Bernini - The Movie

Why hasn't anyone done a movie on Bernini? Or have they? Let me know if there's something besides a documentary. He was a rock star in Italy in the 1600's. Child prodigy artist. Sculptor. Carved masterpieces in marble as a teenager. He was good, and he knew it. He was charming, and he knew it, knew how to use it. Became a close friend of the Pope. Also did architecture. A bit of a narcissist. Fame went to his head.

He fell in love . . . with a married woman. She cheated on him with his brother. He found out and almost killed his own brother, breaking a couple of his brother's ribs. He sent his servant to his lover's house, to slash her face and disfigure her, which he did.

Constanza, or Constance, Bernini's lover.

His brother went to jail for fighting, his lover went to jail for adultery, his servant went to jail. Bernini got a warning. Things never change. Celebrities get away with everything. And he was made to marry a beautiful woman in hopes of keeping him in line. I bet she loved that arrangement. I wonder what she did to deserve Bernini.

Along comes a rival, somewhere in this timeline, I'm not sure exactly when, but a reserved and talented architect arises, Borromini. He is building buildings in ways no one had thought of before, beautiful buildings. Buildings Bernini could only dream of building.

That's ok, Bernini is friends with the Pope. The Pope assigns Bernini to build onto the Church Michelangelo designed. Here's Bernini's chance to outdo Michelangelo. Over the top, so to speak, by building towers higher than Michelangelo's original dome. Bernini has already pissed off Borromini by consulting him on other jobs and then not giving him any credit. A habit he has with his assistants too. He does not consult Borromini on this one, to his detriment.

Bernini, outdoing Michelangelo with his own version of David.

His high and heavy towers begin to crack, and not just crack ,but crack down into the rest of the church. The foundation cannot hold the weight. The church consults Borromini, he tells them the problem and the Pope orders the towers torn down. Bernini also, finally is torn down, well maybe not torn down, just feeling sorry for himself. He becomes depressed and becomes sick from lying around not eating. He recovers, he still gets commissions. And finally he gets commissioned by the church to build a chapel, or shrine, whatever they call it, to Saint Teresa. He borrows design ideas from Borromini and uses his own flare for the theatrical and of course his world class sculpting skills to produce this:

This is only part of it, look it up, the Ecstasy of St. Teresa. 

The story has everything, and it's true. Why hasn't anyone made a movie of this?  It can even be twisted to be anti-Christian, which Hollywood loves to do. One more pic:

See those leaves. Those were sculpted by an assistant, Giuliano Finelli. Hats off to you Giuliano!