Meeting Pietro Bernini on a walk

by Stefania Bufano

by Stefania Bufano

In Italy, when you go out for just a walk (and if you are not in a hurry without looking around yourself and deep in your thoughts), and maybe you have your camera with you, or your mobile phone to make a photo just in case, you can very often discover things. So, after a long way, and having crossed a garden with a lot of people, who were laying in the sun, who were talking with friends, who were reading on a bench, watching children play football, running free and going happy on the swing, and then overtaking a school of music right out of the garden, hearing with pleasure from an open window a nice sound of a saxophone, and soon after, another one, maybe of a student this time…

 

I looked at a wall, in an old and not so beautiful road as you could imagine: it’s a place not really important for tourists. Just an old narrow street, with old houses where one day there was countryside, where I don’t think people too rich lived there, maybe people who were doing handicrafts, meanwhile others cultivated lands, which in part you can still see if you walk there, and also you can see in the distance through those fields big roads that connect towns near Florence.

Just in that direction you can see airplanes fly, depart and land, from the near airport of Florence.

But back to what I have seen. Here was born in a little house, Pietro Bernini, a very important Italian sculptor, exactly on the 6th of May in 1562. He studied in Florence and lived and worked in Naples (where his son Gian Lorenzo was also born, also a sculptor, painter and architect) and Rome. He made monumental sculptures, with other’s sculptors, like Fontana del Nettuno and Fontana del Gigante (in Naples), and the very famous fountain Fontana della Barcaccia (in Spanish Square in Rome).

But the walk was yesterday. Unfortunately, I often do very strange things: like going out, sometimes without a camera or mobile phone, feeling free from all, without anything apart from my house keys. So when I saw the writing “6 Maggio” I thought: I must come tomorrow to make a photo of it, on the 6th of May, today!

So, happy birthday, Pietro Bernini!

 

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Around the house where was born Pietro Bernini

 

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Pietro Bernini

Sesto Fiorentino