1 00:00:16,878 --> 00:00:19,312 She's in ecstasy all right. 2 00:00:22,598 --> 00:00:25,556 Her head is thrown back, her mouth open. 3 00:00:26,518 --> 00:00:29,112 Her heavy-lidded eyes are half-closed. 4 00:00:31,878 --> 00:00:36,030 An angelic hand is delicately uncovering her breast. 5 00:00:40,118 --> 00:00:41,756 You have to look. 6 00:00:43,478 --> 00:00:45,673 You don't know where to look. 7 00:00:57,358 --> 00:01:00,873 A century after Bernini created this sculpture, 8 00:01:00,958 --> 00:01:03,677 a French art lover, doing the tour of Rome, 9 00:01:03,758 --> 00:01:07,387 came into this church, peered at the spectacle and said, 10 00:01:07,478 --> 00:01:12,188 ''Well, if that's divine love, I know all about it. '' 11 00:01:15,558 --> 00:01:17,230 So, what is this? 12 00:01:18,318 --> 00:01:21,196 Surely not an erotic trance, 13 00:01:21,278 --> 00:01:23,712 not from the most devout sculptor in Rome. 14 00:01:29,398 --> 00:01:32,310 No one who was the bosom friend of popes, 15 00:01:32,398 --> 00:01:34,707 a pillar of the Catholic establishment, 16 00:01:34,798 --> 00:01:40,634 could possibly want us to see a nun in the throes of orgasm, 17 00:01:41,878 --> 00:01:43,914 could he? 18 00:02:21,158 --> 00:02:27,347 It's no good pretending that ecstasy isn't a physical as well as a spiritual experience. 19 00:02:27,958 --> 00:02:31,792 That passion doesn't work through the body as well as the soul. 20 00:02:34,678 --> 00:02:37,272 Bernini knew all about passion. 21 00:02:37,998 --> 00:02:40,228 That's what his art was about. 22 00:02:42,438 --> 00:02:46,989 It was this physical intensity that would transform sculpture. 23 00:02:50,478 --> 00:02:55,711 No one before Bernini had managed to make marble so carnal. 24 00:02:58,798 --> 00:03:04,953 In his nimble hands, it would flutter and stream, quiver and sweat. 25 00:03:09,478 --> 00:03:11,867 His figures weep and shout, 26 00:03:11,958 --> 00:03:15,553 their torsos twist and run and arch themselves 27 00:03:15,638 --> 00:03:18,675 in spasms of intense sensation. 28 00:03:20,598 --> 00:03:25,831 He could, like an alchemist, change one material into another. 29 00:03:26,678 --> 00:03:31,229 Marble into trees, leaves, hair 30 00:03:31,318 --> 00:03:33,957 and, of course, flesh. 31 00:03:45,518 --> 00:03:50,353 The whole point of classical sculpture was to make humans less so, 32 00:03:50,438 --> 00:03:54,954 to give mortal flesh the heavyweight smoothness of immortality. 33 00:03:55,518 --> 00:03:59,431 So many of them end up looking divine, but bloodless. 34 00:04:14,998 --> 00:04:17,353 But then, along comes Bernini, 35 00:04:17,438 --> 00:04:21,272 and suddenly even Michelangelo's David looks immobile 36 00:04:21,358 --> 00:04:24,828 beside Bernini's whirling, twisting tornado. 37 00:04:28,918 --> 00:04:34,436 If sculpture was supposed to convey gravity, Bernini would defy it. 38 00:04:34,518 --> 00:04:39,717 His figures break loose from their plinths, flying away into space. 39 00:04:49,118 --> 00:04:51,074 For as long as anyone could remember, 40 00:04:51,438 --> 00:04:55,590 Gian Lorenzo Bernini had startled the people who mattered. 41 00:05:00,918 --> 00:05:03,671 Brought before the Pope when he was just eight, 42 00:05:03,758 --> 00:05:06,670 he did a lightning sketch of St Paul's head 43 00:05:06,758 --> 00:05:11,752 that prompted the astonished Pope to tip the little boy as the next Michelangelo. 44 00:05:16,638 --> 00:05:20,551 His father, Pietro, was a sculptor from Florence. 45 00:05:20,638 --> 00:05:23,789 Seldom better than competent and sometimes worse. 46 00:05:24,678 --> 00:05:28,034 But in his son, he knew a good thing when he saw it. 47 00:05:30,638 --> 00:05:34,677 ''Watch out, Signor Bernini,'' an admiring cardinal said, 48 00:05:34,758 --> 00:05:37,067 ''The boy will surpass his master.'' 49 00:05:42,238 --> 00:05:46,550 So, fast out of the starting blocks, our little prodigy. 50 00:05:52,638 --> 00:05:54,913 Here's a playful tour de force. 51 00:05:55,718 --> 00:05:59,950 Two little angels embrace in wide-eyed innocence. 52 00:06:01,118 --> 00:06:03,507 Bernini did this in his teens. 53 00:06:03,598 --> 00:06:07,955 He kept it on display on the landing of his house throughout his life. 54 00:06:09,998 --> 00:06:14,310 And this is his goat, Amalthea, and the infant Jupiter. 55 00:06:14,398 --> 00:06:18,676 A standard bit of mythology transformed into a romp 56 00:06:18,758 --> 00:06:21,750 with the shaggiest nanny goat in sculpture. 57 00:06:24,478 --> 00:06:29,506 What makes these little figures burst from their dull, mythological subject matter? 58 00:06:30,358 --> 00:06:32,633 They have the hot breath of life in them, 59 00:06:32,718 --> 00:06:36,711 lusty, mischievous, nursery school naughtiness. 60 00:06:46,838 --> 00:06:50,956 Bernini arrived in Rome in 1605. 61 00:06:53,758 --> 00:06:57,512 Just at the time that Caravaggio's punchy street dramas 62 00:06:57,598 --> 00:06:59,793 were electrifying the Church, 63 00:07:07,958 --> 00:07:11,428 giving it a new vision of how to move the flock. 64 00:07:12,278 --> 00:07:14,348 No more remote saints. 65 00:07:14,758 --> 00:07:18,637 Instead, the shock theatre of the earthy passions. 66 00:07:20,198 --> 00:07:22,917 Salvation in the guts. 67 00:07:26,438 --> 00:07:29,032 So how do you top Caravaggio? 68 00:07:29,118 --> 00:07:32,952 Answer: you can't, but in sculpture. 69 00:07:41,678 --> 00:07:46,468 This is St Lawrence being barbecued alive for his Christian beliefs. 70 00:07:47,558 --> 00:07:49,867 Bernini was 16 when he did this. 71 00:07:54,638 --> 00:07:58,870 He's trying to catch the moment of transcendent pain 72 00:07:58,958 --> 00:08:04,828 when, if we believe the legends, St Lawrence turns to his executioners and says, 73 00:08:04,918 --> 00:08:11,391 in a moment of macabre drollery, ''Right, turn me over, boys, this side's done. '' 74 00:08:12,718 --> 00:08:15,949 No wonder he became the patron saint of cooks. 75 00:08:19,798 --> 00:08:22,631 But there's something serious going on here. 76 00:08:22,718 --> 00:08:27,633 As Lawrence's hand touches the flame, a mysterious transformation takes place. 77 00:08:30,638 --> 00:08:36,474 The chroniclers said the smell of scorched flesh turned fragrant. 78 00:08:37,758 --> 00:08:40,511 Pain and sweetness become one. 79 00:08:41,478 --> 00:08:43,912 Torment becomes ecstasy. 80 00:08:46,598 --> 00:08:50,671 A rehearsal, perhaps, for a sweet ordeal to come. 81 00:08:56,358 --> 00:09:00,431 He loved playing with fire, did Bernini. Couldn't stop himself. 82 00:09:01,718 --> 00:09:03,868 Here he is as a damned soul. 83 00:09:04,398 --> 00:09:05,797 It's a self-portrait. 84 00:09:07,878 --> 00:09:11,188 Bernini has scorched his own arm in a naked flame, 85 00:09:11,358 --> 00:09:14,953 screaming in a mirror to get the expression just right. 86 00:09:17,518 --> 00:09:19,634 An extremist for his art, then, 87 00:09:19,718 --> 00:09:24,587 but also, perhaps, someone capable of impulsive acts of violence. 88 00:09:27,118 --> 00:09:29,188 Still, it's a drama of the flesh 89 00:09:29,278 --> 00:09:31,269 no one, not even Michelangelo, 90 00:09:31,358 --> 00:09:33,394 had made quite so gripping. 91 00:09:48,398 --> 00:09:51,515 It was enough to make one bigwig on the Roman scene, 92 00:09:51,598 --> 00:09:55,557 Cardinal Scipione Borghese, want to adopt Gian Lorenzo 93 00:09:55,638 --> 00:09:58,106 as his personal star property. 94 00:09:58,198 --> 00:10:02,191 Someone who'd make his fabulous new villa, up here on the Pincian Hill, 95 00:10:02,278 --> 00:10:04,917 the place to see great art. 96 00:10:04,998 --> 00:10:08,673 How the other red hats would gnash their teeth in envy. 97 00:10:17,678 --> 00:10:21,466 There was something larger than life about Scipione Borghese. 98 00:10:26,078 --> 00:10:31,277 The bull-like neck and head sat atop a jumbo body. 99 00:10:34,478 --> 00:10:36,594 Sly Bernini, 100 00:10:36,678 --> 00:10:40,956 using a button that can't quite make it through its hole 101 00:10:41,038 --> 00:10:46,158 to give us a feeling for the flesh tight-packed into the satin. 102 00:10:50,078 --> 00:10:54,435 The holy man of the Church is, above all, a physical presence. 103 00:10:55,958 --> 00:10:58,916 He looks more like a chef than His Eminence. 104 00:11:01,158 --> 00:11:04,787 What he was after, Bernini said, was a speaking likeness, 105 00:11:04,878 --> 00:11:07,711 because he thought that people gave themselves away 106 00:11:07,798 --> 00:11:12,314 most characteristically either just before or after they spoke. 107 00:11:16,878 --> 00:11:19,756 So he works his magic on Scipione. 108 00:11:20,358 --> 00:11:23,794 The little fringe poking out from the Cardinal's hat, 109 00:11:24,518 --> 00:11:28,397 the chipmunk cheeks, the fleshy, blubbery lips. 110 00:11:29,438 --> 00:11:35,229 Scipione's nose catching the light in such a way as to suggest a film of sweat. 111 00:11:35,998 --> 00:11:40,276 The natural effusion of a big man in a hot city. 112 00:11:48,758 --> 00:11:54,196 Rome, the holy metropolis, buzzing with worldly ambition. 113 00:11:54,278 --> 00:11:58,430 For the church aristocracy, it's not just the money you've got that counts. 114 00:11:58,518 --> 00:12:00,190 It's also the art. 115 00:12:01,598 --> 00:12:05,910 Painters, sculptors and architects are angling for patrons, 116 00:12:05,998 --> 00:12:09,786 and the Rothschilds and the Saatchis of their day, the popes and cardinals, 117 00:12:09,878 --> 00:12:13,268 are gambling on the next prize genius. 118 00:12:23,878 --> 00:12:28,713 Bernini, of course, has everything it takes to succeed. 119 00:12:28,798 --> 00:12:33,110 He's witty, charming, extremely well-connected, 120 00:12:33,198 --> 00:12:36,793 frighteningly cultured, ferociously disciplined, 121 00:12:36,878 --> 00:12:39,711 always delivers when he says he will 122 00:12:39,798 --> 00:12:41,595 and he doesn't drink. 123 00:12:46,998 --> 00:12:50,035 In other words, the opposite of Caravaggio. 124 00:12:54,358 --> 00:12:56,155 And how do we know all this? 125 00:12:56,238 --> 00:12:59,435 Well, someone had noted Bernini's every move. 126 00:13:00,198 --> 00:13:04,635 Filippo Baldinucci, minor painter, gossip and art critic. 127 00:13:05,318 --> 00:13:07,149 Not that important in himself, 128 00:13:07,238 --> 00:13:12,517 but someone who'd collected everything he could from those who knew Bernini, 129 00:13:12,598 --> 00:13:15,829 and turned it into his first proper biography. 130 00:13:38,838 --> 00:13:40,874 This is Apollo and Daphne. 131 00:13:41,758 --> 00:13:44,272 It's a story of sexual hunting. 132 00:13:46,478 --> 00:13:49,072 Apollo wants the nymph, Daphne. 133 00:13:49,598 --> 00:13:52,032 She definitely doesn't want him. 134 00:13:53,838 --> 00:13:56,113 He runs after her, 135 00:13:56,198 --> 00:13:58,348 and just as he's about to grab her, 136 00:13:58,438 --> 00:14:02,909 the gods answer her prayers by turning her into a laurel tree. 137 00:14:05,318 --> 00:14:07,673 It's all-action sculpture. 138 00:14:09,878 --> 00:14:12,995 Apollo breaking his breathless run, 139 00:14:13,078 --> 00:14:16,991 his cape and his hair still flying in the wind. 140 00:14:18,558 --> 00:14:22,267 Daphne, who's cornered, isn't rooted to the spot, 141 00:14:22,358 --> 00:14:27,113 except botanically, and seems to be climbing into the air, 142 00:14:28,278 --> 00:14:31,475 her mouth open wide in a scream. 143 00:14:32,318 --> 00:14:37,631 Hair and fingers already metamorphosing into leafy twigs. 144 00:14:44,078 --> 00:14:47,548 But the tease of the drama is the silky nude 145 00:14:48,638 --> 00:14:51,550 that Bernini's made available to us 146 00:14:51,638 --> 00:14:54,152 exactly as she disappears 147 00:14:54,238 --> 00:14:57,753 inside her protective casing of tree bark. 148 00:14:59,918 --> 00:15:03,115 A painfully thwarted consummation. 149 00:15:09,438 --> 00:15:10,632 It's not just me. 150 00:15:10,718 --> 00:15:13,915 A French cardinal said he wouldn't have it in his house 151 00:15:13,998 --> 00:15:19,356 because such a beautiful nude would be sure to arouse anybody who saw it. 152 00:15:19,438 --> 00:15:23,067 Bernini is said to have been really pleased when he heard that. 153 00:15:28,238 --> 00:15:32,072 Bernini is in his early 20s, a superstar. 154 00:15:32,758 --> 00:15:36,797 Someone on whom the mighty and the powerful almost fawn. 155 00:15:38,438 --> 00:15:41,635 One pope, Gregory XV, makes him a knight, 156 00:15:42,598 --> 00:15:46,113 so Bernini is known ever after as the Cavaliere. 157 00:15:47,758 --> 00:15:51,433 The next pope, Urban VIII, makes him his best friend. 158 00:15:52,318 --> 00:15:56,914 There's a story that when Cardinal Barberini became Pope Urban VIII, 159 00:15:56,998 --> 00:16:00,388 he called Bernini into his apartment and said... 160 00:16:38,718 --> 00:16:41,949 Bernini is Rome's supreme virtuoso. 161 00:16:42,038 --> 00:16:45,826 The emperor of the arts, and not just in sculpture. 162 00:16:45,918 --> 00:16:50,275 He's also a painter, a master builder and a playwright. 163 00:16:50,358 --> 00:16:54,146 And he has everything, charisma, swarthy good looks, 164 00:16:54,238 --> 00:16:57,150 money, status and enemies. 165 00:17:04,718 --> 00:17:07,278 This is Francesco Borromini, 166 00:17:08,078 --> 00:17:11,912 taciturn, neurotic, introverted, depressive. 167 00:17:12,638 --> 00:17:16,187 A man of absolutely no social graces whatsoever. 168 00:17:18,638 --> 00:17:20,151 For good and for ill, 169 00:17:20,238 --> 00:17:23,674 Borromini would play a pivotal role in Bernini's life. 170 00:17:24,718 --> 00:17:27,994 The two of them would trip over each other's ambitions, 171 00:17:28,078 --> 00:17:31,468 spur each other on to ever-greater heights, 172 00:17:31,558 --> 00:17:33,276 ever-greater risks. 173 00:17:35,358 --> 00:17:37,872 Borromini was a brilliant architect. 174 00:17:39,558 --> 00:17:45,554 He made walls and balconies curve and bulge where they had no right to. 175 00:17:46,958 --> 00:17:49,597 Ceilings that sing and throb. 176 00:17:53,998 --> 00:17:56,910 Here he is exaggerating perspective. 177 00:17:56,998 --> 00:18:00,388 Making the columns at the back much smaller than they should be 178 00:18:00,478 --> 00:18:04,756 in order to make the space much deeper than it really is. 179 00:18:04,838 --> 00:18:06,829 It's all eye wizardry. 180 00:18:18,078 --> 00:18:22,708 If two men were responsible for creating the look of baroque Rome, 181 00:18:22,798 --> 00:18:25,028 for making Rome Rome, 182 00:18:25,118 --> 00:18:28,633 those two men were Borromini and Bernini. 183 00:18:34,558 --> 00:18:36,628 And they hated each other. 184 00:18:41,798 --> 00:18:44,710 At first, it was a one-way rivalry. 185 00:18:44,798 --> 00:18:48,427 Borromini resented Bernini's popularity, 186 00:18:48,518 --> 00:18:50,713 his hogging of the limelight. 187 00:18:52,518 --> 00:18:54,827 It's a bit like Mozart and Salieri. 188 00:18:54,918 --> 00:18:58,752 Only there's no Salieri here, no weaker talent. 189 00:18:58,838 --> 00:19:00,669 They're both geniuses. 190 00:19:04,038 --> 00:19:08,907 Look at these two churches, just 200 yards away from each other, in Rome. 191 00:19:08,998 --> 00:19:11,990 One by Bernini, the other by Borromini. 192 00:19:14,278 --> 00:19:18,715 Here's the Borromini church, San Carlo delle Quattro Fontane. 193 00:19:19,918 --> 00:19:22,796 It's the work of an architect chess master, 194 00:19:24,158 --> 00:19:25,591 pure and austere. 195 00:19:25,678 --> 00:19:29,114 Just brick and stucco, no colour or sculpture allowed. 196 00:19:30,038 --> 00:19:34,270 Just mind-blowing designs, worked out from the higher geometry. 197 00:19:35,438 --> 00:19:38,555 The heavenly order of shapes and numbers. 198 00:19:43,638 --> 00:19:45,913 Now, here's the Bernini church. 199 00:19:46,478 --> 00:19:50,312 Loads of colour trowelled on, as if it were a stage set 200 00:19:50,398 --> 00:19:52,628 with full theatrical lighting. 201 00:19:56,238 --> 00:19:58,627 It's all look-at-me razzle-dazzle. 202 00:19:58,718 --> 00:20:02,074 Showy, visceral and sexy, just like him. 203 00:20:13,798 --> 00:20:19,668 The rivalry between Bernini and Borromini started in earnest in 1624, 204 00:20:20,198 --> 00:20:24,430 when someone had to be appointed the new architect for Saint Peter's, 205 00:20:25,478 --> 00:20:27,753 and get to build the baldachino, 206 00:20:28,398 --> 00:20:31,435 the enormous canopy over the tomb of Saint Peter, 207 00:20:31,518 --> 00:20:35,272 located directly under Michelangelo's great dome. 208 00:20:36,718 --> 00:20:38,948 It's the plummiest job in town. 209 00:20:41,478 --> 00:20:45,551 Now, at this stage, Borromini was far more qualified than Bernini. 210 00:20:46,158 --> 00:20:50,037 He'd trained as an architect and was the obvious candidate for the job. 211 00:20:50,118 --> 00:20:51,267 But guess who got it? 212 00:20:51,358 --> 00:20:54,555 Mr Charming, Gian Lorenzo Bernini. 213 00:20:55,358 --> 00:20:59,271 ''What, the biggest job in Rome? And he gives it to him, and not me, 214 00:20:59,358 --> 00:21:01,110 just because he's the Pope's best friend?" 215 00:21:01,198 --> 00:21:04,315 ''I mean, the man knows damn all about buildings.'' 216 00:21:04,958 --> 00:21:07,347 Borromini must have been furious. 217 00:21:12,638 --> 00:21:17,268 Of course, the engineering problems of forging the great canopy, 218 00:21:17,358 --> 00:21:20,475 raising this twisty gilt-bronze monster, 219 00:21:20,558 --> 00:21:23,709 were a serious stretch for Bernini's competence. 220 00:21:25,318 --> 00:21:27,627 So, wisely, he gets help. 221 00:21:30,198 --> 00:21:33,873 He turns to Borromini, who had no choice but to help. 222 00:21:34,358 --> 00:21:37,794 It was for the greater good of the Church, after all. 223 00:21:39,078 --> 00:21:43,037 Architecture has always been a collaborative exercise, 224 00:21:43,798 --> 00:21:48,553 so it's not surprising to find that virtually all the drawings for the baldachino 225 00:21:48,638 --> 00:21:50,594 are by Borromini. 226 00:21:52,798 --> 00:21:56,074 Does he get the credit he deserves? Does he hell. 227 00:21:56,158 --> 00:22:00,674 And that, Francesco Borromini neither forgives nor forgets. 228 00:22:04,438 --> 00:22:06,394 It's an unappealing trait, 229 00:22:06,478 --> 00:22:09,993 this ungenerous instinct for monopolising the glory. 230 00:22:10,678 --> 00:22:13,272 And it will come back to bite Bernini. 231 00:22:14,438 --> 00:22:16,793 It's not just Borromini who feels it. 232 00:22:17,958 --> 00:22:21,712 The assistant who did that fine leaf-work on Daphne's leaves 233 00:22:22,478 --> 00:22:24,992 was so angry at not getting his due 234 00:22:25,078 --> 00:22:28,036 that he walked out of the project in a rage. 235 00:22:34,118 --> 00:22:36,234 But then the Cavaliere Bernini 236 00:22:36,318 --> 00:22:40,027 always did have a cavalier way with his assistants. 237 00:22:42,998 --> 00:22:45,114 His own mother complained. 238 00:22:45,758 --> 00:22:47,749 So he took what he needed. 239 00:22:47,838 --> 00:22:51,148 Technical expertise, grinding toil 240 00:22:51,238 --> 00:22:53,547 and, in the case of one of his assistants, 241 00:22:53,638 --> 00:22:56,550 Matteo Buonarelli, his wife. 242 00:23:03,238 --> 00:23:06,947 Her name is Costanza. Constance. 243 00:23:07,798 --> 00:23:11,074 Did she and Bernini have a laugh in bed about that? 244 00:23:13,638 --> 00:23:17,870 Here she is, in 1637, at the height of their affair. 245 00:23:22,358 --> 00:23:25,111 You can see he can't get enough of her. 246 00:23:28,318 --> 00:23:32,709 And from the intensity of all this brimming desire 247 00:23:32,798 --> 00:23:35,995 comes an entirely new kind of European sculpture. 248 00:23:40,478 --> 00:23:44,710 Before Costanza, busts had been entirely respectable, 249 00:23:44,798 --> 00:23:47,790 and they were usually reserved for tombs. 250 00:23:48,918 --> 00:23:51,307 Only the Romans, a long time before, 251 00:23:51,398 --> 00:23:54,356 had used sculpture for informal portraits. 252 00:23:59,638 --> 00:24:03,153 But informal doesn't quite do it for Costanza, does it? 253 00:24:03,238 --> 00:24:04,751 How about intimate? 254 00:24:04,838 --> 00:24:09,832 For this is a portrait of a woman whose passion is written on her face and her body. 255 00:24:09,918 --> 00:24:13,627 Whose flaring temper just adds fuel to her lover's fire. 256 00:24:21,598 --> 00:24:24,670 This is what we mean by lovingly carved. 257 00:24:29,678 --> 00:24:34,798 It's as though Bernini was reliving his caresses with his chisel. 258 00:24:35,198 --> 00:24:37,154 The falling away of the blouse, 259 00:24:37,238 --> 00:24:40,435 perhaps the single, sexiest invitation 260 00:24:40,518 --> 00:24:42,748 in all European sculpture. 261 00:24:48,118 --> 00:24:50,871 There's something else unique about this sculpture. 262 00:24:50,958 --> 00:24:53,426 It's the celebration of a spitfire. 263 00:24:54,118 --> 00:24:58,236 Costanza Buonarelli may have been the wife of a lowly assistant sculptor, 264 00:24:58,318 --> 00:25:01,993 but she came from a proud, old family, the Piccolomini. 265 00:25:07,758 --> 00:25:10,113 So her jaw is firm, 266 00:25:10,198 --> 00:25:13,634 the rosebud mouth is in the act of speaking, 267 00:25:13,718 --> 00:25:15,549 and not deferentially. 268 00:25:18,558 --> 00:25:21,868 Everything that was supposed to define womanhood, 269 00:25:21,958 --> 00:25:24,233 demure, chaste serenity, 270 00:25:24,318 --> 00:25:26,434 is junked for Costanza. 271 00:25:26,518 --> 00:25:28,668 She's a wild thing, 272 00:25:28,758 --> 00:25:31,670 and the sculptor is hooked on her temper. 273 00:25:40,318 --> 00:25:44,516 But it's not Costanza's temper that would end up undoing Bernini. 274 00:25:44,598 --> 00:25:46,111 It was his own. 275 00:25:46,198 --> 00:25:51,431 Despite all the genteel charm, Bernini was known to have a low boiling point. 276 00:25:52,238 --> 00:25:54,957 Underneath all those social graces 277 00:25:55,038 --> 00:25:59,077 was the bloodthirsty temper of a Neapolitan gangster. 278 00:26:01,998 --> 00:26:06,355 And in one unbelievably shocking episode, he lets it rip. 279 00:26:10,118 --> 00:26:12,109 It started with a rumour. 280 00:26:13,078 --> 00:26:16,991 Costanza, it's whispered, was not so constant after all. 281 00:26:18,038 --> 00:26:20,552 Seems she has a thing about the Bernini boys, 282 00:26:20,638 --> 00:26:24,392 since she's sleeping not just with Gian Lorenzo, 283 00:26:24,478 --> 00:26:27,311 but with his younger brother, Luigi. 284 00:26:38,878 --> 00:26:40,709 Oh, it's hard to believe, I know, 285 00:26:40,798 --> 00:26:46,031 that anyone would want to get their hands on anyone except Mr Fabulous himself. 286 00:26:46,958 --> 00:26:49,631 But could the rumours be true? 287 00:26:54,718 --> 00:26:56,913 The trap is set that evening. 288 00:26:57,838 --> 00:27:02,787 Gian Lorenzo says breezily how he has to go off to the country the next day, 289 00:27:02,878 --> 00:27:04,789 so he won't be in town. 290 00:27:05,678 --> 00:27:08,636 But he doesn't go into the country, does he? 291 00:27:08,718 --> 00:27:13,314 Instead, early next morning, he goes to Costanza's house 292 00:27:13,398 --> 00:27:14,717 and waits. 293 00:27:22,678 --> 00:27:25,988 Luigi emerges. So does Costanza. 294 00:27:27,158 --> 00:27:30,673 That swelling breast Bernini had lovingly carved 295 00:27:30,758 --> 00:27:34,797 flattened against Luigi's chest in a passionate embrace. 296 00:27:41,278 --> 00:27:43,314 There's a chase through the streets, 297 00:27:44,798 --> 00:27:48,996 across the piazzas, over the bridges, right into Saint Peter's itself. 298 00:27:52,638 --> 00:27:58,668 Where its official architect does his best to murder his own brother. 299 00:28:02,718 --> 00:28:07,348 Gian Lorenzo grabs an iron bar and smashes it against Luigi's body, 300 00:28:07,878 --> 00:28:09,550 breaking two ribs. 301 00:28:20,758 --> 00:28:23,226 He's famous as a miracle worker. 302 00:28:23,838 --> 00:28:28,150 This time the miracle is that he hasn't killed his own brother. 303 00:28:31,838 --> 00:28:36,434 It takes a message from their mother to the papal cops to separate them. 304 00:28:44,598 --> 00:28:46,793 And that's not the end of it. 305 00:28:47,118 --> 00:28:52,112 That afternoon, Gian Lorenzo sends a servant to Costanza's house. 306 00:28:53,478 --> 00:28:59,235 He doesn't cut her throat. Instead, he slashes her perfect face to ribbons. 307 00:29:03,998 --> 00:29:09,994 So the man who has cut stone to create beauty has cut flesh to destroy it. 308 00:29:19,038 --> 00:29:21,996 And what do you suppose is Bernini's punishment 309 00:29:22,078 --> 00:29:25,468 for grievous bodily harm and attempted murder? 310 00:29:25,558 --> 00:29:30,951 Oh, a really stiff sentence, a 3,000 scudi fine. 311 00:29:31,038 --> 00:29:34,075 Except that his pal, the Pope, waives it. 312 00:29:34,158 --> 00:29:37,912 ''Naughty, naughty,'' says the Pope, ''This mustn't happen again. 313 00:29:37,998 --> 00:29:41,308 ''So I sentence you to be married." 314 00:29:41,398 --> 00:29:45,835 ''And, by the way, she just happens to be the most beautiful girl in Rome." 315 00:29:45,918 --> 00:29:50,230 ''That should keep you out of mischief.'' Papal wink, papal nudge. 316 00:29:55,238 --> 00:30:00,915 So Bernini is married off to Caterina Tezio, daughter of a Roman lawyer. 317 00:30:03,038 --> 00:30:07,111 For his part in the fight, brother Luigi is banished to Bologna. 318 00:30:07,918 --> 00:30:13,038 Everyone else goes to jail. The servant who did the razor job 319 00:30:13,638 --> 00:30:18,314 and, insult added to injury, Costanza herself, 320 00:30:18,838 --> 00:30:22,069 convicted of fornication and adultery. 321 00:30:25,678 --> 00:30:27,669 And what happened to the bust? 322 00:30:27,758 --> 00:30:31,717 Well, Bernini's new wife wouldn't have it in the house. 323 00:30:31,798 --> 00:30:36,474 Which is just as well, since Gian Lorenzo couldn't bear to look at it, either. 324 00:30:38,598 --> 00:30:41,192 He might, I suppose, have smashed it. 325 00:30:42,758 --> 00:30:46,751 But luckily, a Medici buyer from Florence snapped it up. 326 00:30:50,518 --> 00:30:55,148 Which is why we're looking at it here in the Bargello Museum in Florence. 327 00:30:55,638 --> 00:31:00,234 The Costanza that once was, and, for us, always will be. 328 00:31:14,598 --> 00:31:18,034 And you're thinking, ''I don't care how good his sculpture is. 329 00:31:18,118 --> 00:31:20,632 ''I don't care how important his art is." 330 00:31:20,718 --> 00:31:23,471 ''What an absolute bastard!" 331 00:31:23,558 --> 00:31:27,187 ''Please tell me he doesn't get off scot-free.'' 332 00:31:31,638 --> 00:31:37,588 Well, strangely enough, it's exactly from this moment of the crime against Costanza 333 00:31:37,678 --> 00:31:43,469 that things go swiftly downhill for the Cavaliere Untouchable. 334 00:31:49,798 --> 00:31:53,632 And it all went wrong in the place that mattered most for Bernini. 335 00:31:55,118 --> 00:31:59,111 The place that made or broke artists and architects. 336 00:32:01,238 --> 00:32:03,468 The Cathedral of Saint Peter's. 337 00:32:12,598 --> 00:32:15,351 This is the facade of Saint Peter's we all know, 338 00:32:15,438 --> 00:32:18,748 but the aggressively confident 17th century popes 339 00:32:18,838 --> 00:32:20,510 didn't want to stop with this. 340 00:32:23,518 --> 00:32:29,036 They wanted two great bell towers at each corner, above where we now see the clocks. 341 00:32:30,598 --> 00:32:35,956 It was those bells, after all, that would summon the faithful for papal blessings 342 00:32:36,998 --> 00:32:39,466 and make the Christian dream real. 343 00:32:42,998 --> 00:32:47,037 But in the middle, of course, was Michelangelo's great dome. 344 00:32:48,518 --> 00:32:52,989 So the first designs for the towers made them respectfully low. 345 00:32:54,078 --> 00:32:57,036 Safe, squat, one-storey affairs. 346 00:33:00,558 --> 00:33:05,393 The along comes Bernini, constitutionally incapable of deference. 347 00:33:07,398 --> 00:33:11,232 ''My towers are going to be taller than your dome'', he says. 348 00:33:11,798 --> 00:33:13,595 Three storeys tall, in fact. 349 00:33:14,798 --> 00:33:18,677 Almost 70 metres above the original pedestals, 350 00:33:19,038 --> 00:33:22,235 six times heavier than the original towers. 351 00:33:25,318 --> 00:33:30,995 Problem was, though, Bernini's towers were about to be built on swampy ground. 352 00:33:37,478 --> 00:33:41,517 It's not that Bernini didn't know about this before he got started. 353 00:33:41,598 --> 00:33:46,274 It's just that he's surrounded by yes men who tell him what he wants to hear. 354 00:33:49,278 --> 00:33:53,317 That building tall towers on dodgy ground is no real problem. 355 00:33:54,838 --> 00:33:58,308 What he needs are brutally honest advisors 356 00:33:58,398 --> 00:34:01,913 who aren't afraid of spelling out the risks he's taking. 357 00:34:05,078 --> 00:34:09,230 There was one person who knew that building a tall, heavy tower 358 00:34:09,318 --> 00:34:13,277 on unstable foundations was asking for trouble. 359 00:34:13,718 --> 00:34:15,788 That person was Borromini. 360 00:34:20,398 --> 00:34:25,347 But it seemed to be beneath Bernini's dignity to ask his rival for advice. 361 00:34:26,678 --> 00:34:30,193 So, without the benefit of Borromini's criticism, 362 00:34:30,278 --> 00:34:33,873 Bernini sails straight into disaster. 363 00:34:38,998 --> 00:34:43,947 In July, 1641, Bernini unveiled his first tower to the public. 364 00:34:48,398 --> 00:34:52,186 Two months later, cracks start to appear. 365 00:34:59,558 --> 00:35:02,914 Bernini takes to his bed. Won't eat. 366 00:35:02,998 --> 00:35:05,990 Gets so ill, he's reported near death. 367 00:35:09,878 --> 00:35:12,108 It gets worse. 368 00:35:12,198 --> 00:35:15,508 The cracks aren't just in the foundation of the bell tower. 369 00:35:15,998 --> 00:35:19,752 They've spread to the facade of the main church itself. 370 00:35:48,438 --> 00:35:52,431 Then, in 1644, disaster. 371 00:35:52,518 --> 00:35:54,827 Pope Urban VIII, Bernini's friend 372 00:35:54,918 --> 00:35:58,149 and the staunchest supporter of the bell tower, dies. 373 00:36:04,038 --> 00:36:06,506 There's a new pope, Innocent X, 374 00:36:06,598 --> 00:36:12,389 and he sees it as his job to get rid of all the old favourites, like Bernini. 375 00:36:12,478 --> 00:36:17,268 After all, he has a new favourite, Francesco Borromini. 376 00:36:21,998 --> 00:36:25,308 So, after 15 years in Bernini's shadow, 377 00:36:26,238 --> 00:36:30,277 Borromini's moment for revenge has at last arrived. 378 00:36:33,118 --> 00:36:36,190 An inquiry is set up to deal with Bernini's towers. 379 00:36:38,518 --> 00:36:41,271 Borromini submits detailed evidence, 380 00:36:42,398 --> 00:36:46,949 a lovingly-rendered drawing of Bernini's disaster. 381 00:37:01,278 --> 00:37:04,395 ''Well, what do you expect?'' says Borromini. 382 00:37:04,478 --> 00:37:08,107 ''The tower's too tall. It's too heavy for its base supports." 383 00:37:08,198 --> 00:37:12,350 ''It's too unwieldy. It's built recklessly on swampy ground." 384 00:37:12,918 --> 00:37:16,308 ''It's amazing, actually, it hasn't collapsed already." 385 00:37:16,398 --> 00:37:19,754 ''It's all very well going digging beneath the tower after the event 386 00:37:19,838 --> 00:37:22,910 to see how serious the damage is." 387 00:37:22,998 --> 00:37:26,468 ''If he'd have asked me, since I know a bit about building, 388 00:37:26,558 --> 00:37:29,436 I would've told him. But he didn't.'' 389 00:37:35,158 --> 00:37:40,676 On the 23rd of February, 1646, a meeting was held at the Vatican 390 00:37:40,758 --> 00:37:43,716 to discuss the fate of Bernini's south tower. 391 00:37:44,638 --> 00:37:47,596 But the Pope had already made his decision. 392 00:37:49,318 --> 00:37:50,717 Demolish it. 393 00:37:56,198 --> 00:37:59,190 The demolition takes 11 months. 394 00:37:59,278 --> 00:38:04,147 If Bernini had been anywhere near Saint Peter's, he would've seen it and heard it. 395 00:38:04,638 --> 00:38:08,313 The winches, the pulleys, the columns stacked on the roof. 396 00:38:09,358 --> 00:38:14,637 Down came the bell tower, and down with it came Gian Lorenzo Bernini 397 00:38:14,718 --> 00:38:19,872 from the height of fame and reputation to something like a laughing stock. 398 00:38:29,798 --> 00:38:31,914 It's 1648. 399 00:38:31,998 --> 00:38:35,957 Bernini is 50, old by the standards of the time. 400 00:38:37,878 --> 00:38:41,029 So how did he survive the humiliation? 401 00:38:42,718 --> 00:38:47,314 One visiting English student has him collapsing into despair. 402 00:38:49,078 --> 00:38:51,717 Others have him buckling down to work. 403 00:38:52,598 --> 00:38:54,429 He still does get commissions, 404 00:38:54,518 --> 00:38:58,272 but not from the biggest hitters in Rome, not any more. 405 00:38:59,038 --> 00:39:02,508 It would take a miracle now for him to redeem himself. 406 00:39:05,278 --> 00:39:08,588 And then that miracle arrived. 407 00:39:26,158 --> 00:39:29,116 A moment of mind-boggling drama. 408 00:39:31,238 --> 00:39:36,312 A moment that wavers between mystery and indecency. 409 00:39:39,278 --> 00:39:41,917 The body of a saint penetrated. 410 00:39:56,078 --> 00:40:01,232 The arrow withdrawn from its passage, poised to strike again. 411 00:40:02,078 --> 00:40:04,990 Her pain indistinguishable from pleasure. 412 00:40:06,518 --> 00:40:11,114 The gasping woman levitating, defying gravity 413 00:40:11,198 --> 00:40:13,792 on rippling cushions of stone. 414 00:40:19,998 --> 00:40:24,867 So, who was it then that gave Bernini the chance to portray a saint 415 00:40:24,958 --> 00:40:28,348 in a way no one else had ever dared? 416 00:40:33,958 --> 00:40:39,828 You can't imagine a more respectable patron than Cardinal Federico Cornaro, 417 00:40:39,918 --> 00:40:44,867 who came from an old aristocratic clan that wanted to build a family chapel 418 00:40:44,958 --> 00:40:47,916 in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria. 419 00:40:49,278 --> 00:40:53,317 He would have known about Saint Teresa of Įvila. Everyone did. 420 00:40:58,838 --> 00:41:02,672 She died in her native Spain in 1582. 421 00:41:03,958 --> 00:41:09,988 But there was something, many things, actually, which made Teresa an awkward fit for sainthood. 422 00:41:11,278 --> 00:41:13,746 Not least her levitations. 423 00:41:19,478 --> 00:41:22,470 A rapture came over me so suddenly, 424 00:41:23,038 --> 00:41:25,711 it almost lifted me out of myself. 425 00:41:29,118 --> 00:41:30,870 I heard these words, 426 00:41:32,518 --> 00:41:37,672 ''Now, I want you to speak not with men, but with angels. '' 427 00:41:47,798 --> 00:41:50,790 It's not surprising, then, that of all the modern saints, 428 00:41:50,878 --> 00:41:54,712 it was Teresa who still had no chapel devoted to her. 429 00:41:55,158 --> 00:41:59,754 The Cornaro dynasty, who were patrons of her austere order of nuns, 430 00:41:59,838 --> 00:42:01,749 the Barefoot Carmelites, 431 00:42:01,838 --> 00:42:06,753 jumped in and presented Bernini with the biggest challenge of his career, 432 00:42:06,838 --> 00:42:10,433 but also the chance for a spectacular comeback. 433 00:42:11,238 --> 00:42:14,753 It was the most daring drama of the body that he, 434 00:42:14,838 --> 00:42:17,796 or any other sculptor in the history of art, 435 00:42:17,878 --> 00:42:21,234 had ever conceived, much less executed. 436 00:42:34,278 --> 00:42:37,907 Bernini would certainly have known about Saint Teresa. 437 00:42:37,998 --> 00:42:41,832 Her autobiography was a bestseller in Catholic Rome. 438 00:42:43,438 --> 00:42:49,308 Like everyone else, he would've been startled by the earthy directness of her story. 439 00:42:49,998 --> 00:42:54,150 But above all, he would have been electrified by those moments 440 00:42:54,238 --> 00:42:58,356 in which Teresa, in the most graphic words imaginable, 441 00:42:58,438 --> 00:43:00,952 describes what happens to her. 442 00:43:06,478 --> 00:43:10,596 Very close to me, an angel appeared in human form. 443 00:43:12,878 --> 00:43:16,712 In his hands I saw a large golden spear. 444 00:43:17,758 --> 00:43:21,990 And at its iron tip, there seemed to be a point of fire. 445 00:43:26,678 --> 00:43:31,513 I felt as if he plunged this into my heart several times, 446 00:43:32,318 --> 00:43:36,596 so that it penetrated all the way to my entrails. 447 00:43:39,918 --> 00:43:43,706 When he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out with it, 448 00:43:44,478 --> 00:43:48,915 and it left me totally inflamed with a great love for God. 449 00:43:56,638 --> 00:44:01,314 The pain was so severe that it made me moan several times. 450 00:44:14,958 --> 00:44:18,189 Now, if there was one thing that Bernini was not, 451 00:44:18,278 --> 00:44:19,677 it was crude. 452 00:44:19,758 --> 00:44:24,229 He understood perfectly well that when Teresa wrote of her raptures, 453 00:44:24,318 --> 00:44:29,233 she meant the longing of her soul for a consummated union with God. 454 00:44:29,878 --> 00:44:32,108 It was the way she wrote about it 455 00:44:32,198 --> 00:44:36,669 that made it seem as if her soul and her body were the same thing. 456 00:44:42,798 --> 00:44:49,067 All of Bernini's greatest body dramas had featured figures twisting in ascent. 457 00:44:49,878 --> 00:44:52,597 Proserpina's flight from Pluto. 458 00:44:52,678 --> 00:44:56,876 Daphne rising to the sky as if to escape stony doom. 459 00:44:59,958 --> 00:45:03,155 Now it was time for him to make Teresa levitate. 460 00:45:04,118 --> 00:45:09,829 This time, not in escape from penetration, but in craving for it. 461 00:45:16,838 --> 00:45:20,274 It was time to forget about euphemisms. 462 00:45:20,798 --> 00:45:22,470 The only way that Bernini 463 00:45:22,558 --> 00:45:26,346 could possibly communicate the flood of her sensation 464 00:45:26,438 --> 00:45:30,829 was to make visible what he knew of bodily ecstasy. 465 00:45:31,798 --> 00:45:35,996 The face of a woman at the height of sexual euphoria. 466 00:45:38,078 --> 00:45:42,913 It's as if he's turning his own intimate knowledge of carnal sin 467 00:45:42,998 --> 00:45:45,034 into carnal blessing. 468 00:45:46,838 --> 00:45:52,788 So, of course, this isn't the real Teresa, middle-aged nun, rising up her cell wall 469 00:45:52,878 --> 00:45:55,312 with sisters hanging on to her habit. 470 00:45:56,318 --> 00:45:59,754 No, this woman is unforgettably beautiful. 471 00:46:01,678 --> 00:46:05,273 A match for the exquisite seraph angel lover. 472 00:46:07,518 --> 00:46:09,554 They are, in their way, a couple. 473 00:46:10,478 --> 00:46:14,790 Smiley face is pointing his arrow not at her breast at all, 474 00:46:14,878 --> 00:46:17,312 but rather lower down the torso. 475 00:46:26,118 --> 00:46:29,349 But how to make visible both their union 476 00:46:29,438 --> 00:46:33,397 and the tide of engulfing feeling washing through Teresa? 477 00:46:33,918 --> 00:46:38,514 And here Bernini has the crucial insight of the whole piece. 478 00:46:41,118 --> 00:46:44,269 He turns her body inside out, 479 00:46:45,078 --> 00:46:49,833 so that her covering, her habit, the symbol of chastity and containment, 480 00:46:50,478 --> 00:46:55,108 becomes a representation of what's going on inside her. 481 00:47:00,558 --> 00:47:06,474 It's the accomplice of her helpless dissolution into a liquid bliss. 482 00:47:16,318 --> 00:47:19,594 It is, in fact, the climax itself. 483 00:47:20,598 --> 00:47:25,388 A storm surge of churning sensation, cresting and falling 484 00:47:25,478 --> 00:47:27,867 as if the marble had been molten. 485 00:47:30,118 --> 00:47:34,191 And these billows pour themselves from the smiling angel 486 00:47:34,278 --> 00:47:37,429 directly into Teresa's robe, 487 00:47:37,518 --> 00:47:41,193 where they join an ocean of heaving waves 488 00:47:41,278 --> 00:47:44,315 that folds into hollows and crevices, 489 00:47:44,398 --> 00:47:47,390 like surf breaking on a shore. 490 00:47:57,638 --> 00:48:00,516 There's nothing furtive about any of this. 491 00:48:00,598 --> 00:48:03,556 Bernini wants us to look and look hard. 492 00:48:06,158 --> 00:48:10,276 So much, that he surrounds the performance with an audience, 493 00:48:10,838 --> 00:48:13,113 members of the Cornaro family. 494 00:48:14,358 --> 00:48:18,829 Some watching the show, some chatting about what it might mean. 495 00:48:23,398 --> 00:48:29,030 There's every kind of show lighting, fake sun beams, hidden lights at the back. 496 00:48:33,158 --> 00:48:38,994 And, as Teresa climbs to her heights, the earth really does move. 497 00:48:40,238 --> 00:48:42,194 Look down here. 498 00:48:42,278 --> 00:48:45,714 The ground is opening and out pop the dead. 499 00:48:49,998 --> 00:48:52,751 Everything is shaking and quaking, 500 00:48:54,478 --> 00:48:57,151 even the columns of the little chapel. 501 00:48:57,558 --> 00:49:01,790 And here, Bernini adds the coup de grāce to all those critics 502 00:49:01,878 --> 00:49:04,950 who said he couldn't do architecture. 503 00:49:05,038 --> 00:49:11,068 Not least Borromini, who specialised in weird, counter-intuitive bulges and curves. 504 00:49:13,598 --> 00:49:18,626 ''Right,'' said Bernini, ''I'll build you a temple that not just curves and bulges, 505 00:49:18,718 --> 00:49:21,186 ''but actually explodes through its columns 506 00:49:21,278 --> 00:49:26,033 ''from the sheer uncontainable force of the drama going on inside.'' 507 00:49:32,758 --> 00:49:37,707 The most ambitious thing he'd ever attempted, the bell tower of Saint Peter's, 508 00:49:37,878 --> 00:49:42,315 had come crashing down in ignominious failure. 509 00:49:45,598 --> 00:49:50,388 Now, it was time for Teresa to rise up, and carry with her 510 00:49:50,478 --> 00:49:55,996 the resurrected reputation of the disgraced Cavaliere Bernini. 511 00:50:02,558 --> 00:50:04,992 And you feel him, when he's done, 512 00:50:05,078 --> 00:50:09,788 standing back and saying, ''Right, top that''. 513 00:50:11,278 --> 00:50:12,996 No one ever could. 514 00:50:26,398 --> 00:50:28,787 The Cornaro loved their chapel. 515 00:50:29,358 --> 00:50:34,034 12,000 scudi, no problem, worth every scudo. 516 00:50:34,638 --> 00:50:37,277 Word got round. The dazzler was back. 517 00:50:37,918 --> 00:50:42,992 Even the sour, old Pope Innocent X began to sweeten on Bernini, 518 00:50:43,078 --> 00:50:47,435 as Borromini skulked unhappily through the Vatican corridors. 519 00:50:58,798 --> 00:51:02,916 It's not that Borromini never gets commissions from the Pope again, 520 00:51:02,998 --> 00:51:06,308 it's just that it was Bernini who triumphed. 521 00:51:09,678 --> 00:51:14,354 So wherever you go in Rome now, you're really in the Cavaliere's city. 522 00:51:16,798 --> 00:51:19,995 As you approach Saint Peter's over the Ponte Sant'Angelo, 523 00:51:20,758 --> 00:51:23,591 you're in the company of Bernini's angels. 524 00:51:31,278 --> 00:51:35,237 And even though he was denied his bell towers at Saint Peter's, 525 00:51:35,318 --> 00:51:37,354 he did something much better. 526 00:51:38,758 --> 00:51:43,309 The colonnades which lead us towards the great church, 527 00:51:43,398 --> 00:51:47,596 its arms gathering believers to the bosom of the faith. 528 00:51:54,798 --> 00:51:58,108 Inside the church, past the baldachino, 529 00:51:58,198 --> 00:52:01,315 you're drawn towards Bernini's great light. 530 00:52:02,438 --> 00:52:05,350 The Holy Spirit at the seat of Saint Peter. 531 00:52:10,998 --> 00:52:14,752 Popes came and went, but Bernini endured. 532 00:52:16,158 --> 00:52:20,913 He gave up sinning, became a model Christian, fathered 11 children. 533 00:52:21,518 --> 00:52:23,554 Never strayed again, they said. 534 00:52:26,918 --> 00:52:29,591 And we're told that when he was troubled, 535 00:52:29,678 --> 00:52:33,387 he'd be found at the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, 536 00:52:34,118 --> 00:52:37,030 praying before his shrine to Saint Teresa. 537 00:52:40,798 --> 00:52:43,392 And what of the others in this story? 538 00:52:44,798 --> 00:52:49,474 Costanza with the cut-up face eventually got out of jail 539 00:52:49,558 --> 00:52:52,516 with the help of her long-suffering husband. 540 00:52:57,798 --> 00:53:01,268 Borromini went on to become the great master builder 541 00:53:01,358 --> 00:53:04,668 of ever more eccentric and brilliant churches. 542 00:53:05,758 --> 00:53:09,751 But in the end, he never really felt he got true recognition 543 00:53:09,838 --> 00:53:12,671 and he never got over Bernini's comeback. 544 00:53:14,318 --> 00:53:19,551 Eaten up by jealousy and disappointment, he ended up by committing suicide. 545 00:53:25,078 --> 00:53:27,114 And what of brother Luigi? 546 00:53:27,198 --> 00:53:30,349 Well, he returned to Rome after his exile 547 00:53:30,438 --> 00:53:34,590 and, deep into his 60s, he was at it again. 548 00:53:34,678 --> 00:53:38,830 This time caught in flagrante delicto in, guess where? 549 00:53:38,918 --> 00:53:42,388 The precincts of the holy church of Saint Peter's. 550 00:53:43,158 --> 00:53:45,592 Where, according to court records, 551 00:53:45,678 --> 00:53:49,432 he was arrested for acts of violent sodomy. 552 00:53:54,958 --> 00:53:59,748 To clear the family name and secure a papal pardon for his brother, 553 00:53:59,838 --> 00:54:02,352 Bernini created this, 554 00:54:04,118 --> 00:54:06,837 the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni. 555 00:54:13,878 --> 00:54:17,871 For me, though, none of those grandstanding jobs in Rome 556 00:54:17,958 --> 00:54:21,667 come close to the one work he called, 557 00:54:21,758 --> 00:54:24,955 ''The least bad thing I ever did. '' 558 00:54:28,598 --> 00:54:33,547 Why? Because he's managed to make visible, tangible, actually, 559 00:54:34,238 --> 00:54:38,072 something we all, if we're honest, know we hunger for, 560 00:54:39,638 --> 00:54:42,630 but before which we're properly tongue-tied. 561 00:54:43,518 --> 00:54:47,591 Something which has produced more bad writing, 562 00:54:47,678 --> 00:54:52,798 more excruciating poems than anything else you can think of. 563 00:54:57,398 --> 00:55:00,674 No wonder, when art historians look at this, 564 00:55:00,758 --> 00:55:04,671 they tie themselves in knots to avoid saying the obvious. 565 00:55:05,718 --> 00:55:10,348 That we're looking at the most intense, convulsive drama of the body 566 00:55:10,438 --> 00:55:14,511 that any of us experience between birth and death. 567 00:55:17,318 --> 00:55:23,075 Which is not to say that what we're looking at is just a spasm of erotic chemistry. 568 00:55:24,118 --> 00:55:26,996 It's precisely because it isn't just that. 569 00:55:27,798 --> 00:55:31,347 Because it is somehow a fusion of physical craving 570 00:55:31,438 --> 00:55:36,592 and, choose your word, spiritual or emotional transcendence, 571 00:55:37,158 --> 00:55:40,036 that Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa 572 00:55:40,118 --> 00:55:44,270 is a sculpture that possesses the beholder completely, 573 00:55:44,358 --> 00:55:46,872 the longer we stare. 574 00:55:55,638 --> 00:55:59,392 So, perhaps, when that 18th-century French connoisseur 575 00:55:59,478 --> 00:56:01,434 looked at Teresa and said, 576 00:56:01,518 --> 00:56:04,828 ''If that's divine love, I know it well', 577 00:56:04,918 --> 00:56:07,751 he wasn't making a sly joke at all, 578 00:56:07,838 --> 00:56:11,877 but doffing his hat to Bernini for using the power of art 579 00:56:11,998 --> 00:56:16,355 to make the most difficult, the most desirable thing in the world.; 580 00:56:17,238 --> 00:56:20,355 the visualisation of pure bliss.