Gianlorenzo Bernini's The Impresario: The Artist as the Supreme Trickster

Abstract

Perhaps the least known aspect of Gianlorenzo Bernini's artistic endeavours is his work as a scenographer and playwright. His contributions to the Barberini court spectacles have been the subject of several recent studies, many of them dealing with the tricky problem of distinguishing the work of Bernini from that of his contemporaries. That he was one of the most admired impresarios of his day is a received idea, but the ephemerality of the medium has deprived modern critics of actual works for study. John Evelyn, following his trip to Rome in 1644, celebrated Bernini's versatility in his Diary, stating that he gave a 'Publique Opera ... where in he painted the scenes, cut the Statues, invented the Engines, composed the Musique, writ the Comedy and built the Theatre all himselfe.' We know of some of his devices such as flooding the stage in the Inundation of the Tiber (1638), a trick in hydraulics he learned from Aleotti, and the pyrotechnics of The Fair (before 1645) in which a coachman 'accidentally' set fire to the stage, causing the audience to flee for their lives. Before they could get away, however, the fire was out, and the scene changed to a 'noble and beautiful' garden.