Gian Lorenzo Bernini and workshop

Gian Lorenzo Bernini and workshop is the credit a museum gives when a sculpture was designed and directed by Bernini but carved, in large part, by assistants in his studio in Rome. The Capitoline Museums put it in their own words, Bernini ed aiuti, Bernini and helpers.

For the large papal commissions that filled his career this was the ordinary way of working. Bernini supplied drawings and clay models and kept control of the whole, while a team of trained sculptors cut the stone. On the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona each of the four river gods was carved by a different member of the team from his designs, among them Antonio Raggi and Francesco Baratta. How much of any one figure the master carved himself can seldom be measured. Several of the assistants, Raggi and Ercole Ferrata among them, later ran busy workshops of their own.