I read this book on the trip up from Knoxville today – The Genius in the Design: Bernini, Borromini, and the Rivalry that transformed Rome.

It’s basically a dual biography of the men, highlighting their points of collaboration (few) and competition (many), as well as their contrasting sensibilities and styles.I enjoyed it, although it could used many more illustrations – but I do understand now, after many years in publishing, how illustrations jack up the price of producing a book – not just in terms of production, but in terms of rights to images. You’d think major publishers could swing it though, and that in a book about art and architecture, it would be a priority. I also could have used a bit more analysis of exactly what Baroque was, contrasting it with earlier styles. There was one editing snafu I picked up on – one chapter began indicating that the subject would be two major Bernini projects, including the Chair of Peter in St. Peter’s – but it was never mentioned or described in that chapter, and got only a one-sentence parenthetical mention in the first paragraph of the next. Whoops. Ran out of space, I guess.

Which was too bad, because that structure fascinated me. Not the first couple of times we wandered through St. Peter’s, but that last Sunday morning we went to Mass, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It is so resplendent and over-the-top, with that riot of angels surrounding the dove (not stained glass but sheets of amber) which struck me as practically orgiastic. I mean…look at it. But there you go. How to portray spiritual ecstasy, fullness and splendor?

My favorite Bernini object in St. Peter’s though (aside from the piazza, of course!) is the tomb of Alexander VII. But then I’m a sucker for images of women carting babies as symbols of Charity and Divine Love. The shrouded skeleton bearing the hourglass (because, our tour guide said, the tomb was constructed while Alexander was still alive, so the hour of his death had not yet been revealed) was striking as well.

Back to the book – an engaging introduction to the period, giving a real sense of how the dynamics of patronage worked, as well as the basics of the two mens’ lives, careers and sensibilities. And, as always, food for thought about powerful, stunning religious art and architecture and the, let us say, interesting lives of those who create it.