Kenneth Clark TV - Waldemar Januszczak TV - Simon Schama TV -
The work of Bernini is ideal and eternal. He was a very great artist ... He not only gave baroque Rome its character but he was the chief source of an international style that has spread all over Europe ... He was dazzlingly precocious ... He became more skilful in the carving of marble than any sculptor has ever been. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 7/13: Grandeur & Obedience, BBC 1969
Bernini was only twenty five and the very next year he was made the architect of St Peter’s. ibid.
Bernini is perhaps the only artist in history who has been able to carry through such a vast design over so long a period. ibid.
The Bronze Baldacchino ... It’s incredible ... The perfection of craftsmanship that extends to every detail. (Art & Civilisation & Sculpture & Artists: Bernini) ibid.
Bernini was one of the key players of the Baroque. Waldemar Januszczak, Baroque! – From St Peter’s to St Paul’s I, BBC 2013
Bernini: as architect, as sculpture, as painter, the man could do everything. Ibid
His work is filled with movement and restless transformation. ibid.
She is in ecstasy all right. Her head is thrown back, her mouth is open ... You have to look. You don’t know where to look. Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Bernini, BBC 2006
A nun in the throes of ecstasy ... Bernini knew all about passion: that’s what his art was about. It was this physical intensity that would transform sculpture. ibid.
He could like an alchemist change one material into another: marble into trees, leaves, hair, and of course flesh. ibid.
Bernini arrived in Rome in 1605 just at the time Caravaggio’s punchy street dramas were electrifying the Church. Giving it a new vision of how to move the flock. ibid.
This is Apollo and Daphne. A story of sexual huntings: Apollo wants the nymph Daphne. She definitely doesn’t want him. He runs after her and just as he is about to grab her the gods answer her prayers by turning her into a laurel tree. It’s all action sculpture – Apollo breaking his breathless run, his cape and his hair still flying in the wind. ibid.
Bernini is in his early twenties. A Superstar. Someone on whom the almighty and the powerful almost fawn. ibid.
Top that: no-one ever could ... We are looking at the most intense, convulsive drama of the body that any of us experience ... The visualisation of complete bliss. ibid.