Podcasts-2 - Rocky Ruggiero

Podcasts

Available on your favorite platform

Rebuilding The Renaissance podcast will explore the development of the art, architecture, culture and history in Italy, from ancient Roman times through the Renaissance. Listeners will develop an understanding of Italy’s role in the development of Western civilization and an ability to appreciate and understand works of art in their historical context.

"No one brings the Renaissance to life better than Rocky"

- Valoreev

"No one brings the Renaissance to life better than Rocky"

- Historywrocky

"No one brings the Renaissance to life better than Rocky"

- Treskovich

iTunes

Android

Google

Stitcher

Spotify

RSS

iHeart Radio

Episodes

Cities Artists Theory Answers to Open Questions Interviews

Bernini Borromini Brunelleschi Canova Caravaggio Donatello Giotto Leonardo da Vinci Michelangelo Other Artists Raphael Tintoretto Titian

Episode 320 – The Death and Legacy of Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Posted: March 5th, 2025

On November 28, 1680, the 82-year-old Bernini passed away. His spectacular career was nearly 70 years long, during which he worked for 8 different popes. Only Michelangelo surpassed him in terms of lifespan and papal patrons! This podcast looks back on Bernini’s career, his rather surprisingly m...

Episode 319 – Bernini’s “Tomb of Pope Alexander VII”

Posted: February 27th, 2025

In 1672, Gian Lorenzo began the creation of the most spectacular papal tomb monument in St. Peter’s Basilica – the “Tomb of Pope Alexander VII.” Located in the southern transept arm of the church, the monument depicts a pious figure of the pope kneeling in prayer, surrounded by four massive ...

Episode 318 – Bernini’s “Blessed Ludovica Albertoni”

Posted: February 20th, 2025

Carved in the last decade of Bernini’s life, the monument to Blessed Ludovica Albertoni shows that Bernini had not lost his touch in his later years. As sensual and beautiful as his more celebrated earlier works such as “Apollo and Daphne” or “Ecstasy of St. Teresa,” the “Blessed Ludovic...

Episode 317 – Bernini’s Bridge of Angels

Posted: February 12th, 2025

In 1669, at the age of 71, Gian Lorenzo Bernini was commissioned by Pope Clemet IX to renovate the most important pilgrimage bridge in Rome, the Ponte Sant’Angelo. Bernini planned on installing 10 spectacular statues of angels holding the instruments of the passion, only two of which were ultimate...

Episode 316 – Bernini’s “Elephant”

Posted: February 5th, 2025

Completed in 1667 and located in front of the church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome, Italy, Bernini’s “Elephant” is a powerful symbol combining Egyptian lore and Roman power. The elephant was designed as an imaginative base for the ancient Egyptian obelisk from the 6th century BCE....

Episode 314 – Bernini’s “Equestrian Monument of King Louis XIV”

Posted: January 22nd, 2025

Although commissioned while Bernini was in Paris in 1665, Bernini did not work on the statue until he returned to Rome. When it was finally delivered to Paris 20 years later, it was immediately rejected by the king, who vowed to destroy it!...

Episode 313 – Bernini and King Louis XIV

Posted: January 15th, 2025

In April of 1665, Gian Lorenzo Bernini was sent by Pope Alexander VII to the court of King Louis XIV in Paris as a gesture of goodwill between monarchs. Although Bernini’s main project was the design of the east façade of the Palace of the Louvre (which was eventually rejected, perhaps out of jea...

Episode 312 – Bernini’s “Vision of Constantine”

Posted: January 8th, 2025

Originally commissioned in 1654 by Pope Innocent X to be a free-standing statue in the Basilica of St. Peter, Bernini’s “Vision of Constantine” was later incorporated into Bernini’s Scala Regia. The marble statue represents – in typical Bernini dramatic fashion – the miraculous vision of...

Episode 311 – Bernini’s Scala Regia

Posted: January 2nd, 2025

In 1663, Pope Alexander VII commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini to restore and reinvent the official royal staircase – “Scala Regia” in Italian - leading up to the Apostolic Palace. The result was one of the world’s most majestic and breathtaking staircases....

Episode 310 – Bernini’s Sant’Andrea al Quirinale in Rome

Posted: December 26th, 2024

Gian Lorenzo Bernini was commissioned in 1658 by the nephew of the late Pope Innocent X to build the third Jesuit church in Rome. Sant’ Andrea al Quirinale was Bernini’s first church project, and he did not disappoint. The combination of convex and concave forms dressed in polychromed marbles, g...

Episode 309 – Bernini and St. Peter’s Square

Posted: December 18th, 2024

In 1656, Gian Lorenzo Bernini was commissioned by Pope Alexander VII to design and build an appropriate forecourt to the Basilica of St. Peter, known as Piazza San Pietro (“St. Peter’s Square”). The resulting space is one of the greatest triumphs of Baroque architecture, combining a trapezoida...

Episode 308 – Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s “Chair of St. Peter”

Posted: December 11th, 2024

In 1647, Gian Lorenzo began work on a monumental reliquary for an ancient wooden chair (“Cathedra Petri”) thought to have belonged to St. Peter himself. The result was a spectacular ensemble of sculpture, gilded architecture, stained-glass and stucco that dominates the western apse of the grea...

Episode 307 – Bernini’s “Fountain of the Four Rivers”

Posted: December 4th, 2024

In 1651, with the help of the niece of Pope Innocent X, Bernini was able to sneak his design for the “Fountain of the Four Rivers” into the Pamphilj Palace. When Innocent saw it, he realized that despite being excluded from the competition, Bernini was clearly Rome’s greatest artist and deserv...

Episode 306 – Rome: Piazza Navona

Posted: November 27th, 2024

Once the site of an ancient stadium used for athletics (“agones”), the Piazza Navona is arguably Rome’s most famous piazza. It was renovated during the reign of Pope Innocent X in the middle of the 17th century and contains some of Rome’s most spectacular monuments such as Bernini’s “Fo...

Episode 305 – Bernini’s “Ecstasy of St. Teresa” (Part II)

Posted: November 20th, 2024

The central sculpture of the Coronaro Chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, Italy, is one of history’s greatest statues. Bernini depicts the ecstatic heavenly experience of the Spanish nun, which is described in vivid detail in St. Teresa’s autobiography....

Episode 304 – Bernini’s “Ecstasy of St. Teresa” (Part I)

Posted: November 13th, 2024

In 1647, Gian Lorenzo Bernini was commissioned by Cardinal Federigo Coronaro to design a funerary chapel in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, Italy. While the actual sculpture of the saint’s ecstatic experience is simply breathtaking, its architectural context is also magnificent. ...

Episode 303 – Bernini’s “Truth Unveiled by Time”

Posted: November 6th, 2024

Begun in 1645, one year after the death of his great patron Pope Urban VIII, the unfinished “Truth Unveiled by Time” is perhaps Bernini’s most personal statue. He was carving it for himself as a visual expression of vindication against the slander against him by his rivals for his earlier mish...

Episode 302 – Bernini’s Tomb of Pope Urban VIII

Posted: October 30th, 2024

Although commissioned in 1627, at the height of Bernini’s involvement at St. Peter’s, Bernini did not complete the tomb of Pope Urban VIII until 3 years after the pope’s death. Inspired by Michelangelo’s tombs in the New Sacristy in Florence, Italy, the tomb of Urban VIII was also the first ...

Episode 301 – Rome: Bernini’s “Triton Fountain”

Posted: October 23rd, 2024

The spectacular “Triton Fountain” was carved by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1642 for Pope Urban VIII for the piazza named after him – the Piazza Barberini – in the heart of Rome. Made of travertine stone, the fountain depicts the sea god kneeling upon a shell blowing into a conch out of which wa...

Episode 299 – Bernini’s Towers for St. Peter’s

Posted: October 9th, 2024

In 1637, Pope Urban VIII decided to let his superstar artist, Gian Lorenzo Bernini realize a project that had been abandoned 25 years earlier – bell towers at either end of the façade of St. Peter’s in Rome. The project would end up being the greatest failure of Bernini’s long, illustrious ca...

Episode 298 – The Barberini Palace in Rome – Maderno, Bernini, and Borromini

Posted: October 2nd, 2024

In 1627, Pope Urban VIII hired Carlo Maderno to design his new family palace in Rome. When Maderno died two years later, instead of assigning Maderno’s nephew, the visionary architect Francesco Borromini, as architect, the pope gave the job to Gian Lorenzo Bernini. This may have been the beginning...

Episode 297 – Bernini’s “St. Bibiana”

Posted: September 25th, 2024

In 1624, Pope Urban VIII commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini to carve a statue of the early Christian saint, virgin, and martyr St. Bibiana. The result is one of Bernini’s most overlooked but by no means less beautiful statues....

Episode 296 – Bernini’s Crossing Piers in St. Peter’s

Posted: September 18th, 2024

Under the direction of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, head architect of St. Peter’s, a group of sculptors closely associated with him produced three spectacular statues for the crossing piers of the church. These statues represent the three other most important relics of the Vatican – the largest piece o...

Episode 295 – Bernini’s “St. Longinus”

Posted: September 11th, 2024

In 1627, Bernini became the head architect of St. Peter’s Basilica. His first project was to oversee the decoration of the great crossing piers of the church. Four different sculptors – including Bernini – each produced a large-scale sculpture of a saint. But it was Bernini’s 4m tall marble ...

Episode 293 – Bernini’s Baldacchino

Posted: August 29th, 2024

Commissioned in 1623 by Pope Urban VIII – whose coat of arms are ubiquitous throughout the monument - Bernini’s Baldacchino was his first large-scale project. Standing over 100ft. tall, the bronze structure marks the central point of the great Basilica of St. Peter over the tomb of the first pop...

Episode 292 – Bernini’s “David”

Posted: August 21st, 2024

Gian Lorenzo Bernini carved his statue of “David” in 1623 in only 7 months, interrupting his work working on the “Apollo and Daphne” to do so. His “David” shows the young shepherd boy in the act of casting the stone with an assortment of symbols surrounding him. Perhaps the most striki...

Episode 291 – Bernini’s “Apollo and Daphne”

Posted: August 15th, 2024

In 1622, at the age of 24, Gian Lorenzo Bernini began carving his most spectacular sculpture, the “Apollo and Daphne,” for Cardinal Scipione Borghese. The marble statue magically demonstrates the transformation of the nymph Daphne into a laurel tree to escape the advances of the god Apollo....

Episode 290 – Bernini’s “Pluto and Persephone”

Posted: August 7th, 2024

Located in the Borghese Gallery in Rome, Italy, and carved when Bernini was only 23 years old, the spectacular “Pluto and Persephone” depicts the Greek myth which explains the cyclical seasons. Pluto, the god of the underworld, abducts Persephone. Eventually forced to release her, Pluto tricks P...

Episode 289 – Bernini’s “Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius”

Posted: July 31st, 2024

Carved when Bernini was only 20 years old for the powerful cardinal-nephew Scipione Borghese, the “Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius” demonstrated the extraordinary talent of the sculptor to the world. Mesmerizing special effects transform stone into stretching, malleable flesh, and textures that yo...

Episode 288 – The Life of Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Posted: July 24th, 2024

Born in Naples in 1598, the sculptor, painter and architect, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, showed signs of genius from a very early age. He produced some of history’s greatest sculptures, such as the “Apollo and Daphne” and the “Pluto and Persephone.” But he also blurred the lines between sculptur...

"We recently traveled to Florence with our twin daughters and we wanted them to experience the rich art history of Florence in a more personalized basis. We were grateful that Rocky agreed to this assignment. His Knowledge, love and enthusiasm for the arts was contagious. It was the highlight of our trip!"

Alan L. Rivera

CFO and General Counsel, Millbrook Capital Management, Inc.

"Rocky is a favorite and one of the best art historians we’ve ever used. He has led our family on occasion where are high school and college kids praised how Rocky made art "interesting" and "relevant", while his interactive style held everyone’s attention"

Michael Chesser

President and Founder Chesser Group Inc., Los Angeles CA

"I can say that Rocky Ruggiero is the best among the very best. I have yet to encounter a more precise, informative and commanding teacher or conductor through the beauty and magnificence of Florence and Italy"

Peter Weller

Actor, Director, Writer, Musician, Scholar