In our attempt to fill in the silences of the historical record about the specifics of Bernini’s mentality — silences created, above all, by Bernini himself — we turn to the virtuosi and eruditi closest to him. Among the latter is Jesuit scholar Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino (1607–67; his first name is Sforza, not the inexplicable “Pietro” that unfortunately still appears in scholarly works). Though the most active years of that relationship date to the pontificate of Pope Alexander VII (1655–67), the two first met at the Barberini court in the 1620s. When Pallavicino boasted in 1665 that “truly [Bernini] has very few friends whom he trusts as much as he does me,” he was not exaggerating.

Tomaso Montanari and Eraldo Bellini have contributed significantly to our knowledge of Pallavicino and his influence in Bernini’s Rome. Maarten Delbeke now takes an entirely new and extremely important next step, the reconstruction of the cardinal’s theory of art. Art theory was not one of Pallavicino’s major intellectual concerns: he spent little time, relatively speaking, on the topic. Yet a mining of his published works does “result in a coherent set of art theoretical tenets” (21). Even though those ideas had little influence after the cardinal’s death, as one of the leading intellectuals of Baroque Rome and as a prominent figure in the Bernini biographies, his thoughts on the matter count. We cannot know whether Bernini espoused any of them himself but we can at least know what the artist is likely to have heard and pondered on the subject from his cardinal-friend.

It is impossible to do justice here to the contents of Delbeke’s illuminating, exhaustive study of so complex and so dense a subject: in tracking down and weaving into a coherent exposition the cardinal’s views about art, Delbeke combs with diligence the entirety (it would seem) of Pallavicino’s prodigious scholarly production, including The History of the Council of Trent. Moreover, at every point he compares and contrasts those views — at times in close detail — with similar or competing theories of other influential contemporaries, such as Mascardi, Tesauro, Ciampoli, Virginio Cesarani, Guidiccioni, Ottonelli, and Lancellotti. Much attention is given to the Bernini biographical sources, especially Domenico Bernini’s biography, where both the figure and the ideas of Pallavicino are used as instruments of apologetic persuasion.

Delbeke’s exposition and interpretations are, throughout, clear, thoughtful, well conceived, and well argued. My queries and criticisms concern only smaller items. As discussed in my Domenico Bernini edition, I see no reason why to obfuscate the Italian term ingegno by refusing to translate it: the English genius fits fine. Regarding the statement that Pallavicino was “master of the Jesuit novitiate on the Quirinal” (15): the job of “Master of Novices” at Sant’Andrea was distinct from that of “Rector” (of the entire community) and, as far as I have been able to determine, Pallavicino was neither. Delbeke (137–39) takes too seriously Bernini’s flip remark that his Baldacchino had succeeded “by chance”: the obsessively cautious Bernini left nothing to chance, testing the proportions of the Baldacchino in numerous drawings and three-dimensional modelli, including a full-scale one erected in situ. I am unconvinced by Delbeke’s claim that Domenico Bernini’s descriptions of the Louis equestrian statue and Savior bust are part of the topos about Bernini’s “ability to judiciously transgress the rules” (149). Domenico’s “Complessione e Naturalezza” is better translated as “Constitution and Natural Aptitude” (149). It was Gian Paolo Oliva, not de Lionne, who described Bernini as “transformed in [sic] Trumpet” (152). The transcription of Ciampoli’s poem on the Baldacchino (179) appears slightly inaccurate: altre must surely be oltre and the first-person pronoun me is puzzling and not accounted for in the English translation, which also omits an entire verse. In the bibliography (213), Barker’s first name is Sheila, while Barocchi’s is Paola, not Paolo.

But let me not end on negative minutiae: we owe a scholarly debt of gratitude to Delbeke for having undertaken with such success the herculean task of retrieving and analyzing the art theory of one of the most prominent intellectuals of Seicento Italy. This book will be an important point of reference for all future discussions of art theory in Bernini’s Rome.