Quotes

Gian Lorenzo Bernini was a strongly religious man whose quotes will inevitably contain strands of his own belief, combined with the exceptional technical skill that he held as an artist

Notable quote are also available on other masters of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt van Rijn.

Famous Quotes by Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Three things are needed for success in painting and sculpture: to see beauty when young and accustom oneself to it, to work hard, and to obtain good advice

What we have is given by God and to teach it to others is to return it to him

There are two devices which can help the sculptor to judge his work: one is not to see it for a while. The other... is to look at his work through spectacles which will change its color and magnify or diminish it, so as to disguise it somehow to his eye, and make it look as though it were the work of another

An architect proves his skill by turning the defects of a site into advantages

Sometimes, in order to imitate the original, it is necessary to put something that is not in the original into a portrait in marble

Quotes about Gian Lorenzo Bernini

People, neglectful of those charming delights [of Cardinal Scipione's Villa Borghese], made their way to where the statues were placed, and having sated their eyes on their beauty, did not deign to ogle the great many others scattered over that delectable garden, whence they immediately went to Bernini's house, who to see him face to face, who to take note of his comportment, who is to ascertain his years for the grandeur of the works led to credit him older, and finally as happens in cases of great marvel, he was pointed to by all as a monster of genius.

Domenico, son of Gian Lorenzo Bernini

...In Italian sculpture, four giants represent as many eras from the early Renaissance to Neoclassicism: Donatello, Michelangelo, Bernini and Canova. Between 1813 and 1818, Leopoldo Cicognara wrote the first history of sculpture in Italy and named his treatment of the respective periods after them but only the century of Bernini covered roughly a hundred and fifty years, from 1600 to 1750. Perhaps no one, before or after Gian Lorenzo, has left so deep a mark on such a long period of art history...

Andrea Bacchi and Anna Coliva

Gain Lorenzo Bernini was the greatest and most influential sculptor of his age. Endlessly inventive and gifted with extraordinary technical skill, he virtually created the Baroque style. In his religious sculptures he excelled at capturing movement and extreme emotion, uniting figures with their setting to create a single conception of overwhelming intensity that perfectly expressed the fervour of Counter-Reformation Rome. Intensity and drama also characterise his mythological groups, his remarkable portraits and his world-famous Roman fountains.

Rudolf Wittkower, in Bernini - The Sculptor of the Roman Baroque