1 00:00:09,904 --> 00:00:17,350 [church music] 2 00:00:17,350 --> 00:00:23,052 She is in ecstasy, all right. 3 00:00:23,052 --> 00:00:26,614 Her head is thrown back, her mouth open. 4 00:00:26,614 --> 00:00:31,983 Her heavy-lidded eyes are half closed. 5 00:00:31,983 --> 00:00:40,221 An angelic hand is delicately uncovering her breast. 6 00:00:40,221 --> 00:00:43,719 You have to look. 7 00:00:43,719 --> 00:00:57,498 You don't know where to look. 8 00:00:57,498 --> 00:01:00,974 A century after Bernini created this sculpture 9 00:01:00,974 --> 00:01:05,387 a French art lover doing the tour of Rome came into this church, 10 00:01:05,387 --> 00:01:06,882 peered at the spectacle, 11 00:01:06,882 --> 00:01:15,667 and said, "Well, if that's divine love, I know all about it." 12 00:01:15,667 --> 00:01:18,356 So what is this? 13 00:01:18,356 --> 00:01:21,388 Surely not an erotic trance. 14 00:01:21,388 --> 00:01:29,567 Not from the most devout sculptor in Rome. 15 00:01:29,567 --> 00:01:32,818 No one who was the bosom friend of popes, 16 00:01:32,818 --> 00:01:34,815 a pillar of the Catholic establishment, 17 00:01:34,815 --> 00:01:42,402 could possibly want us to see a nun in the throes of orgasm. 18 00:01:42,402 --> 00:01:45,208 Could he? 19 00:02:21,213 --> 00:02:28,030 It's no good pretending that ecstasy isn't a physical as well as a spiritual experience. 20 00:02:28,030 --> 00:02:34,805 The passion doesn't work through the body as well as the soul. 21 00:02:34,805 --> 00:02:37,963 Bernini knew all about passion. 22 00:02:37,963 --> 00:02:42,585 That's what his art was about. 23 00:02:42,585 --> 00:02:50,632 It was this physical intensity that would transform sculpture. 24 00:02:50,632 --> 00:02:58,853 No one before Bernini had managed to make marble so carnal. 25 00:02:58,853 --> 00:03:09,651 In his nimble hands it would flutter and stream, quiver and sweat. 26 00:03:09,651 --> 00:03:12,059 His figures weep and shout. 27 00:03:12,059 --> 00:03:20,811 Their torsos twist and run and arch themselves in spasms of intense sensation. 28 00:03:20,811 --> 00:03:27,043 He could, like an alchemist, change one material into another. 29 00:03:27,043 --> 00:03:29,219 Marble into trees. 30 00:03:29,219 --> 00:03:31,414 Leaves, hair. 31 00:03:31,414 --> 00:03:39,649 And of course, flesh. 32 00:03:39,649 --> 00:03:45,645 [woman singing] 33 00:03:45,645 --> 00:03:50,531 The whole point of classical sculpture was to make humans less so, 34 00:03:50,531 --> 00:03:55,466 to give mortal flesh the heavyweight smoothness of immortality. 35 00:03:55,466 --> 00:04:01,903 So many of them end up looking divine but bloodless. 36 00:04:15,105 --> 00:04:21,301 But then along comes Bernini, and suddenly even Michelangelo's David looks immobile 37 00:04:21,301 --> 00:04:29,405 beside Bernini's whirling, twisting tornado. 38 00:04:29,405 --> 00:04:32,403 His sculpture was supposed to convey gravity. 39 00:04:32,403 --> 00:04:34,871 Bernini would defy it. 40 00:04:34,871 --> 00:04:37,801 His figures break loose from their plinths, 41 00:04:37,801 --> 00:04:42,270 flying away into space. 42 00:04:43,716 --> 00:04:49,377 [rushing music] 43 00:04:49,377 --> 00:04:51,578 For as long as anyone could remember, 44 00:04:51,578 --> 00:04:58,725 Gian Lorenzo Bernini had startled the people who mattered. 45 00:05:01,018 --> 00:05:06,891 Brought before the pope when he was just 8, he did a lightning sketch of St. Paul's head 46 00:05:06,891 --> 00:05:15,019 that prompted the astonished pope to tip the little boy as the next Michelangelo. 47 00:05:16,727 --> 00:05:20,649 His father, Pietro, was a sculptor from Florence, 48 00:05:20,649 --> 00:05:24,974 seldom better than competent, and sometimes worse. 49 00:05:24,974 --> 00:05:30,808 But in his son, he knew a good thing when he saw it. 50 00:05:30,808 --> 00:05:34,662 "Watch out, Signor Bernini," an admiring cardinal said, 51 00:05:34,662 --> 00:05:42,269 "The boy will surpass his master." 52 00:05:42,269 --> 00:05:45,306 So, fast out of the starting blocks, 53 00:05:45,306 --> 00:05:49,182 our little prodigy - 54 00:05:52,798 --> 00:05:55,888 Here's a playful tour de force. 55 00:05:55,888 --> 00:06:01,406 Two little angels embrace in wide-eyed innocence. 56 00:06:01,406 --> 00:06:03,884 Bernini did this in his teens. 57 00:06:03,884 --> 00:06:10,018 He kept it on display on the landing of his house throughout his life. 58 00:06:10,018 --> 00:06:14,639 And this is his goat, Analthea, and the infant Jupiter. 59 00:06:14,639 --> 00:06:24,614 A standard bit of mythology transformed into a romp with the shaggiest nanny goat in sculpture. 60 00:06:24,614 --> 00:06:30,464 What makes these little figures burst from their dull mythological subject matter? 61 00:06:30,464 --> 00:06:33,302 They have the hot breath of life in them. 62 00:06:33,302 --> 00:06:36,972 Lusty, mischievous, nursery school naughtiness. 63 00:06:36,972 --> 00:06:45,231 [choral singing] 64 00:06:46,955 --> 00:06:53,969 Bernini arrived in Rome in 1605. 65 00:06:53,969 --> 00:07:03,249 Just at the time Caravaggio's punchy street dramas were electrifying the church. 66 00:07:08,049 --> 00:07:12,490 Giving it a new vision of how to move the flock. 67 00:07:12,490 --> 00:07:20,381 No more remote saints. Instead, the shock theatre of the earthy passions. 68 00:07:20,381 --> 00:07:26,413 Salvation in the guts. 69 00:07:26,413 --> 00:07:29,252 So how do you top Caravaggio? 70 00:07:29,252 --> 00:07:31,588 Answer: You cant. 71 00:07:31,588 --> 00:07:37,384 But in sculpture. 72 00:07:42,015 --> 00:07:47,807 This is St. Lawrence being barbecued alive for his Christian beliefs. 73 00:07:47,807 --> 00:07:54,888 Bernini was 16 when he did this. 74 00:07:54,888 --> 00:07:59,544 He's trying to catch the moment of transcendent pain. 75 00:07:59,544 --> 00:08:08,004 When - if we believe the legends - St. Lawrence turns to his executioners and says, in a moment of macabre drollery, 76 00:08:08,004 --> 00:08:13,045 "Right, turn me over boys. This side's done." 77 00:08:13,045 --> 00:08:17,889 No wonder he became the patron saint of cooks! 78 00:08:19,411 --> 00:08:22,886 But there's something serious going on here. 79 00:08:22,886 --> 00:08:30,800 As Lawrence's hand touches the flame, a mysterious transformation takes place. 80 00:08:30,800 --> 00:08:37,970 The chronicler said the smell of scorched flesh turned fragrant. 81 00:08:37,970 --> 00:08:41,576 Pain and sweetness become one. 82 00:08:41,576 --> 00:08:46,970 Torment becomes ecstacy. 83 00:08:46,970 --> 00:08:56,582 A rehearsal perhaps, for a sweet ordeal to come. 84 00:08:56,582 --> 00:08:59,253 He loved playing with fire, did Bernini. 85 00:08:59,253 --> 00:09:01,889 Couldn't stop himself. 86 00:09:01,889 --> 00:09:04,668 Here he is as a damned soul. 87 00:09:04,668 --> 00:09:08,261 It's a self-portrait. 88 00:09:08,261 --> 00:09:12,951 Bernini has scorched his own arm in a naked flame, screaming in the mirror 89 00:09:12,951 --> 00:09:17,820 to get the expression just right. 90 00:09:17,820 --> 00:09:27,247 An extremist for his art, then, but also perhaps someone capable of impulsive acts of violence. 91 00:09:27,247 --> 00:09:36,786 Still, it's a drama of the flesh no one, not even Michelangelo, had made quite so gripping. 92 00:09:36,786 --> 00:09:46,268 [glorious choral singing] 93 00:09:48,484 --> 00:09:53,952 It was enough to make one bigwig on the Roman scene - Cardinal Scipione Borghese - 94 00:09:53,952 --> 00:09:58,219 want to adopt Gian Lorenzo as his personal staff property. 95 00:09:58,219 --> 00:10:05,024 Someone who'd make his fabulous new villa up here on the Pinchion hill THE place to see great art. 96 00:10:05,024 --> 00:10:09,581 How the other red hats would gnash their teeth in envy! 97 00:10:18,086 --> 00:10:26,169 There was something larger than life about Scipione Borghese. 98 00:10:26,169 --> 00:10:34,633 The bull-like neck and head sat atop a jumbo body. 99 00:10:34,633 --> 00:10:41,215 Sly Bernini. Using a button that can't quite make it through its hole 100 00:10:41,215 --> 00:10:50,103 to give us a feeling for the flesh tight-packed into the satin. 101 00:10:50,103 --> 00:10:56,100 The holy man of the church is, above all, a physical presence. 102 00:10:56,100 --> 00:11:01,267 He looks more like a chief than His Eminence. 103 00:11:01,267 --> 00:11:05,009 What he was after, Bernini said, was a speaking likeness 104 00:11:05,009 --> 00:11:09,557 because he thought that people gave themselves away most characteristically 105 00:11:09,557 --> 00:11:15,469 either just before or after they spoke. 106 00:11:17,100 --> 00:11:20,611 So he works his magic on Scipione. 107 00:11:20,611 --> 00:11:24,704 The little fringe poking out from the cardinal's hat, 108 00:11:24,704 --> 00:11:26,460 the chipmunk's cheeks, 109 00:11:26,460 --> 00:11:29,711 the fleshy blubbery lips. 110 00:11:29,711 --> 00:11:36,129 Scipione's nose catching the light in such a way as to suggest a film of sweat, 111 00:11:36,129 --> 00:11:43,728 the natural effusion of a big man in a hot city. 112 00:11:48,960 --> 00:11:54,411 Rome. The holy metropolis buzzing with worldly ambition. 113 00:11:54,411 --> 00:11:58,629 For the church aristocracy it's not just the money you've got that counts. 114 00:11:58,629 --> 00:12:01,961 It's also the art. 115 00:12:01,961 --> 00:12:06,268 Painters, sculptors and architects are angling for patrons. 116 00:12:06,268 --> 00:12:10,178 And the Rothschilds and the Sarches of their day, the popes and cardinals 117 00:12:10,178 --> 00:12:15,678 are gambling on the next prize genius. 118 00:12:24,310 --> 00:12:29,020 Bernini, of course, has everything it takes to succeed. 119 00:12:29,020 --> 00:12:30,893 He's witty, charming, 120 00:12:30,893 --> 00:12:33,309 extremely well-connected, 121 00:12:33,309 --> 00:12:35,419 frighteningly cultured, 122 00:12:35,419 --> 00:12:37,426 ferociously disciplined, 123 00:12:37,426 --> 00:12:40,049 always delivers when he says he will, 124 00:12:40,049 --> 00:12:47,223 and he doesn't drink. 125 00:12:47,223 --> 00:12:54,578 In other words, the opposite of Caravaggio. 126 00:12:54,578 --> 00:12:56,664 And how do we know all this? 127 00:12:56,664 --> 00:13:02,265 Well, someone had noted Bernini's every move - Filippo Baldinucci, 128 00:13:02,265 --> 00:13:05,747 minor painter, gossip and art critic. 129 00:13:05,747 --> 00:13:10,547 Not that important in himself, but someone who'd collected everything he could 130 00:13:10,547 --> 00:13:12,954 from those who knew Bernini, 131 00:13:12,954 --> 00:13:17,801 and turned it into his first proper biography. 132 00:13:17,801 --> 00:13:39,017 133 00:13:39,017 --> 00:13:42,412 This is Apollo and Daphne. 134 00:13:42,412 --> 00:13:46,802 It's a story of sexual hunting. 135 00:13:46,802 --> 00:13:49,723 Apollo wants the nymph, Daphne. 136 00:13:49,723 --> 00:13:54,104 She definitely doesn't want him. 137 00:13:54,104 --> 00:13:56,553 He runs after her, 138 00:13:56,553 --> 00:13:58,736 and just as he's about to grab her 139 00:13:58,736 --> 00:14:05,569 the gods answer her prayers by turning her into a laurel tree. 140 00:14:05,569 --> 00:14:10,262 It's all action sculpture. 141 00:14:10,262 --> 00:14:18,810 Apollo, breaking his breathless run, his cape and his hair still flying in the wind, 142 00:14:18,810 --> 00:14:24,951 Daphne, who's cornered, isn't rooted to the spot, except botanically. 143 00:14:24,951 --> 00:14:32,572 And seems to be climbing into the air, her mouth open wide in a scream. 144 00:14:32,572 --> 00:14:44,302 Hair and fingers already metamorphosing into leafy twigs. 145 00:14:44,302 --> 00:14:48,730 But the tease of the drama is the silky nude 146 00:14:48,730 --> 00:15:00,133 that Bernini's made available to us, exactly as she disappears inside her protective casing of tree bark. 147 00:15:00,133 --> 00:15:07,396 A painfully thwarted consummation. 148 00:15:09,535 --> 00:15:14,011 It's not just me. A French cardinal said he wouldn't have it in his house 149 00:15:14,011 --> 00:15:19,577 because such a beautiful nude would be sure to arouse anybody who saw it. 150 00:15:19,577 --> 00:15:26,324 Bernini is said to have been really pleased when he heard that. 151 00:15:28,417 --> 00:15:32,897 Bernini is in his early 20's, a superstar. 152 00:15:32,897 --> 00:15:38,622 Someone on whom the mighty and the powerful almost fawn. 153 00:15:38,622 --> 00:15:42,882 One pope, Gregory XV, makes him a knight. 154 00:15:42,882 --> 00:15:48,053 So Bernini is known ever after as the Cavaliere. 155 00:15:48,053 --> 00:15:52,589 The next pope, Urban VIII, makes him his best friend. 156 00:15:52,589 --> 00:15:57,090 There's a story that when Cardinal Barberini became Pope Urban VIII, 157 00:15:57,090 --> 00:16:00,613 he called Bernini into his apartment and said, 158 00:16:00,613 --> 00:16:38,803 159 00:16:38,803 --> 00:16:45,968 Bernini is Rome's supreme virtuoso, the emperor of the arts, and not just in sculpture. 160 00:16:45,968 --> 00:16:50,402 He's also a painter, a master builder, and a playwright. 161 00:16:50,402 --> 00:17:02,391 And he has everything - charisma, swarthy good looks, money, status, and enemies. 162 00:17:04,884 --> 00:17:12,892 This is Francesco Borromini - taciturn, neurotic, introverted, depressive. 163 00:17:12,892 --> 00:17:18,751 A man of absolutely no social graces whatsoever. 164 00:17:18,751 --> 00:17:24,881 For good and for ill, Borromini would play a pivotal role in Bernini's life. 165 00:17:24,881 --> 00:17:28,301 The two of them would trip over each other's ambitions, 166 00:17:28,301 --> 00:17:35,567 spur each other on to ever-greater heights, ever-greater risks. 167 00:17:35,567 --> 00:17:39,723 Borromini was a brilliant architect. 168 00:17:39,723 --> 00:17:47,129 He made walls and balconies curve and bulge, where they had no right to. 169 00:17:47,129 --> 00:17:54,465 Ceilings that sing and throb. 170 00:17:54,465 --> 00:17:57,463 Here is, exaggerating perspective. 171 00:17:57,463 --> 00:18:00,660 Making the columns at the back much smaller than they should be, 172 00:18:00,660 --> 00:18:05,151 in order to make the space much deeper than it really is. 173 00:18:05,151 --> 00:18:10,592 It's all eye wizardry. 174 00:18:18,300 --> 00:18:25,259 If two men were responsible for creating the look of the rock Rome, for making Rome Rome, 175 00:18:25,259 --> 00:18:32,783 those two men were Borromini and Bernini. 176 00:18:34,814 --> 00:18:39,298 And, they hated each other! 177 00:18:42,022 --> 00:18:48,661 At first, it was a one-way rivalry - Borromini resented Bernini's popularity, 178 00:18:48,661 --> 00:18:52,839 his hogging of the limelight. 179 00:18:52,839 --> 00:18:55,101 It's a bit like Mozart and Salieri, 180 00:18:55,101 --> 00:18:59,184 only there's no Salieri here, no weaker talent. 181 00:18:59,184 --> 00:19:04,136 They're both geniuses. 182 00:19:04,136 --> 00:19:09,176 Look at these two churches, just 200 yards away from each other in Rome. 183 00:19:09,176 --> 00:19:14,592 One by Bernini, the other by Borromini. 184 00:19:14,592 --> 00:19:20,111 Here's the Borromini church - St. Carlo delle Quattro Fontane. 185 00:19:20,111 --> 00:19:24,334 It's the work of an architect chess master. 186 00:19:24,334 --> 00:19:30,229 Pure and austere, just brick and stucco, no color or sculpture allowed. 187 00:19:30,229 --> 00:19:35,740 Just mind-blowing designs worked out from the higher geometry. 188 00:19:35,740 --> 00:19:43,857 The heavenly order of shapes and numbers. 189 00:19:43,857 --> 00:19:46,936 Now, here's the Bernini church. 190 00:19:46,936 --> 00:19:56,551 Loads of color, troweled on, as if it were a stage set with full theatrical lighting. 191 00:19:56,551 --> 00:19:58,852 It's all look-at-me razzle dazzle, 192 00:19:58,852 --> 00:20:03,698 showy, visceral and sexy - just like him. 193 00:20:13,991 --> 00:20:20,254 The rivalry between Bernini and Borromini started in earnest in 1624, 194 00:20:20,254 --> 00:20:25,783 when someone had to be appointed the new architect for St. Peter's, 195 00:20:25,783 --> 00:20:31,786 and get to build the baldacchino, the enormous canopy over the tomb of St. Peter, 196 00:20:31,786 --> 00:20:36,971 located directly under Michelangelo's great dome. 197 00:20:36,971 --> 00:20:41,432 It's the plummiest job in town. 198 00:20:41,432 --> 00:20:46,142 Now at this stage Borromini was far more qualified than Bernini. 199 00:20:46,142 --> 00:20:50,195 He'd trained as an architect and was the obvious candidate for the job. 200 00:20:50,195 --> 00:20:51,440 But guess who got it? 201 00:20:51,440 --> 00:20:55,577 Mr. Charming - Gian Lorenzo Bernini. 202 00:20:55,577 --> 00:20:59,405 What? The biggest job in Rome? And he gives it to him and not me? 203 00:20:59,405 --> 00:21:01,395 Just because he's the pope's best friend? 204 00:21:01,395 --> 00:21:05,177 I mean, the man knows damn all about buildings. 205 00:21:05,177 --> 00:21:10,600 Borromini must have been furious. 206 00:21:12,847 --> 00:21:20,644 Of course, the engineering problems of forging the great canopy, raising this twisty gilt-bronzed monster 207 00:21:20,644 --> 00:21:25,353 were a serious stretch for Bernini's competence. 208 00:21:25,353 --> 00:21:30,433 So, wisely, he gets help. 209 00:21:30,433 --> 00:21:34,657 He turns to Borromini, who had no choice but to help. 210 00:21:34,657 --> 00:21:39,224 It was for the greater good of the church, after all. 211 00:21:39,224 --> 00:21:43,980 Architecture has always been a collaborative exercise. 212 00:21:43,980 --> 00:21:53,035 So it's not surprising to find that virtually all the drawings for the balacchino are by Borromini. 213 00:21:53,035 --> 00:21:55,186 Does he get the credit he deserves? 214 00:21:55,186 --> 00:21:56,688 Does he, hell? 215 00:21:56,688 --> 00:22:04,733 And that, Francesco Borromoni neither forgives nor forgets. 216 00:22:04,733 --> 00:22:10,827 It's an unappealing trait, this ungenerous instinct for monopolizing the glory. 217 00:22:10,827 --> 00:22:14,644 And it will come back to bite Bernini. 218 00:22:14,644 --> 00:22:18,044 It's not just Borromini who feels it. 219 00:22:18,044 --> 00:22:22,574 The assistant who did that fine leaf work on Daphne's leaves 220 00:22:22,574 --> 00:22:25,224 is so angry at not getting his due 221 00:22:25,224 --> 00:22:32,087 that he walked out of the project in a rage. 222 00:22:34,241 --> 00:22:40,729 But then the Cavaliere Bernini always did have a cavalier way with his assistants. 223 00:22:40,729 --> 00:22:43,909 224 00:22:43,909 --> 00:22:46,939 His own mother complained. 225 00:22:46,939 --> 00:22:51,569 So he took what he needed, technical expertise, grinding toil, 226 00:22:51,569 --> 00:22:57,842 and in the case of one of his assistants, Bonarelli, his wife. 227 00:23:02,933 --> 00:23:07,970 Her name is Costanza, Constance. 228 00:23:07,970 --> 00:23:13,736 Did she and Bernini have a laugh in bed about that? 229 00:23:13,736 --> 00:23:20,244 Here she is in 1637, at the height of their affair. 230 00:23:22,583 --> 00:23:28,621 You can see he can't get enough of her. 231 00:23:28,621 --> 00:23:32,995 And from the intensity of all this brimming desire 232 00:23:32,995 --> 00:23:38,239 comes an entirely new kind of European sculpture. 233 00:23:40,654 --> 00:23:45,197 Before Costanza, busts had been entirely respectable, 234 00:23:45,197 --> 00:23:49,693 and they were usually reserved for tombs. 235 00:23:49,693 --> 00:23:58,147 Only the Romans, a long time before, had used sculpture for informal portraits. 236 00:23:59,717 --> 00:24:03,435 But informal doesn't right do it for Costanza. 237 00:24:03,435 --> 00:24:04,507 Does it? 238 00:24:04,507 --> 00:24:06,271 How about intimate? 239 00:24:06,271 --> 00:24:10,146 For this is a portrait of a woman whose passion is written on her face and her body. 240 00:24:10,146 --> 00:24:17,625 Whose flaring temper just adds fuel to her lover's fire. 241 00:24:21,964 --> 00:24:29,860 This is what we mean by lovingly carved. 242 00:24:29,860 --> 00:24:35,548 It's as though Bernini was reliving his caresses with his chisel, 243 00:24:35,548 --> 00:24:37,804 the falling away of the blouse, 244 00:24:37,804 --> 00:24:48,257 perhaps the single sexiest invitation in all European sculpture. 245 00:24:48,257 --> 00:24:51,106 There's something else unique about this sculpture. 246 00:24:51,106 --> 00:24:54,346 It's the celebration of a spitfire. 247 00:24:54,346 --> 00:24:58,468 Costanza Bonorelli may have been the wife of a lowly assistant sculptor 248 00:24:58,468 --> 00:25:01,341 but she came from a proud old family. 249 00:25:01,341 --> 00:25:07,868 the Piccolomini. 250 00:25:07,868 --> 00:25:13,975 So her jaw is firm, the rosebud mouth is in the act of speaking, 251 00:25:13,975 --> 00:25:18,825 and not deferentially. 252 00:25:18,825 --> 00:25:22,170 Everything that was supposed to define womanhood - 253 00:25:22,170 --> 00:25:26,976 demure, chaste serenity - is junked for Costanza. 254 00:25:26,976 --> 00:25:29,181 She's a wild thing. 255 00:25:29,181 --> 00:25:36,577 And the sculptor is hooked on her temper. 256 00:25:40,562 --> 00:25:44,793 But it was not Costanza's temper that would end up undoing Bernini. 257 00:25:44,793 --> 00:25:46,710 It was his own. 258 00:25:46,710 --> 00:25:52,420 Despite all the genteel charm, Bernini was known to have a low boiling point. 259 00:25:52,420 --> 00:26:02,342 Underneath all those social graces was the bloodthirsty temper of a Neopolitan gangster. 260 00:26:02,342 --> 00:26:10,289 And in one unbelievably shocking episode, he lets it rip. 261 00:26:10,289 --> 00:26:13,351 It started with a rumor. 262 00:26:13,351 --> 00:26:18,222 Costanza, it's whispered, was not so constant after all. 263 00:26:18,222 --> 00:26:24,696 Seems she has a thing about the Bernini boys, since she's sleeping not just with Gian Lorenzo, 264 00:26:24,696 --> 00:26:30,594 But with his younger brother, Luigi. 265 00:26:30,594 --> 00:26:39,071 266 00:26:39,071 --> 00:26:47,256 Oh, it's hard to believe, I know, that anyone would want to get their hands on anyone except Mr. Fabulous himself, 267 00:26:47,256 --> 00:26:54,307 But could the rumors be true? 268 00:26:54,984 --> 00:26:58,056 The trap is set that evening. 269 00:26:58,056 --> 00:27:03,032 Gian Lorenzo says breezily how he has to go off to the country the next day. 270 00:27:03,032 --> 00:27:05,844 So he won't be in town. 271 00:27:05,844 --> 00:27:09,076 But he doesn't go into the country, does he? 272 00:27:09,076 --> 00:27:19,583 Instead, early next morning he goes to Costanza's house, and waits. 273 00:27:22,968 --> 00:27:27,400 Luigi emerges. So does Costanza. 274 00:27:27,400 --> 00:27:33,488 That swelling breast Bernini had lovingly carved flattened against Luigi's chest 275 00:27:33,488 --> 00:27:39,390 in a passionate embrace. 276 00:27:41,698 --> 00:27:47,105 There's a chase through the streets, across the piazzas and over the bridges 277 00:27:47,105 --> 00:27:52,867 right into St. Peter's itself, 278 00:27:52,867 --> 00:28:02,980 where, its official architect does his best to murder his own brother. 279 00:28:02,980 --> 00:28:08,065 Gentleman Sir grabs an iron bar and smashes it against Luigi's body, 280 00:28:08,065 --> 00:28:13,522 breaking two ribs. 281 00:28:21,016 --> 00:28:24,084 He's famous as a miracle worker. 282 00:28:24,084 --> 00:28:32,328 This time the miracle is that he hasn't killed his own brother. 283 00:28:32,328 --> 00:28:37,590 It takes a message from their mother to the papal cops to separate them. 284 00:28:37,590 --> 00:28:44,898 285 00:28:44,898 --> 00:28:47,425 And that's not the end of it. 286 00:28:47,425 --> 00:28:53,792 That afternoon Gian Lorenzo sends a servant to Costanza's house. 287 00:28:53,792 --> 00:28:55,988 He doesn't cut her throat. 288 00:28:55,988 --> 00:29:04,241 Instead, he slashes her perfect face to ribbons. 289 00:29:04,241 --> 00:29:07,831 So the man who has cut stone to create beauty 290 00:29:07,831 --> 00:29:15,070 has cut flesh to destroy it. 291 00:29:19,178 --> 00:29:25,760 And what do you suppose is Bernini's punishment for grievous bodily harm and attempted murder? 292 00:29:25,760 --> 00:29:28,487 Oh, a really stiff sentence. 293 00:29:28,487 --> 00:29:31,183 A 3000 scudi fine. 294 00:29:31,183 --> 00:29:34,324 Except that his pal, the pope, waives it. 295 00:29:34,324 --> 00:29:36,463 "Naughty, naughty," says the pope. 296 00:29:36,463 --> 00:29:38,205 "This mustn't happen again. 297 00:29:38,205 --> 00:29:41,563 So I sentence you to be married. 298 00:29:41,563 --> 00:29:46,215 And, by the way, she just happens to be the most beautiful girl in Rome. 299 00:29:46,215 --> 00:29:48,672 That should keep you out of mischief!" 300 00:29:48,672 --> 00:29:52,844 Papal wink. Papal nudge. 301 00:29:55,660 --> 00:29:59,280 So Bernini is married off to Catalina Tetzio, 302 00:29:59,280 --> 00:30:03,266 daughter of a Roman lawyer. 303 00:30:03,266 --> 00:30:08,143 For his part in the fight, brother Luigi is banished to Bologna. 304 00:30:08,143 --> 00:30:11,084 Everyone else goes to jail. 305 00:30:11,084 --> 00:30:13,823 The servant who did the razor job, 306 00:30:13,823 --> 00:30:16,589 and, insult added to injury, 307 00:30:16,589 --> 00:30:19,389 Costanza herself. 308 00:30:19,389 --> 00:30:26,004 Convicted of fornication and adultery. 309 00:30:26,004 --> 00:30:28,197 And what happened to the bust? 310 00:30:28,197 --> 00:30:32,396 Well, Bernini's new wife wouldn't have it in the house. 311 00:30:32,396 --> 00:30:38,806 Which is just as well since Gian Lorenzo couldn't bear to look at it either. 312 00:30:38,806 --> 00:30:42,952 He might, I suppose, have smashed it. 313 00:30:42,952 --> 00:30:50,693 But luckily a Medici buyer from Florence snapped it up. 314 00:30:50,693 --> 00:30:55,742 Which is why we're looking at it here, in the Bargello Museum in Florence. 315 00:30:55,742 --> 00:31:04,878 The Costanza that once was, and for us always will be. 316 00:31:04,878 --> 00:31:10,258 [soprano] 317 00:31:14,828 --> 00:31:18,275 And you're thinking, "I don't care how good his sculpture is. 318 00:31:18,275 --> 00:31:20,953 I don't care how important his art is. 319 00:31:20,953 --> 00:31:23,773 What an absolute bastard! 320 00:31:23,773 --> 00:31:31,851 Please, tell me, he doesn't get off scot-free." 321 00:31:31,851 --> 00:31:38,085 Well, strangely enough, it's exactly from this moment of the crime against Costanza 322 00:31:38,085 --> 00:31:50,022 that things go swiftly downhill for the cavaliere untouchable. 323 00:31:50,022 --> 00:31:55,318 And it all went wrong in the place that mattered most for Bernini. 324 00:31:55,318 --> 00:32:01,548 The place that made, or broke, artists and architects. 325 00:32:01,548 --> 00:32:09,369 The Cathedral of St. Peter's. 326 00:32:12,816 --> 00:32:16,109 This is the facade of St. Peter's we all know, 327 00:32:16,109 --> 00:32:23,697 but the aggressively confident 17th century popes didn't want to stop with this. 328 00:32:23,697 --> 00:32:27,526 They wanted two great bell towers at each corner, 329 00:32:27,526 --> 00:32:30,855 above where we now see the clocks. 330 00:32:30,855 --> 00:32:37,253 It was those bells, after all, that would summon the faithful for papal blessings, 331 00:32:37,253 --> 00:32:43,368 and make the Christian dream real. 332 00:32:43,368 --> 00:32:48,795 But in the middle, of course, was Michelangelo's great dome. 333 00:32:48,795 --> 00:32:54,219 So the first designs for the towers made them respectfully low. 334 00:32:54,219 --> 00:33:00,748 Safe, squat, one-story affairs. 335 00:33:00,748 --> 00:33:07,753 Then along comes Bernini, constitutionally incapable of deference. 336 00:33:07,753 --> 00:33:11,871 "My towers are going to be taller than your dome," he says. 337 00:33:11,871 --> 00:33:19,337 "Three stories tall, in fact. Almost 70 meters above the original pedestals. 338 00:33:19,337 --> 00:33:25,537 Six times heavier than the original towers." 339 00:33:25,537 --> 00:33:35,096 Problem was, though, Bernini's towers were about to be built on swampy ground. 340 00:33:37,820 --> 00:33:42,044 It's not that Bernini didn't know about this before he got started. 341 00:33:42,044 --> 00:33:49,546 It's just that he's surrounded by yes-men who tell him what he wants to hear. 342 00:33:49,546 --> 00:33:55,118 That building tall towers on dotty ground is no real problem. 343 00:33:55,118 --> 00:34:05,447 What he needs are brutally honest advisors who aren't afraid of spelling out the risks he's taking. 344 00:34:05,447 --> 00:34:11,481 There was one person who knew that building a tall, heavy tower on unstable foundations 345 00:34:11,481 --> 00:34:13,973 was asking for trouble. 346 00:34:13,973 --> 00:34:20,731 And that person was Borromini. 347 00:34:20,731 --> 00:34:26,974 But it seemed to be beneath Bernini's dignity to ask his rival for advice. 348 00:34:26,974 --> 00:34:30,533 So, without the benefit of Borromini's criticism 349 00:34:30,533 --> 00:34:39,210 Bernini sails straight into disaster. 350 00:34:39,210 --> 00:34:48,680 In July 1641 Bernini unveiled his first tower to the public. 351 00:34:48,680 --> 00:34:56,184 Two months later, cracks start to appear. 352 00:34:59,892 --> 00:35:10,246 Bernini takes to his bed, won't eat, gets so ill he's reported near death. 353 00:35:10,246 --> 00:35:12,623 It gets worse. 354 00:35:12,623 --> 00:35:16,659 The cracks aren't just in the foundation of the bell tower, 355 00:35:16,659 --> 00:35:24,218 they've spread to the facade of the main church itself. 356 00:35:24,218 --> 00:35:48,643 357 00:35:48,643 --> 00:35:52,825 Then, in 1644,disaster. 358 00:35:52,825 --> 00:35:57,748 Pope Urban VIII, Bernini's friend and the staunchest supporter of the bell tower, dies. 359 00:36:04,101 --> 00:36:11,520 There's a new pope, Innocent X, and he sees it as his job to get rid of all the old favorites, 360 00:36:11,520 --> 00:36:13,668 like Bernini. 361 00:36:13,668 --> 00:36:22,450 After all, he has a new favorite, Francesco Borromini. 362 00:36:22,450 --> 00:36:26,404 So, after 15 years in Bernini's shadow, 363 00:36:26,404 --> 00:36:33,471 Borromini's moment for revenge has at last arrived. 364 00:36:33,471 --> 00:36:38,854 An inquiry is set up to deal with Bernini's towers. 365 00:36:38,854 --> 00:36:42,928 Borromini submits detailed evidence, 366 00:36:42,928 --> 00:36:52,591 a lovingly rendered drawing of Bernini's disaster. 367 00:36:59,545 --> 00:37:00,835 368 00:37:00,835 --> 00:37:05,175 "Well, what do you expect?" says Borromini. 369 00:37:05,175 --> 00:37:08,289 The tower's too tall, too heavy for its base supports. 370 00:37:08,289 --> 00:37:13,082 It's too unwieldy. It's built recklessly on swampy ground. 371 00:37:13,082 --> 00:37:16,704 It's amazing, actually, it hasn't collapsed already. 372 00:37:16,704 --> 00:37:20,386 It's all very well going digging beneath the tower after the offense to see 373 00:37:20,386 --> 00:37:23,333 how serious the damage is. 374 00:37:23,333 --> 00:37:28,309 If he'd have asked me, since I know a bit about building, I would have told him, 375 00:37:28,309 --> 00:37:32,323 but he didn't. 376 00:37:35,585 --> 00:37:45,189 On the 23rd of February 1646, a meeting was held at the Vatican to discuss the fate of Bernini's south tower, 377 00:37:45,189 --> 00:37:49,757 but the pope had already made his decision. 378 00:37:49,757 --> 00:37:56,004 Demolish it. 379 00:37:56,004 --> 00:37:57,128 380 00:37:57,128 --> 00:38:00,336 The demolition takes 11 months. 381 00:38:00,336 --> 00:38:04,784 If Bernini had been anywhere near St. Peter's he would have seen it and heard it. 382 00:38:04,784 --> 00:38:09,478 The winches, the pulleys, the columns stacked on the roof. 383 00:38:09,478 --> 00:38:11,686 Down came the bell tower. 384 00:38:11,686 --> 00:38:14,783 And down with it came Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 385 00:38:14,783 --> 00:38:17,733 from the heights of fame and reputation 386 00:38:17,733 --> 00:38:22,193 to something like a laughingstock. 387 00:38:22,193 --> 00:38:27,052 388 00:38:27,052 --> 00:38:30,598 [church bells] 389 00:38:30,598 --> 00:38:34,213 It's 1648. Bernini is 50. 390 00:38:34,213 --> 00:38:38,157 Old by the standards of the time. 391 00:38:38,157 --> 00:38:42,959 So how did he survive the humiliation? 392 00:38:42,959 --> 00:38:49,473 One visiting English student has him collapsing into despair. 393 00:38:49,473 --> 00:38:52,847 Others have him buckling down to work. 394 00:38:52,847 --> 00:38:57,672 He still does get commissions, but not from the biggest hitters in Rome, 395 00:38:57,672 --> 00:38:59,554 not any more. 396 00:38:59,554 --> 00:39:05,566 It would take a miracle now for him to redeem himself. 397 00:39:05,566 --> 00:39:06,338 398 00:39:06,338 --> 00:39:08,247 And then - 399 00:39:08,247 --> 00:39:11,629 that miracle arrived. 400 00:39:26,385 --> 00:39:31,561 A moment of mind-boggling drama. 401 00:39:31,561 --> 00:39:39,553 A moment that wavers between mystery and indecency. 402 00:39:39,553 --> 00:39:48,052 The body of a saint, penetrated. 403 00:39:48,052 --> 00:39:56,384 [dramatic orchestral music] 404 00:39:56,384 --> 00:39:59,365 The arrow, withdrawn from its passage, 405 00:39:59,365 --> 00:40:02,621 poised to strike again. 406 00:40:02,621 --> 00:40:07,157 Her pain indistinguishable from pleasure. 407 00:40:07,157 --> 00:40:09,624 The gasping woman, levitating, 408 00:40:09,624 --> 00:40:20,262 defying gravity on rippling cushions of stone. 409 00:40:20,262 --> 00:40:22,212 So, who was it, then? 410 00:40:22,212 --> 00:40:31,538 That gave Bernini the chance to portray a saint in a way no one else had ever dared? 411 00:40:34,277 --> 00:40:40,101 You can't imagine a more respectable patron than Cardinal Federico Cornaro, 412 00:40:40,101 --> 00:40:42,770 who came from an old aristocratic clan 413 00:40:42,770 --> 00:40:49,440 that wanted to build a family chapel in the Church of Santa Maria Della Vittoria. 414 00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:52,490 He would have known about St. Teresa of Avila. 415 00:40:52,490 --> 00:40:56,809 Everyone did. 416 00:40:59,117 --> 00:41:04,209 She'd died in her native Spain, in 1582. 417 00:41:04,209 --> 00:41:07,060 But there was something - many things actually - 418 00:41:07,060 --> 00:41:11,654 which made Teresa an awkward fit for sainthood. 419 00:41:11,654 --> 00:41:17,580 Not least, her levitations. 420 00:41:19,827 --> 00:41:29,504 >> A rapture came over me so suddenly, it almost lifted me out of myself. 421 00:41:29,504 --> 00:41:43,101 I heard these words, "Now, I want you to speak not with men, but with angels." 422 00:41:48,301 --> 00:41:55,413 It's not surprising, then, that of all the modern saints it was Teresa who still had no chapel devoted to her. 423 00:41:55,413 --> 00:42:00,032 The Cornari dynasty, who were patrons of her austere order of nuns, 424 00:42:00,032 --> 00:42:02,089 the Barefoot Carmelites, 425 00:42:02,089 --> 00:42:07,228 jumped in and presented Bernini with the biggest challenge of his career, 426 00:42:07,228 --> 00:42:11,268 but also the chance for a spectacular comeback. 427 00:42:11,361 --> 00:42:18,236 It was the most daring drama of the body that he, or any other sculptor in the history of art, 428 00:42:18,236 --> 00:42:20,093 had ever conceived. 429 00:42:20,093 --> 00:42:25,040 Much less executed. 430 00:42:34,595 --> 00:42:38,182 Bernini would certainly have known about St. Teresa. 431 00:42:38,182 --> 00:42:43,757 Her autobiography was a best-seller in Catholic Rome. 432 00:42:43,757 --> 00:42:50,338 Like everyone else, he would have been startled by the earthy directness of her story, 433 00:42:50,338 --> 00:42:54,590 but above all, he would have been electrified by those moments 434 00:42:54,590 --> 00:42:58,638 in which Teresa, in the most graphic words imaginable, 435 00:42:58,638 --> 00:43:03,904 describes what happens to her. 436 00:43:06,781 --> 00:43:13,120 >> Very close to me, an angel appeared in human form. 437 00:43:13,120 --> 00:43:18,158 In his hands I saw a large golden spear, 438 00:43:18,158 --> 00:43:25,180 and at its iron tip there seemed to be a point of fire. 439 00:43:27,027 --> 00:43:32,605 I felt as if he'd plunged these into my heart several times, 440 00:43:32,605 --> 00:43:40,191 so that it penetrated all the way to my entrails. 441 00:43:40,191 --> 00:43:44,789 When he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out with it, 442 00:43:44,789 --> 00:43:53,281 and it left me totally inflamed, with a great love for God. 443 00:43:56,912 --> 00:44:05,794 The pain was so severe that it made me moan several times. 444 00:44:14,856 --> 00:44:18,622 Now if there was one thing that Bernini was not, 445 00:44:18,622 --> 00:44:20,276 it was crude. 446 00:44:20,276 --> 00:44:24,591 He understood perfectly well that when Teresa wrote of her raptures 447 00:44:24,591 --> 00:44:27,122 she meant the longing of her soul. 448 00:44:27,122 --> 00:44:30,171 for a consummated union with God. 449 00:44:30,171 --> 00:44:35,989 It was the way she wrote about it, that made it seem as if her soul and her body 450 00:44:35,989 --> 00:44:40,073 were the same thing. 451 00:44:43,212 --> 00:44:50,116 All of Bernini's greatest body dramas had featured figures twisting in ascent. 452 00:44:50,116 --> 00:44:53,092 Persephone's flight from Pluto, 453 00:44:53,092 --> 00:45:00,320 Daphne rising to the sky as if to escape stony doom, 454 00:45:00,320 --> 00:45:04,478 Now it was time for him to make Teresa levitate. 455 00:45:04,478 --> 00:45:12,467 This time, not an escape from penetration, but in craving for it. 456 00:45:17,206 --> 00:45:21,132 It was time to forget about euphemisms. 457 00:45:21,132 --> 00:45:26,754 The only way that Bernini could possibly communicate the flood of her sensation 458 00:45:26,754 --> 00:45:32,242 was to make visible what he knew of bodily ecstasy. 459 00:45:32,242 --> 00:45:38,476 The face of a women at the height of sexual euphoria. 460 00:45:38,476 --> 00:45:43,472 It's as if he's turning his own intimate knowledge of carnal sin 461 00:45:43,472 --> 00:45:47,159 into carnal blessing. 462 00:45:47,159 --> 00:45:50,052 So, of course, this isn't the real Teresa. 463 00:45:50,052 --> 00:45:53,240 Middle aged nun, rising up her cell wall, 464 00:45:53,240 --> 00:45:56,638 with sisters hanging onto her habit. 465 00:45:56,638 --> 00:46:02,096 No, this woman is unforgettably beautiful! 466 00:46:02,096 --> 00:46:07,798 A match for the exquisite seraph angel lover. 467 00:46:07,798 --> 00:46:10,799 They are in a way - a couple. 468 00:46:10,799 --> 00:46:15,196 Smiley Face is pointing his arrow not at her breast at all, 469 00:46:15,196 --> 00:46:21,087 but rather, lower down the torso. 470 00:46:26,380 --> 00:46:32,265 But how to make visible both their union and the tide of engulfing feeling 471 00:46:32,265 --> 00:46:34,216 washing through Teresa? 472 00:46:34,216 --> 00:46:39,944 And here, Bernini has the crucial insight of the whole piece. 473 00:46:41,314 --> 00:46:45,355 He turns her body inside out. 474 00:46:45,355 --> 00:46:47,764 So that her covering, her habit - 475 00:46:47,764 --> 00:46:50,779 the symbol of chastity and containment, 476 00:46:50,779 --> 00:46:57,072 becomes a representation of what's going on inside her. 477 00:47:01,302 --> 00:47:12,199 It's the accomplice of her helpless dissolution into liquid bliss. 478 00:47:16,723 --> 00:47:21,309 It is, in fact, the climax itself. 479 00:47:21,309 --> 00:47:24,024 A storm surge of churning sensation, 480 00:47:24,024 --> 00:47:30,477 cresting and falling as if the model had been molten. 481 00:47:30,477 --> 00:47:34,535 And these billows pour themselves from the smiling angel 482 00:47:34,535 --> 00:47:37,938 directly into Teresa's robe, 483 00:47:37,938 --> 00:47:41,566 where they join an ocean of heaving waves 484 00:47:41,566 --> 00:47:51,475 the folds into hollows and crevices like surf breaking on a shore. 485 00:47:57,815 --> 00:48:00,881 There's nothing furtive about any of this. 486 00:48:00,881 --> 00:48:06,757 Bernini wants us to look, and look hard. 487 00:48:06,757 --> 00:48:11,365 So much that he surrounds the performance with an audience, 488 00:48:11,365 --> 00:48:14,698 members of the Cornari family, 489 00:48:14,698 --> 00:48:23,698 some watching the show, some chatting about what it might mean. 490 00:48:23,698 --> 00:48:26,383 There's every kind of show lighting - 491 00:48:26,383 --> 00:48:33,526 fake sunbeams, hidden lights at the back. 492 00:48:33,526 --> 00:48:37,257 And, as Teresa climbs to her heights, 493 00:48:37,257 --> 00:48:40,810 the earth really does move! 494 00:48:40,810 --> 00:48:43,061 Look down here. 495 00:48:43,061 --> 00:48:50,319 The ground is opening and out pop the dead. 496 00:48:50,319 --> 00:48:54,874 Everything is shaking and quaking. 497 00:48:54,874 --> 00:48:58,190 Even the columns of the little chapel. 498 00:48:58,190 --> 00:49:05,667 And here Bernini adds the coup de grace to all those critics who said he couldn't do architecture. 499 00:49:05,667 --> 00:49:13,966 At least Borromini, who specialized in weird counterintuitive bulges and curves. 500 00:49:13,966 --> 00:49:15,710 "Right," said Bernini. 501 00:49:15,710 --> 00:49:19,057 "I'll build you a temple that not just curves and bulges, 502 00:49:19,057 --> 00:49:25,011 but actually explodes through its columns from the sheer uncontainable force of the drama 503 00:49:25,011 --> 00:49:29,442 going on inside." 504 00:49:33,073 --> 00:49:38,190 The most ambitious thing he'd ever attempted, the bell tower of St. Peter's, 505 00:49:38,190 --> 00:49:45,638 had come crashing down in ignominious failure. 506 00:49:45,638 --> 00:49:49,255 Now it was time for Teresa to rise up 507 00:49:49,255 --> 00:49:58,933 and carry with her the resurrected reputation of the disgraced cavaliere, Bernini. 508 00:50:02,995 --> 00:50:11,651 And you feel him, when he's done, standing back and saying, "Right. Top that." 509 00:50:11,651 --> 00:50:18,029 No one ever could. 510 00:50:26,769 --> 00:50:29,623 The Cornaro loved their chapel. 511 00:50:29,623 --> 00:50:32,768 12,000 scudi. No problem. 512 00:50:32,768 --> 00:50:34,979 Worth every scudo. 513 00:50:34,979 --> 00:50:36,547 Word got round. 514 00:50:36,547 --> 00:50:38,408 The dazzler was back. 515 00:50:38,408 --> 00:50:41,087 Even the sour old pope, Innocent X, 516 00:50:41,087 --> 00:50:43,337 began to sweeten on Bernini 517 00:50:43,337 --> 00:50:50,806 as Borromini's skulked unhappily through the Vatican corridors. 518 00:50:59,130 --> 00:51:03,402 It's not that Borromini never gets commissions from the pope again, 519 00:51:03,402 --> 00:51:10,002 it's just that it was Bernini who triumphed. 520 00:51:10,002 --> 00:51:12,183 So wherever you go in Rome now, 521 00:51:12,183 --> 00:51:17,242 you're really in the Cavaliere city. 522 00:51:17,242 --> 00:51:21,026 As you approach St. Peter's over the Ponte Sant'Angelo 523 00:51:21,026 --> 00:51:25,302 you're in the company of Bernini's angels. 524 00:51:31,918 --> 00:51:35,610 And even though he was denied his bell towers at St. Peter's, 525 00:51:35,610 --> 00:51:39,277 he did something much better. 526 00:51:39,277 --> 00:51:43,839 The Colonnades, which lead us towards the great church, 527 00:51:43,839 --> 00:51:50,371 its arms gathering believers to the bosom of the faith. 528 00:51:55,356 --> 00:51:58,503 Inside the church, past the baldacchino, 529 00:51:58,503 --> 00:52:02,930 you're drawn towards Bernini's great lives. 530 00:52:02,930 --> 00:52:09,266 The Holy Spirit, at the seat of St. Peter. 531 00:52:11,497 --> 00:52:16,647 Popes came and went, but Bernini endured. 532 00:52:16,647 --> 00:52:19,644 He gave up sinning, became a model Christian, 533 00:52:19,644 --> 00:52:27,220 fathered 11 children, never strayed again, they said. 534 00:52:27,220 --> 00:52:30,109 And we're told that when he was troubled, 535 00:52:30,109 --> 00:52:34,462 he'd be found at the Church of Santa Maria Della Vittoria, 536 00:52:34,462 --> 00:52:41,176 praying before his shrine to St. Teresa. 537 00:52:41,176 --> 00:52:45,202 And what of the others in this story? 538 00:52:45,202 --> 00:52:47,826 Costanza with the cut-up face 539 00:52:47,826 --> 00:52:58,168 eventually got out of jail, with the help of her long-suffering husband. 540 00:52:58,168 --> 00:53:02,246 Borromini went on to become the great master builder, 541 00:53:02,246 --> 00:53:06,108 of evermore eccentric and brilliant churches. 542 00:53:06,108 --> 00:53:10,205 But in the end he never really felt he got true recognition, 543 00:53:10,205 --> 00:53:14,679 and he never got over Bernini's comeback. 544 00:53:14,679 --> 00:53:17,538 Eaten up by jealousy and disappointment, 545 00:53:17,538 --> 00:53:25,409 he ended up by committing suicide. 546 00:53:25,409 --> 00:53:27,692 And what of brother Luigi? 547 00:53:27,692 --> 00:53:30,743 Well, he returned to Rome after his exile 548 00:53:30,743 --> 00:53:34,996 and deep into his sixties he was at it again, 549 00:53:34,996 --> 00:53:39,205 this time caught in flagrante delicto in, guess where? 550 00:53:39,205 --> 00:53:43,570 The precincts of the holy Church of St. Peter's. 551 00:53:43,570 --> 00:53:46,257 where, according to court records, 552 00:53:46,257 --> 00:53:55,247 he was arrested for acts of violent sodomy. 553 00:53:55,247 --> 00:54:00,347 To clear the family name and secure a papal pardon for his brother, 554 00:54:00,347 --> 00:54:04,347 Bernini created this - the blessed Ludovica Albertoni.