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Personal life

In the late 1630s, Bernini had an affair with a married woman named Costanza (wife of his workshop assistant, Matteo Bonucelli, also called Bonarelli) and sculpted a bust of her (now in the Bargello, Florence) during the height of their romance. However, at some point, Costanza began at the same time an affair also with Bernini's younger brother, Luigi, who was Bernini's right-hand man in his studio. When Bernini found out about Costanza and his brother, in a fit of mad fury, he chased Luigi through the streets of Rome and into the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, almost ending his life. To punish his unfaithful mistress, Bernini had a servant go to the house of Costanza, where the servant slashed her face several times with a razor. The servant was later jailed, while Costanza herself was jailed for adultery. Bernini himself was exonerated by the pope, even though he had committed a crime in ordering the face-slashing.

Soon after, in May 1639, at age forty-one, Bernini wed a twenty-two-year-old Roman woman, Caterina Tezio, in an arranged marriage, under orders from Pope Urban. She had eleven children, including youngest son Domenico Bernini, who would later be his father's first biographer. After his never-repeated episode of stalking and disfigurement by proxy, in his subsequent marriage Bernini turned more sincerely to the practice of his faith, according to his early official biographers. Luigi, however, once again brought scandal to his family in 1670 by raping a young Bernini workshop assistant at the construction site of the 'Constantine' memorial in St. Peter's Basilica.