Bernini's Death

Abstract

A remarkable picture of Bernini's death emerges from the biographies by Filippo Baldinucci and the artist's son, Domenico. They mention two works of art in this connection. One is Bernini's Sangue di Cristo composition engraved by Francois Spierre, which can be dated to the year 1670 (Fig. 1). The Crucified Christ is shown with the Virgin, God the Father and a host of angels, suspended above a sea formed by the blood pouring from His wounds. Two texts referring to the blood of Christ are inscribed at the bottom of the print, one from Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, “The blood of Christ, who offered himself without spot to God, will purge our conscience,” the other from St. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, “I offer you, eternal Father, the blood of the incarnate word; and if anything is wanting in me I offer it to you, Mary, that you may present it to the eternal Trinity.” The second work is a bust of the Savior, the last sculpture by Bernini's hand. He began it in his eightieth year, in 1679, and willed it to his friend and patron, Queen Christina of Sweden (cf. Figs. 9–14). It was more than life-size (103cm high) and represented Christ with His right hand slightly raised, as if in the act of blessing. Bernini evidently attached particular importance to “this divine simulacrum,” which he called his “favorite” and to which he devoted “all the forces of his Christian piety and of art itself”; in the Savior he “summed up and concentrated all his art.” Although technically weak, it demonstrated for him the triumph of “disegno” over the physical depredations of old age. Both works were regarded by contemporaries as extraordinary achievements, even for Bernini, and fitting capstones to the artist's extraordinary career.

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