Sculptor. A son of Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, he remained in his father’s workshop until the latter’s death in 1680. In 1665, when Giovanni was summoned to Paris to work for Louis XIV, Paolo accompanied him, and while there – and with some help from his father – executed a low relief in marble, The Infant Jesus with the Instruments of the Passion (Louvre). He worked with his father on one of the Angel statues on the Ponte Sant’Angelo in Rome and executed the matching memorials to the da Silva family on the side walls of his father’s Cappella da Silva in the church of Sant’ Isidoro a Capo le Case, Rome. The design of the Monument to Lady Jane Cheyne, 1670–72, Chelsea Old Church, is attributed to him. Paolo was admitted to membership of Accademia di San Luca in 1672.
Bibliography: T. Cavanagh, Public Sculpture of Kensington and Chelsea with Westminster South-West, Watford, 2023, pp. 73–77; W.L. Hildburgh, ‘A Signed Marble Cupid Perhaps by Paolo Valentino Bernini’, Burlington Magazine, November 1942, pp. 280, 282–84; J. Montagu, Roman Baroque Sculpture. The industry of art, New Haven and London, 1989, pp. 6–7, 38–44; Oxford Art Online – Benezit Dictionary of Artists.
Terry Cavanagh November 2022