which stands beneath an elaborate stone pediment that looks like a livelier version of what sits above the main door of the Chiesa Nuova. Above this pediment is a wide, scalloped near circle, with a similar set of two rows of stone florets that Borromini also used at San Carlino, which allow just enough room beneath them to place a dove, its wings outspread, its face turned to the east to catch the morning sun. Here, though, it looks as if a piece of the façade has been scraped away, like a scoop of gelato from a tub at a neighborhood kiosk.
Magnuson calls this “one of Borromini’s most remarkable façades.” It’s surprising and unconventional, drawing in the visitor with its odd, curious look. But the whole effect of the building itself never really comes together. Creative and inventive though the façade and the Oratory are, they feel as if Borromini tried too hard. He’s too clever by half. His work here is both too cautious and too vigorous, like that of a talented student who studied too thoroughly for an examination and feels compelled to shout out the answers even before the questions are posed.
Perhaps if Borromini’s creativity had been allowed more freedom, the Oratory would seem less calculated, less confined. But although the restraints imposed by the Oratorians proved too strict for him, he would have other opportunities to indulge them.
AT THIS TIME, Bernini’s experience was the opposite of Borromini’s: He was living a life that wasn’t strict enough. It was too self-indulgent, and he risked losing everything and being branded a murderer.
While Borromini was known throughout Rome for his chastity, Bernini was a man who enjoyed women and their charms. When he was in his sixties, he admitted that in his youth he had “a great inclination to pleasure.” Nowhere else in his life was this more evident than in his passionate, tempestuous affair with Costanza Bonarelli, the wife of Matteo Bonarelli, one of the assistants Bernini hired in 1636 to work on the monument to Countess Matilda of Tuscany that he was carving for St. Peter’s. Costanza became, if not the love of his life, at least his most public expression of his passion.
Several of the men caught up in the drama that surrounded Bernini and Costanza were involved in the carving of the tomb dedicated to Countess Matilda, a medieval noblewoman who donated her money and property to the church. According to Filippo Baldinucci, most of the marble statue of Matilda (except the head) is the work of Luigi Bernini, Bernini’s brother, who worked in Bernini’s studio and was his brother’s soprastante at St. Peter’s. The two putti holding the coat of arms were carved by Matteo Bonarelli, Costanza’s husband.
Little is known about Costanza or the details of her life before she met Bernini. And there’s nothing in Bernini’s writings to indicate what he really thought of her—no unsent scrap of poetry, no forgotten melody scratched across a piece of paper. His feelings for her are clear when he expressed them in the idiom he communicated in best: sculpture. Some speculate that Bernini used Costanza as a model for the statue of Divine Love that adorns Urban’s tomb.
Around 1635, at about the time that Matteo Bonarelli began working in Bernini’s studio, the Cavaliere—he had been knighted by Gregory XV, receiving the Order of Christ and what Filippo Baldinucci called a “rich pension that went with it”—carved a bust of Costanza, who at the time was his mistress. According to Domenico Bernini, Bernini “was then inflamed with desire for this woman,” and nearly four centuries later, it is still possible to see why. The bust is an irresistible expression of the bewitching power of desire.
It is one of the few portrait busts of a woman that Bernini carved, and it is the only known bust he carved as an adult that was not for a specific commission. One need only to look at it to know that Bernini created it for reasons that went beyond money or status. In fact, what makes the bust so profound, so unambiguous, is its startling intimacy. Sensuous and unapologetic, the rendering of Costanza’s head and shoulders is free of the formality of his papal busts or the pious majesty of his religious figures. This is no idealized portrait of a prince of the church or a martyr to the faith. This is the likeness of a woman of her time with an appetite for the pleasant temptations that life can offer.
Bernini’s portrait seems to catch Costanza unaware, exposed and unguarded. Her simple dress is open at the neck, offering the slightest glimpse of the top of her breasts. Her hair, free of ornament, is pushed away from her face, as if she had not yet arranged it for the day, and an untidy braid is curled into a bun at the back of her head. Her sturdy but graceful neck is unadorned by jewelry. There’s a hint of concern in her face: Her brow is furrowed slightly, her large, well-spaced eyes are wide open and watchful, and her lips are pursed, as if she is about to speak.
The entire effect calls to mind Bernini’s own advice for how to sculpt a human being: “To succeed with a portrait, you must fix an attitude and try to depict it well. The finest moment you can choose for the mouth is when the sitter stops speaking or when he starts to speak.”
Costanza looks as if she is afraid the visitor she had waited so long to see might leave soon—sooner than she expected. Though carved from a block of cool, white marble, the bust swells with vitality; it’s youthful and forthright, passionate and tender. A contemporary letter indicates that Bernini was “fieramente inamorato”: inflamed with passion for her.
But this passion extended to other members of Bernini’s family, with tragic consequences.
In May 1638 word had spread throughout Rome of a horrific altercation between Bernini and his brother Luigi, who had also developed an interest in the young woman. Bernini began to hear tales about the two and was determined to find out if they were true. He announced to his family one day—Bernini at age forty and his brothers still lived with their widowed mother in the house Pietro had bought next to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore—that he was going to the country early the next day. But on the morning of his supposed departure, instead of leaving the city, he directed his coachman to take him to Costanza’s house near the Vatican. There he lingered, watching.
He didn’t have long to wait. After a time, he saw his brother Luigi come out of Costanza’s house. The young woman, Charles Avery notes delicately, “accompanied him amorously to the door in a suggestively dishevelled state.” Costanza had proven to be inconstant, her love as empty as the devil’s promises.
Angry and humiliated, Bernini pursued Luigi to St. Peter’s, where the younger man was working. He attacked his brother with a crowbar. Bernini’s intent was clear: He wanted to kill, to maim. The man who was “notorious for his ruthless ambition and the lengths to which he would go to defeat his rivals” wanted to vanquish the man who had betrayed him. Rome’s great creator was poised to become its most public destroyer.
Yet, because of a stroke of luck, or incompetence, or a sudden realization of what he was doing, Bernini did not kill. The most serious damage he inflicted on Luigi was breaking two of his ribs. Eventually Luigi managed to escape—or perhaps Bernini allowed him to—and the incident was over.
But Bernini was not done with his revenge.
What happened next shocked Bernini’s family and delighted the gossips of Rome. Bernini ordered his servant to return to Costanza’s house and to cut her with a razor. Overnight the “inflamed passion” he had had for her turned into something volatile and dangerous. Costanza’s beauty must be destroyed. Just as she had ruined his trust in her by her infidelity—with Bernini’s brother, which must have shocked him deeply—Bernini wanted to ensure that she never again appealed to another man. That she had already been unfaithful to her husband seems not to have played a part in Bernini’s reprisal. His torment must not have allowed him to think logically.
According to an official deposition, Bernini’s servant returned to the house and discovered Costanza in bed. There, he carried out his master’s orders.
After dispatching his servant, Bernini followed Luigi back home to his mother’s house. He attempted to attack him again, this time with a sword, breaking down a locked door and frightening his mother, Angelica.
Luigi again managed to escape and fled next door to Santa Maria Maggiore, where he hoped to find sanctuary. Even an enraged Bernini wouldn’t kill in a church, his brother thought: He must curb his temper before the wrath of God.
Luigi was right. When Bernini arrived at the church, he had to satisfy himself, Avery says, “with kicking at the door.”
Official penalties against Bernini were inevitable: Such a public disregard for civility and law demanded justice. Even in seventeenth-century Rome, attempted murder was frowned upon. Legal proceedings against Bernini were started, and charges were filed. The prospects for significant punishment were considerable.
Frightened and angered by her eldest son’s scandalous behavior, Angelica Bernini asked the pope’s nephew, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, chairman of the works at St. Peter’s and nominally Bernini’s supervisor, to “mitigate the penalties” and to talk some sense into her son, who was, she said, acting like the padron del mondo, the king of the world.
Bernini was eventually fined 3,000 scudi for his outrageous misbehavior—a large sum for the time, but no more than what a cardinal might pay for one of Bernini’s sculptures. Once he was well enough to travel, Luigi escaped from Rome, settling in Bologna for a time, where he worked at San Paolo Maggiore on commissions that his brother had been given. On November 15 Pietro Paolo Drei replaced Luigi as soprastante at St. Peter’s.
Writing years later, Domenico notes, “The Pope, apprised of the deed, ordered that the servant be exiled, and through his Chamberlain, he sent to the Cavalier an absolution of his crime written on parchment in which appeared a eulogy of his virtue worthy of being transmitted to posterity, because in it he was absolved for no other motive than that he was excellent in art.”
Perhaps the pope considered Bernini’s public humiliation penalty enough. In his declaration of the waiver, Urban proclaimed Bernini “a rare man, sublime genius, and born by divine inspiration and for the glory of Rome to bring light to that century.”
Costanza’s role in this affair ends here; as far as Bernini is concerned, she disappears from his life. He cut her out of a joint portrait he had painted when he was “fiercely in love” and sent her bust into exile (it’s now in Florence). There is also speculation that a later bust that Bernini carved of Medusa was modeled after her, which Bernini could have used, Avery said, “as a constant reminder and warning to himself.”
Perhaps he didn’t need to, as Bernini soon fell into a deep depression—his son called it “a mortal sickness”—which debilitated him. This “strange illness,” Domenico reports, “forced him to bed with the most acute fever,” and he stopped working completely. Urban had long urged Bernini to settle down: The pope, Baldinucci writes, “desired to make [Bernini], so to speak, immortal” by trying to convince the artist to father children. But Bernini told the pope that “the statues he carved would be his children and that they would keep his memory alive for centuries”—a statement of considerable bravado.
But further exhortations by the pope eventually convinced Bernini to marry. On May 15, 1639, Bernini, age forty, married twenty-two-year-old Caterina Tezio, the younger daughter of Paolo Tezio, a curial lawyer of modest means. Caterina was reputed to be the most beautiful girl in Rome, and Bernini told Urban that she was “faultlessly docile…prudent and not at all tricky, beautiful but without affectation, and was such a perfect mixture of seriousness, pleasantness, generosity and hard work, that she might have been said to be a gift stored up in heaven for some great man.” It was also rumored that Bernini put up his own money for her dowry.
If it were true as Bernini said of art that “harmony is the most beautiful thing in the world,” he found it with Caterina. They moved to a spacious four-story house on the Via della Mercede, just south of the Piazza di Spagna, and lived by all accounts happily and fruitfully—they had eleven children, nine of whom outlived them.