Howard Hibbard's precise but involving account of the career of Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) is necessarily the story of one of the most fortunate instances of patronage in Western art. Throughout the book Hibbard balances the advances in Bernini's style and the scope of his ambitions against the importance of a rare degree of privileged access to patronage. Bernini, whose sculptor father had been called to Rome to work for Paul V, was a prodigy who not only received much of his artistic education at the Vatican (where he supposedly drew daily for three years) but may even have been commissioned as a sculptor by the papal family at the age of 11. While stories of the fostering of prodigies by enlightened patrons are the stuff of biographers' public relations efforts (e.g., Michelangelo and the Medici 'sculpture garden'), it is certainly true that Bernini was a prodigy and went on to work for eight successive popes. He enjoyed unprecedented dominance over Roman art for most of the rest of his life due to the papacy's favorable view of his genius.
His relationships with the pontiffs varied but it was his unique friendship with Urban VIII (r. 1623-44) that established Bernini as the sculptor and architect with the official backing to transform much of Rome and to establish trends in sculpture and architecture that were nearly unchallenged throughout the seventeenth century. As Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, Urban VIII had befriended and employed Bernini. Bernini was the first artist to enjoy terms of intimacy equal to those of a prince or statesman with a patron of this stature. On the day of his election Urban summoned Bernini and told him he was lucky to see his friend elected pope but that his own luck was "much greater to have Cavalier Bernini alive in our pontificate" (68).
The tenor of this famous remark was a foretaste of the importance Bernini would have for future popes. Though Urban's successor Innocent X (r. 16...