The Theatrical Activity of Gianlorenzo Bernini

Author(s): Robert Fahrner and William Kleb

Source: Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Mar., 1973), pp. 5-14
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
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 ROBERT FAHRNER and WILLIAM KLEB

The Theatrical Activity of

Gianlorenzo Bernini

Evelyn, the English diarist, arrived in Rome on November 4, 1644. He visited St.
John
Peter's on the nineteenth of that month and recorded his enthusiasm for
Gianlorenzo Bernini's exuberant new Baldacchino, completed in 1633. Concluding his
description of the spectacular canopy, with its monumental, twisted bronze columns,
Evelyn noted that Bernini had recently given "a Publique Opera (for so they call those
Shews of that kind), where in he painted the seanes, cut the Statues, invented the
Engines, composed the Musique, writ the Comedy, & built the Theatre all himselfe." 1
Evelyn's fascinating entry has been widely quoted. Art historians, noting the
"dramatic impulse" in such masterpieces as the Baldacchino or the Cornaro or Altieri
Chapels, add parenthetically that Bernini devoted much time and energy to the theatre
throughout his long career. The English tourist's remark provides emphatic, con-
temporary testimony to the extent of this involvement. But what more can be said of
Bernini's theatrical activity? Having aroused our curiosity, Evelyn provides no further
details. Art historians seem interested in it only in general, as an "influence" on Bernini's
more important (and tangible) sculptural and architectural achievements. Theatre
historians seem to have ignored it almost entirely.

And yet a considerable amount of information about Bernini's theatrical activity

exists. While accounts are fragmentary, an invetigation of the evidence-virtually none of
it in English-provides a fascinating glimpse of a neglected facet of the Baroque genius's
career.

Rudolph Wittkower, in Art and Architecture in Italy 1600 to 1750, argues that
Bernini developed a "revolutionary" aesthetic approach during his "middle period," from
about 1640 to 1655, in which "the traditional separation of the arts into clearly defined
species or categories became obsolete and even nonsensical." The supreme example of
this "fusion" of the arts into "one overwhelming effect," according to Wittkower, is the
artist's Cornaro Chapel with its well-known Ecstasy of St. Teresa over the altar. In such
work the "borderline between painting, sculpture, and architecture becomes fluid." 2
Thus Bernini seems to have anticipated by more than three hundred years similar
"interdisciplinary" phenomena in modern art.
Theatre by its very nature involves such an interdisciplinary approach, of course, and
Baroque theatre, with its opera and court festivals, ranks with Wagnerian "music-drama"
and modern experiments in "total theatre" as one of the most resolutely multi-form of all
Robert Fabrner is Chairman of the Department of Dramatic Art at the University of California, Davis.
William Kleb is Coordinator of the Creative Arts Interdisciplinary Program at California State
University, San Francisco.
The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E. S. deBeer (Oxford, 1955), II, 261.
2 2nd rev. ed. (Baltimore, 1965), pp. 99, 105-106.

5/

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 6 / EDUCATIONAL THEATRE JOURNAL

theatrical developments. Given Bernini's conscious commitment to the creation of new,

interdisciplinary artistic species, the artist's passionate interest in the theatre seems
logical, even inevitable. In fact, however, Bernini's theatrical activity began years before
the radical developments of his "middle period."
In 1624, shortly after his accession to the papacy, Bernini's intimate friend and great
patron Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini) awarded the artist, then twenty-six, the
Baldacchino commission. Bernini spent almost a decade working on the canopy. It was
during these years-helped by his brother Luigi, the painter Guido Ubaldo Abbatini, and
various assistants and students-that he began writing and producing theatrical entertain-
ments for the Roman Carnival seasons each year. Presented in the Vatican foundry,
Bernini's shows were so elaborate that the young master and his collaborators spent the
whole year preparing for the pre-Lenten month of performances.3
Contemporary accounts indicate that plots or sustained themes were not very
important in these theatre pieces of Bernini's-theatre pieces which he presented, at least
occasionally, long after the Baldacchino was completed in 1633. Zongo Hondedei, a
former seminarian from Bologna working in the Vatican, saw Bernini's production for the
1635 Carnival, for example. He described the piece, done in an unidentified private
house, in two letters to his cousin Camillo. Part of the evening featured the participation
of painters and sculptors in on-the-spot creation of non-dramatic works of art as part of
an over-all, multi-media effect; it sounds strikingly similar to certain modern "staged
happenings." The setting was Naples, Hondedei reported, and on the stage were "two
academies," one for painting, the other for sculpturing. In the course of the presentation,
work went on constantly in both areas. The dialogue (improvised at least in part,
apparently) included an attack on vices in the papal court, exhortations to virtue,
discussions of Bernini himself and of his rivals, love interest, and a variety of charming
absurdities (graziosissimi ridicoli)-all while statues and paintings were being produced in
full view. The event was carried off with extraordinary ease and naturalness (facilita e
naturalezza). There was such a variety of effects (tanta diversita d'invenzioni), Hondedei
commented, that the spectators never wearied; every detail was perfect.4 Hondedei's
enthusiasm (neither the ancients nor the moderns, he thought, ever reached the mark
attained by this production) is supported by an entry in the Avvisi di Roma, a
contemporary record of events in Rome. Of the entertainments presented in private
houses during the 1635 Carnival, it noted, the most pleasant (la piii gradevole) was
Bernini's.s
Another production which seems to have had the same kind of varied format was The
Flooding of the Tiber (Inondazione del Tevere), which Bernini mounted for the 1638
Carnival in the theatre of the Palazzo Barberini.6 Massimiliano Montecucoli, who saw the
3 Die Kiinstlerbiographien von Giovanni Battista Passeri, ed. Jacob Hess (Leipzig and Vienna,
1934), p. 236. Passeri's work was first published in 1772.
4 Dated Feb. 14 and Feb. 24, 1635; cited in Alfredo Saviotti, "Feste e spettacoli nel seicento,"
Giornale Storico della letteratura italiana, 41 (1903), 72-74.
s Entry for Feb. 24, 1635; cited in Filippo Clementi, II carnevale romano nelle cronache
contemporanee (Rome, 1899), p. 404.
6 Little is known about this theatre, except that it was reportedly capable of accomodating about
3000 spectators. It opened on Feb. 23, 1632, according to the journal of Jean-Jacques Bouchard, a
Frenchman who visited Rome that year, with a production of an early version of Guilio Rospigliosi
and Stefano Landi's opera II Sant' Alessio (Henry Prunitres, L'Opera italien en France avant Lulli
[Paris, 1913], pp. 7-12).

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 7 / THEATRICAL ACTIVITY OF BERNINI

show, reported to his Duke, Francesco I of Modena, that the evening included a
spectacular re-creation of a Tiber flood which had occurred the previous year, a beautiful
nocturnal street scene, a play in which a house collapsed on stage, and a skit comparing
Florence and Rome. Nowhere, however, did Montecucoli's lengthy account suggest that
these episodes were related.7
To say that Bernini's entertainments lacked a tight, unified structure is not to say that
they were merely superficial. Granted, they did not have the high seriousness and
formality of the Jonsonian masque; there is no evidence of an over-all emblematic
meaning or ritualistic purpose in them. Nevertheless, as witnesses such as Hondedei and
Montecucoli recorded, these shows, occasionally at any rate, did raise serious issues and
dramatize sophisticated ideas-if always in an entertaining manner.

Two particularly interesting examples of this occurred in the entertainment Bernini

presented in his home for the Carnival of 1637.8 Again Montecucoli sent detailed
information to the Duke of Modena. When the curtain fell, he wrote, "two theatres" were
created: on stage a group of figures-some painted, others real-mirrored the large
audience gathered in the hall. Also on stage were two clowns, one facing the real
audience, the other the mock audience. After a brief silence, the clowns acknowledged
each other, discovered that they were friends, and began to converse. The first clown
commented that it was impolite for the second to turn his back on the audience, and
asked why he did it. The second clown responded that it was, in fact, the first who was
impolite, and pulled him around to face the mock audience. Uncertain what to do, the
two discussed the curious situation, finally deciding that a dividing curtain would allow
each to entertain his own audience. The curtain was then pulled, leaving a clown on either
side of it. With the conclusion of this humorous restatement of one of the central
preoccupations of Baroque art-in Wittkower's words, "what is image, what is
reality?"-the main show began.

Although Montecucoli thought the performance of the unidentified play that followed
was excellent, he allotted it only one sentence, devoting most of his long letter to the
spectacular tableau that brought the evening to a close on a serious note. Once again the
two clowns appeared, this time both in front of the curtain. One of them, quite out of
breath, fanned himself with his hat. When the second clown asked about his breathless
condition, the first explained it resulted from the effort involved in staging a conclusion
for the production he had just performed for his audience. The second clown wondered
what perspective or other striking effect he had used; the first replied that he had simply
shown on stage the crowd leaving the theatre-complete with carriages, horses, and
torches. The second clown asked to see the finale. The curtain fell, Montecucoli recorded,
to reveal a perspective which, considering the size of the place, was nothing less than
amazing. There was a sky, he wrote, so perfectly devised that it was astounding. The

7 Undated letter; cited in Stanislao Fraschetti, II Bernini: la sua vita, la sua opera, il suo tempo
(Milan, 1900), pp. 264-265. Fraschetti publishes complete letters or at least whole passages from
letters, not just brief sections.
" Although records show that Bernini did six productions (and presumably more) in his home on
the Corso, at the corner of the Via Frattina, nothing is known about the theatre. Judging from what
we know of the nature of his entertainments, as well as of the elite audiences for which they appear to
have been intended, it seems safe to assume that it was small, comfortable, and technically well
equipped.

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 8 / EDUCATIONALTHEATRE JOURNAL

moon was shown in various stages; it was especially impressive for the way it borrowed
light (riguardevole nell'accatezza del lumme). Now and then clouds moved to obscure it
so realistically, Montecucoli reported, that everyone remained absolutely suspended.
There were innumerable stars, too, which seemed wonderfully real-some fixed, others
moving. And under this splendid sky were palaces, houses, gardens, and hills, all in
perspective. Peasant girls entered and danced. Grooms with lighted torches, cavaliers on
horseback, carriages (some with two horses and others with six), and large retinues
appeared-exactly as would happen when the audience left to return home. Eventually
other grooms gathered, clothed in mourning and holding lighted black torches; then
finally, mounted on a large, lean horse, Death entered, dressed in mourning and holding a
scythe in his right hand. He passed across the stage two or three times and then stopped,
facing the audience. At this, one of the clowns explained to the spectators that the image
before them was Death, who, with his fatal decree, cuts off all earthly pleasure and
diversion, and who had come now to do the same to their revels. The clown then ordered
the curtain raised to keep the hateful figure from ruining a pleasant evening.9

II
While reports such as this prove that at least some of Bernini's productions had their
serious sides, it is clear that opportunity for spectacle was a principal consideration in
their creation. This seems only natural: Bernini was, after all, involved in sculpture,
architecture, and, to a certain extent, painting. Although his theatre pieces frequently
employed dialogue, their primary reality seems to have been non-verbal and theatrical.
The production involving the "two theatres" clearly supports this contention, while a
further examination of The Flooding of the Tiber offers a particularly striking example of
the lengths to which the Bernini went to achieve startling visual effects.
According to Montecucoli, the title episode came first that evening. The curtain fell to
reveal a perspective view of Rome; in the distance were St. Peter's, Castel Sant'Angelo,
and other well-known Roman buildings. Closer was the river itself, which rose ingeniously
(con rara invenzione andave crescendo). Closer still, just beyond the performing area, real
water was held in place with barriers. Men ferried people from one part of the scene to
another, as though water had already occupied the lower sections of the city and
interrupted normal business-exactly as it had the previous year. Various officials came to
look at the embankments and to arrange dikes and planks to keep the water from
submerging the city. But suddenly the barricade broke (Ma all'improviso casco l'Argine)
and water poured onto the stage, rushing furiously toward the audience. Some of the
spectators sitting closer to the stage, believing the embankment had accidentally
collapsed, jumped up to run away. But just as the water was about to pour into the hall, a
barrier rose at the edge of the stage (si alzb un riparo finire del Palco) and the water ran
off harmlessly.1 o
9 Dated Feb. 20, 1637; cited in Fraschetti, pp. 262-263. Wittkower, p. 106. Filippo Baldinucci, in
his biography of Bernini published just two years after the artist's death, wrote that the mock
audience in the "two theatres" prelude wore masks made to resemble the more distinguished members
of the audience in front (Vita di Gian Lorenzo Bernini, ed. Sergio Samek Ludovici [Milan, 19481, p.
151). Bernini's son Domenico Bernino, not born until 1657, in a life of his father based on Baldinucci
and-in great part-on hearsay, stated that the afterpiece alone took about an hour to perform (Vita
del Cavalier Gio. Lorenzo Bernino [Rome, 1713], p. 56).
1 Bernino, who could not have been an eye-witness, of course, wrote that some of the spectators
even climbed on benches to avoid the deluge (p. 55).

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 9 / THEATRICAL ACTIVITY OF BERNINI

Montecucoli went on, in the same letter, to describe in detail other episodes presented
that evening. Like the first, they all seem to have been mounted principally for
spectacular visual effect. In one, during a musical interlude, the stage was transformed
into a street full of carriages and horses and of people who stopped to hear the music.
Farther off there were stately buildings and spacious squares filled with model carriages,
which moved, and miniature people.'1 In the sky above were the moon and stars, which
also sometimes moved. In keeping with the Baroque love of realism, there was even a
donkey in the scene which brayed opportunamente.
Another spectacular effect noted in detail by Montecucoli occurred in a satirical play
on dishonesty and insincerity. In it, two characters dressed a youth as a woman.
Pretending to be "her" guardians, they arranged suitors for "her"-and collected the gifts
brought by the suitors. Eventually Divine justice prevailed, however: the conspirators'
house collapsed on them with a great crash, strewing the stage with stones, beams, plaster,
and dust. Their bodies were then dragged out of the rubble. This particular piece,
Montecucoli added to his description, was so good that everyone ought to have seen it.

The final scene of the evening, Montecucoli went on, showed an audience on stage
supposedly watching another play. The people closer were live, those more distant mock
(finte). But to the spectators (with the exception of Montecucoli, apparently) the whole
thing looked perfectly real. The idea was repeated, Montecucoli explained, to satisfy the
curiosity of those who had heard of the mirrored audience effect of the previous year but
had been unable to attend that production.' 2

Although he did not indicate when it was done, Domenico Bernino recorded another
spectacular visual effect with which his father startled an audience, this time in his private
theatre. It occurred in a production called The Fair (La Fiera) and involved not a flood
but a conflagration. On stage came a carnival wagon surrounded by players carrying
torches. One of the players, a kind of clown, began to rub his torch back and forth on
part of the scenery (frego e refrego la sua Torcia a una Scene), as though he were
attempting to make the torch burn better. Some of the players, along with some of the
spectators, began to scream in terror when the scenery seemed to ignite and fire to spread
until the whole stage was aflame. But in reality the fire was contrived and harmless
(artificiosa, & innocente), and as the spectators ran in confusion to escape, the scene
changed wondrously (mutossi con un ordine maraviglioso la Scena). In place of the fire
there appeared a very delightful garden (un deliziosissimo Giardino).13 Unfortunately
Bernino did not record how his father achieved this fire effect. Perhaps he used aqua vita.

One of Bernini's less alarming special effects was even brought to the attention of Louis
XIII. It was, Bernino wrote, a clever machine (artificiosa Machina) for depicting the

S' Serlio, almost a century earlier, commented briefly on the construction of miniature people:
cut from heavy cardboard and painted, the figures were to be attached to a strip of wood and pulled
across the scene in a runway (Tbe Second Book of Arcbitecture, in The Renaissance Stage, ed. Bernard
Hewitt [Coral Gables, Florida, 1958], p. 35. Bernini very likely used this method.
12 Undated letter; cited in Fraschetti, pp. 264-265. Mirroring his audience seems to have been a
favorite device of Bernini's: Bernino reported that his father employed it again later, in a grander
production (piE maestosa Rappresentazione) in the Casa Rospigliosi during the pontificate of
Clement IX (p. 56). Bernino does not give the title of the production, but it may have been The
Comedy of Heaven in 1668, discussed below.
13 Bernino, pp. 55-56.

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 10 / EDUCATIONAL THEATRE JOURNAL

sunrise, first used in Bernini's production The Seashore (La marina).1 4 Although Bernino
did not explain the operation of the device, it may have been similar to the dawn machine
described in Nicola Sabbatini's manual for building theatre scenes and machines,
published in 1638. This involved a painted section of sky, lighted from beneath the
darkened stage by lamps; the unit was attached by horizontal beams to grooved, vertical,
wooden braces and raised by means of a rope, pulley, and windlass arrangement.' 5
Bernino neglects to date The Seashore, but Baldinuci insists that Bernini was the first to
discover the dawn machine (Fu.... il primo, che trovasse la bella macchina della levata
del sole), adding that the invention was used in The Seashore. 16

There exists a drawing by Bernini showing a rocky seacoast at sunrise which Luigi
Grassi has labeled a theatre design. If Grassi's identification is correct, this rendering-
which looks as though it could have been connected with The Seashore production-is the
only Bernini theatre sketch known to have survived. Unfortunately, however, its
theatrical nature is questionable: the cliffs on either side might be flat wings and the
narrow beach in the foreground a ground row, it is true, but one cannot be sure.17 In any
case, Bernini's sunrise device became so famous that Louis XIII, through Cardinal
Richelieu, requested a model. Bernini complied immediately, but at the end of his
complicated set of directions he added: "It will succeed when I send along my hands and
1
my head." 8

III

Although John Evelyn did not mention it, there is evidence that Bernini, in addition to
writing, designing, and staging his theatre pieces, occasionally performed in them as well.
Montecucoli, in his report to Modena on The Flooding of the Tiber, noted that Bernini
played an old Florentine woman, toward the end of the evening, in an episode comparing
Florence and Rome. Francesco Mantovani, another Modenese, sent Duke Francesco
details about a controversial performance in which Bernini appeared in the home of
Donna Olimpia Pamfili in 1646. Bernini played a character named Graziano, a parody of
Marchese Mario Frangipani, a papal adviser, while Bernini's brother Luigi parodied

14 Ibid., p. 56.
1s Practica di Fabricar scene, e macbine ne'teatri (Ravenna, 1638), pp. 161-162. Sabbatini's
treatise, a compilation of contemporary stage practices, describes standard devices and machines.
Bernini presumably used these fundamental methods when they were appropriate. But in his most
interesting theatre pieces, he invented his own highly imaginative special effects-many of them more
complicated and ingenious than the standard devices described by Sabbatini (for instance, his use of
barriers and water in The Flooding of the Tiber).
16 Baldinucci, p. 151.
1 7 Luigi Grassi,
Disegni del Bernini (Bergamo, 1944), p. 13, Fig. 8. Preserved in the
Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, the drawing is in pen and ink on white paper; it is 295 millimeters long
and 273 millimeters wide. Some recent scholars (Clementi, Fraschetti, and Saviotti, for instance)
believe that Bernini designed the 1634 production of Stephano Landi and Guilio Rospigliosi's II
Sant'Alessio. If so, the 8 engravings by F. Collignon of the sets, attributed to "B inventor" and
published with the score (Rome, 1634), would provide additional visual documentation for a study of
Bernini's theatre work. But there is no contemporary reference to Bernini's having designed the opera:
neither Baldinucci, Bernino, the Avvisi di Roma, nor Giacinto Gigli's Diaro romano: 1608-1670 (ed.
G. Ricciotti, Rome, 1958)-which describes the production enthusiastically-refer to Bernini as the
designer. The engravings, furthermore, depict sets with none of the dynamism and exuberance that we
expect of Bernini; they seem stark, static, and restricted.
8
Bernino, p. 17.

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 12 / EDUCATIONALTHEATRE JOURNAL

CardinalFrancescoBarberini.According to Mantovani,the production,which was much

too outspoken and shocking (troppo libera e scandalosa),greatly offended some of the
more scrupulousspectators,amongthem CardinalCarraffa.However,Mantovanidoubted
the rumor that some of Bernini's material was suppressedat the second performance
because a priest had complained to the Pope of Bernini's lack of restraint.What was
omitted from the second performance,Mantovanicommented, was, if anything, very
little, as much of the questionable humor had been improvised.He added that Bernini
could have gained nothing by presentingthe play-that it was a miracle, in fact, that he
was not condemned to the galleys for it-and that one day, as a result of this kind of
activity, he would fall out of favor.19
Mantovanihad a point. From the beginning Bernini-a sociable man who combined
great charmwith a brilliant,often biting wit-regularly exhibited a penchantfor slightly
veiled personalsatire in his theatre pieces. For example, an anonymous Modenese saw a
Bernini production, done in an unspecified place, duringthe Carnivalin 1633. In a letter
to Duke Francesco he reported that, along with numerousjibes at current fashions,
particularlyclothing styles, the play had been full of cutting jokes about many papal
courtiers. This frankness, he said, had caused general amazement and he himself had
found it remarkablethat the most famous sculptor of the age could risk offending so
many people in a public place. He added, however, that Pope Urbanwas delightedwhen
he heard about the piece.20 Another anonymous letter to the Duke of Modenarecorded
further informationabout Bernini'ssatiric manneras well as additionalproof of Urban's
goodwill towards the artist. Writtenabout a production mounted during the Carnivalof
1634-again in an unidentifiedplace-the letter focused on two controversialsituationsin
particular.The first involvedthe beating of an ox. This amusedeveryone-everyone, that
is, but CardinalBorgia, who saw the episode as a none-too-subtlereferenceto the fact
that Pope Urban had recently called him an ox. CardinalBorgiawas not happy, either,
about a second scene which arousedgeneral laughter.In it a Spaniardwas thrashedby a
porter. The Cardinal, sensitive to political implications, regardedthe performancean
insult to the Spanish King and to the Spanish nation-especially since the Pope himself
had been well awareof the contents of the piece before its presentation.21

Although in 1646 Bernini was still producingthe kind of satiricentertainmenthe had

been doing for two decades-Mantovani's reaction in 1646 is similar to that of the
anonymous Modenese in 1633-the situation in Rome had changed.UrbanVIII, Bernini's
friend and patron, had died in 1644, ending a twenty-one year reign. His successor,
Innocent X (Gian Battista Pamfili), was unfavorableto the Barberinifaction and as a
result Bernini'sposition, as far as the Vatican was concerned, was less securethan it had
been. Moreover, despite the fact that Innocent did not interfere with Bernini's 1646
production (performedin the house of the Pope's sister, after all), he did not approveof
theatrical productions and eventually, in 1650, he sternly prohibited them in Rome.22
One wonders how much Bernini's performancesinfluenced this decision. In any case,
Mantovaniseems rightto have questionedBernini'sdiscretion.
The situation after Innocent's death in 1655 was not much better. UnderAlexander
'9 Dated Feb. 3 and Feb. 7, 1646; cited in Fraschetti, pp. 268-270.
20
Dated Feb. 5, 1633; cited ibid., p. 261.
21 Dated Feb. 25, 1634; cited ibid.,
pp. 261-262.
22 Ibid., pp. 259-260.

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 13 / THEATRICAL ACTIVITY OF BERNINI

VII (Fabio Chigi), who reigneduntil 1667, theatricalproduction in Rome was minimal.
There is no evidence that Bernini staged any performancesagainuntil the two-yearreign
of Clement IX (Guilio Rospigliosi) occasioned a brief flurry of theatrical activity in the
city.23 Even then, apparently, he functioned only as set designer for the Rospigliosi
family's production of The Comedy of Heaven (Comica del cielo), for which Clement
himself, before his accession, had written the libretto. The opera, composed by Anton
Maria Abbatini, was done in a small theatre in the Palazzo Rospigliosi. None of the
designs for the production have survived,although the work providesseveralopportuni-
ties for spectacularscenic effects, includingthe miraculouslevitation of a boulder, a naval
battle, and an apotheosis complete with dancingVirtuesand a choir of angels.24
If Innocent X had been unfavorableto the Barberinifaction, ClementIX's successor,
Clement X (Emilio Altieri), elected in 1670, was actively hostile towards it. Apparently
Bernini's theatrical activity declined in these years. Indeed, we only have proof of a
Bernini production at the end of Clement's reign, during the Carnival of 1676. On
February 1 of that year AlessandroCaprarawrote to MarcheseCarlo FrancescoPio di
Savoia that Bernini would present an entertainment in his theatre the following day.
Another letter, an anonymous one written on February 29, suggests that Bernini
continued to present entertainmentseven duringLent that year, but neitherletter offers
any details about the shows.2 5
Innocent XI (Benedette Odescalchi),who was elected pontiff in September1676, was
austere and, like Innocent X, did not approveof theatricalactivity. Whilehe did not ban
all theatricalproduction, he restricted the 1677 Carnivalperformancesto puppet shows
shortly after his election. Bernini,it seems, had alreadybegun elaboratepreparationsfor
his performance that year, financed with considerable grants (bona mancia) from
CardinalsChigi, Acciaioli, and Nini. Although the new Pope expressedstrongdispleasure
when he heard of Bernini's plans, a member of his court persuadedhim to make an
exception in his case.26 No additionalinformationabout this productionexists, however,
and there are no further references to theatrical activity by Bernini until 1680, when
Innocent had begun to relax his campaignagainstthe theatre.27 Again the informationis
meagre.According to the Avvisi di Roma, when QueenChristinaof Sweden visited Rome
in 1680, she wanted to attend Bernini'sperformancesevery evening-presumablyin his
theatre.2 In an entry dated February7, the Avvisi di Roma refers to HonestyJn Love
(l'Onesta nelli amori), a play with music, but says nothing about it.29 Most likely these
were the last entertainmentsmounted by Bernini;he died on November28, 1680, shortly
before his eighty-secondbirthday.

IV
Thus Bernini seems to have been most involved with theatre duringthe reign of his
23 Ibid., p. 270.
24 Alessandro Ademollo, I teatri di Roma nel secolo decimosettimo (Rome, 1888), pp. 98-102.
2s
Cited in Fraschetti, p. 271.
26 Unsigned letter, dated Jan. 30, 1677; cited ibid., p. 272. An unsigned letter to the court of

Modena, dated Feb. 20, describes the discontent engendered by the Pope's allowing Bernini to do a
regular production when everyone else was restricted to puppet shows (cited ibid.).
27 Ademollo, p. 159.
2" Cited ibid.
29
Cited ibid.

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 14 / EDUCATIONALTHEATRE JOURNAL

patron UrbanVIII, a period of approximatelytwenty years. He could count on financial

support from the Pope duringthis time-Zongo Hondedei recordedthat Urbanprovided
him with 10,000 scudi each year for his theatre productions.30 He could also expect
tolerance and goodwill from the Pope, if not active encouragement,for the satirictype of
entertainmenthe seems to have enjoyed presenting.After that, the scarcityof references
to theatrical activity by Bernini, the number of referencesto the artist's difficulties in
presentingshows, and the generallyunfavorableattitude towardthe stage all suggestthat,
while Berninidid not lose interestin theatreafter Urban'sdeath, his work in this areawas
only intermittent.
Bernini'stheatre pieces, of course,were typical of Baroqueart in general.They reflect
the liberatedexuberance,the confidence and dynamismof an age freed from a century of
Counter Reformation austerity and discipline. They rely chiefly on spectacularvisual
effects and seem designed to engage an audience emotionally ratherthan intellectually.
While lack of visual documentation does not permit a comparisonbetween Bernini'sset
designs and contemporarypainting, the radical Baroqueattitude towards form, the new
openness that, for example, extended pictorial space beyond the limited confines of
Renaissance composition into infinity, may be seen in Bernini's loose, free, even
improvisational approach to dramatic form. And, naturally, Bernini's theatre pieces
vividly illustratethe central Baroquepreoccupationwith the boundariesbetween illusion
and reality. Not only were his productions praisedagain and again for their naturalism
(naturalezza),but again and againwe find the artistintroducingeffects that test the very
limits of that reality. Occasionally he even provoked actual physical involvement or
participationon the part of his audiences.
In conclusion, we know enough of Bernini'stheatricalactivity to wish we knew more.
It was apparently extensive, especially during Urban's reign, and, as Evelyn's note
suggests, clearly involved more than occasional collaboration as a set designer or
macchinista. It seems almost certainly to have influenced the radical interdisciplinary
developmentsof his middle years-perhaps more than has been generallyacknowledged.
Surely those two trompe l'oeil stage boxes in the CornaroChapel, with their richly
costumed, gesticulatingspectatorsflankingthe altar-stageon which a swooningSt. Teresa
is about to be piercedby the Angel'sarrow,are dramaticenough proof of the importance
of the theatre as an aesthetic reality in the artist's work during this period-a period in
which Innocent X had forbidden the actual production of theatricalevents. But more
than this, the enthusiastic, if fragmentary,accounts of such remarkablyimaginative-and
seemingly "modern"-presentations involvingthe "two academies,"the "two theatres,"
and the flooding of the Tiber indicate that Bernini'stheatrewas an exciting achievement
by itself-an importantexpression of the great Baroquemaster'senergy, sensibility, and
versatility.

30 Letter dated Feb. 14, 1635; cited in Saviotti, p. 72.

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