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ccording to Paul Fréart de Chantelou’s detailed account of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s stay in Paris in 1665, the great artist tried on various occasions to impress the court of Louis XIV with anecdotes illustrating the precocity of his genius. Specifically, on 6 October: He said that at the age of six he sculpted a head on one of his father’s bas-reliefs, another at seven, and that Paul V was unwilling to believe it when he saw it.1
1. Chantelou [1665], ed. 2001, 228: “Il a dit qu’à six ans il fit une tête dans un bas-relief de son père, à sept ans une autre, ce que Paul V ne voulait pas croire quand il la vit”. 2. Montanari 1998a, 400. 3. Pierguidi 2008, 103–5. 4. Lavin 2004, 138–9. 5. Baldinucci 1682, 4; Bernini 1713, 9–10. 6. Manilli 1650, 4: “due Termini di marmo, rappresentanti, l’uno il Dio degli horti, e l’altro, Pomona, opere moderne di Pietro Bernini, aiutato dal Cavaliere Lorenzo suo figliuolo, all’hora giovinetto, il quale vi scolpì i frutti, et i fiori”. 7. Montelatici 1700, 8: “due Termini bellissimi di marmo, Opere moderne di Pietro Bernini, rappresentanti, uno, il Dio degl’Horti, e l’altro, una Ninfa, coronati ambedue di fiori e frutti, che tenendone ancor nelle mani, pare che tacitamente voglino farne dono a chi entra, per dargli saggio delle delizie, et amenità della Villa”. 8. Baglione 1642, 305: “diversi Termini con varie teste”. 9. Lavin 1968b, 234–5 note 80; Zeri 1980, ed. 1982, 94–7.
Later, when from around 1673 Gian Lorenzo and his elder son Pier Filippo began arranging for the publication of his biography,2 a veil of silence was thrown over these early exploits as a simple workshop assistant to his father (already fancifully backdated by seven or eight years in the Paris account).3 Neither the Life composed by Filippo Baldinucci (1682) nor that by Domenico Bernini (1713) mentions a single work resulting from the collaboration between Gian Lorenzo and Pietro, nor any by the father where the son contributed to the less important parts (such as the heads cited by Bernini junior in 1665, identified by Irving Lavin as those sculpted by Gian Lorenzo for the two versions of the Coronation of Pope Clement VIII in Santa Maria Maggiore, of 1612 and 1614).4 Like Minerva springing from the head of Jupiter, according to the two biographies of Bernini, Gian Lorenzo emerged from his father’s workshop fully armed, sculpting the portrait bust of Giovanni Battista Santoni in Santa Prassede at the age of only ten.5 Apparently only one 17th-century printed source recalls that—as we might expect—this child prodigy had begun wielding a chisel on the marbles executed by his father. In his 1650 guide to the Villa Borghese, Giacomo Manilli mentions two marble Terms, one representing the God of gardens and the other Pomona, modern works by Pietro Bernini, assisted by his son, the Cavaliere Lorenzo, then a young man, who sculpted the fruits and flowers.6 But already in the second printed guide to the villa, that by Domenico Montelatici of 1700 which depends heavily on its predecessor, we read: Two beautiful marble Terms, modern works by Pietro Bernini, one representing the God of gardens, the other a Nymph; both are crowned with flowers and fruit and hold other flowers and fruit in their hands, and seem silently eager to offer them to those who enter, so they can taste the delights and pleasures of the villa.7 Twenty years after his death, did it already appear too reductive to identify the debut of this great genius in the fruits and flowers of those two garden terms depicting Flora and Priapus (now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York; figs. 1–2), albeit much admired? It is worth noting that the usually meticulous Giovanni Baglione, who in 1642 recalled the “various Terms with different heads” sculpted by Pietro for the Villa Borghese, made no mention of Gian Lorenzo’s contribution to these or other pieces by his father.8 The reconstruction of Bernini junior’s artistic debut in the shadow of Bernini senior is therefore essentially the result of research carried out over the past fifty years. It began with a brilliant insight on the part of Federico Zeri, who identified four garden statues previously believed to be 19th-century pieces as collaborative works by father and son (cat. no. I.7).9 It is hard to come to an agreement on Gian Lorenzo’s contribution to works largely conceived and executed by his father. It is equally difficult to reconstruct their chronological order, though the time span can be circumscribed with some precision to between 1615 and 1618 23 I. THE APPRENTICESHIP WITH PIETRO
10. ‘Documenti berniniani’ 1996, 254: “Una statua di Bacco di marmo con diversi putti, che tengono diversi rampazzi di uva in mano”; “Verità col Sole in mano […] fatta dalla bo: me: del Sig.r Cav.re”; “Una mezza figura, che rappresenta il ritratto di Papa Alessandro Settimo di mano del d.o Sig.r Cav.re”; “un S. Sebastiano di mano di un allievo della bo: me: del Sig.r Cav.re”. 11. Ibid., 255: “Un disegno di Costantino a cavallo di mano della bo: me: del Sig.r Cav.re”. 12. Loffredo 2010, 89. 13. Admittedly, the Assumption was initially intended to be seen from a distance, and outdoors (Kessler 2011, 138), but when Pietro completed it he had known for some time that it would be positioned on an altar inside the church. 14. D’Onofrio 1967, 432–8; Bacchi 1999, 73. 15. See the essay by Stefano Pierguidi in this catalogue.
(with the sole potential exception of the Four Seasons): before the end of the second decade of the century, Gian Lorenzo had already freed himself completely of his father’s influence. Undoubtedly the most spectacular of the pieces by the Bernini workshop that apparently show traces of the hand of both father and son is the Faun Teased by Children now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York (c. 1615; cat. no. I.4). This is also the work that raises the biggest questions about how Gian Lorenzo wished to be viewed by posterity. Indeed, the group was still in Bernini’s house at the time of his death, on the staircase of the piano nobile, and is described in the inventory as “a marble statue of Bacchus with various putti holding bunches of grapes in their hands”. The same inventory (27 January 1681) mentions, in the studio, a “Truth with the Sun in her hand […] made by the late Signor Cavaliere”, “a half figure portraying Pope Alexander VII by the hand of the late Signor Cavaliere” and also “a Saint Sebastian by the hand of a pupil of the late Signor Cavaliere”;10 “a drawing of Constantine on horseback by the hand of the late Signor Cavaliere” is described as being in another room.11 The inventory also lists numerous terracotta busts that must have been, at least in part, the work of Gian Lorenzo, although this is not explicitly stated. However, had Bernini junior been generally recognized as the artist responsible for this astonishing marble group the failure to name him would be extremely odd: had all memory of the great artist’s early beginnings already been lost by 1681, even in the house in Via della Mercede? It is more likely that Gian Lorenzo merely added the finishing touches to this exceptional piece, suggesting to his father how to masterfully differentiate the surface of the nudes from that of the tree trunk, the panther at the bottom and the plant elements. Admittedly, in the Charles Martel of Anjou in Naples Cathedral (1598–1602) Pietro had already employed the tooth chisel in such a way as to leave visible marks,12 and he used this technique again in the Assumption in Santa Maria Maggiore.13 However, Gian Lorenzo alone was responsible for developing this solution into an entirely new experimental form, in the later Saint Longinus in Saint Peter’s (1628–38), and it seems natural to attribute this kind of work on the tree trunk of the New York group to him. It was certainly a fundamental intervention, but not so significant as to allow Gian Lorenzo to claim the masterpiece as his own; it is rightly omitted from the list of his works that he himself helped to draw up many years later with a view to publishing his biography.14 Thus Bernini was not trying to remove from his curriculum a piece that was basically his, as he appears to have done with his youthful putti,15 but simply did not claim as his own a work executed principally by his father. He must certainly have suggested some compositional solutions to make the group a sort of advertisement for the technical skills on offer at the Santa Maria Maggiore workshop. As concerns the conceptual and 24 Andrea Bacchi
Figs. 1–2 Pietro and Gian Lorenzo Bernini Flora and Priapus New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
I.5. Gian Lorenzo Bernini Saint Sebastian 1616–17 marble; 98.8 × 42 × 49 cm Madrid, private collection, on loan to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Provenance Rome, Barberini collection, 1617; Lugano (then Madrid), ThyssenBornemisza Collection, 1935. Exhibitions Rome 1998, no. 5. Bibliography Baldinucci 1682, 104; Fraschetti 1900, 139; Muñoz 1916b, 154–5; Faldi 1953a, 145; Wittkower 1955, 176, no. 4; Wittkower 1966, 174, no. 4; Lavin 1968b, 233–4; Aronberg Lavin 1975, 79, no. 115, 134, no. 109; A.F. Radcliffe, in Radcliffe, Baker, MaekGérard 1992, 132–7, no. 18; P. Cavazzini, in Effigies & Ecstasies 1998, 206 note 6, at no. 40 [sic, but 41]; S. Schütze, in Bernini scultore 1998, 78–95, no. 5; Schütze 2007, 209–24; Montanari 2012a, 7; Cacciaglia 2014, 46.
ternal circumstances. Already in 1968, Irving Lavin hypothesized that the block of marble used for the Saint Sebastian was the same that Nicolas Cordier had begun to sculpt as a Saint John the Baptist for the Barberini Chapel in Sant’Andrea della Valle; when Cordier died in 1612, Pietro Bernini received it as an advance for the Saint John the Baptist that he carved afresh for the same chapel. This was in fact a much larger block than the Saint Sebastian now in Madrid, which seems to have been almost complete. However, in order to execute a completely different figure (though still seated, like those in the four niches of the main space of the chapel), it had to be completely reworked, reducing its size (A.F. Radcliffe, in Radcliffe, Baker, Maek-Gérard 1992, 136–7). Lavin thought it possible that Gian Lorenzo’s statue was conceived for the altar in the small room dedicated to Saint Sebastian to the left of the chapel, that is, the place housing Domenico Passignano’s altarpiece depicting the retrieval of the saint’s body from the sewer in which it had been dumped, for which the painter received 100 scudi in October 1617 (Lavin 1968b, 234 note 74). When Maffeo took possession of the Saint Sebastian, Passignano’s altarpiece was already planned, and Pietro and Gian Lorenzo may have intended to place the statue, portraying a different part of the long story of the saint’s martyrdom, in the niche in the left-hand wall of the small chapel dedicated to him. Long afterwards, the same niche housed the funerary statue of Carlo Barberini (who died in 1630) sculpted by Giuseppe Giorgetti in 1675–77; opposite it the funerary statue of Monsignor Francesco Barberini executed by Cristoforo Stati in 1612–13 was already in place. However, in around 1616–17 the Berninis may have suggested to Maffeo that he place a statue there depicting Saint Sebastian shot by arrows. For around ten years, then, this Saint Sebastian may in fact have been in the chapel of Sant’Andrea della Valle; it is certain that on 28 June 1628 the marble was sent by Carlo Barberini to the Palazzo alle Quattro Fontane, where it entered the collection of his son Francesco (Aronberg Lavin 1975, 79, no. 115). Andrea Bacchi
The Saint Sebastian now in Madrid has been described as the earliest fully Baroque sculpture (Montanari 2012a); it is certainly Gian Lorenzo’s first completely autonomous work, in which no significant connection with Pietro’s style is apparent. In the list of Gian Lorenzo’s works drawn up under the artist’s direct supervision and later published by Baldinucci, the Saint Sebastian comes after the sculptural groups still in the villa on the Pincian Hill. Clearly, it was still associated in the Bernini household with the artist’s ‘Barberini period’, following the Borghese and Strozzi phase. Initially attributed to Pietro (Fraschetti 1900), despite Baldinucci’s clear indication to the contrary, in the first half of the 20th century the work was rightly restored to Gian Lorenzo with a date of around 1625, at the beginning of the pontificate of Urban VIII (Muñoz 1916b). This late chronology was questioned by Italo Faldi and Rudolf Wittkower, who favored a date of around 1617–18, a view confirmed in 1998 by the publication of a document dated 29 December 1617, a payment by Maffeo Barberini of 50 scudi to Pietro ‘as the price of a white marble statue of Saint Sebastian’ (“scudi cinquanta moneta buoni al sudetto pagati al Medesimo [Pietro Bernini] per prezzo di una Statua di Marmo bianco di un San Bastiano”; P. Cavazzini, in Effigies & Ecstasies 1998).The account books in the Barberini Archives record the same payment to Pietro ‘for the price of a marble statue of Saint Sebastian that he sold to me on 29 December 1617’ (“a mess. Pietro Bernini scultore sc. 50 moneta sono per prezzo di una statua di marmo di un San Sebastiano che mi ha venduto questo dì 29 dicembre 1617”; Cacciaglia 2014, 46, b. 21, fol. 424). It is evident, then, that it was not really a commission but an acquisition; similarly, it is possible that the Boy with a Dragon (cat. no. II.2) was not originally ordered by Maffeo. Having established that the 1617 payment only provides a terminus ante quem for the Saint Sebastian, it is worth confirming that the work dates to the second half of that year on the basis of stylistic features and other ex42
I. THE APPRENTICESHIP WITH PIETRO
I.6. Gian Lorenzo Bernini Blessed Soul and Damned Soul c. 1619 marble; H. 38 cm Rome, Spanish Embassy to the Holy See, Palazzo di Spagna
Provenance Fernando Botinete y Acevedo (1565–1632), Rome, c. 1619; Rome, San Giacomo degli Spagnoli, sacristy, between 1637 and 1653; Rome, Santa Maria in Monserrato, sacristy, 1820; Rome, Spanish Embassy to the Holy See, 1892; Rome, Spanish Seminary of Santa Maria in Monserrato, 1910; Rome, Spanish Embassy to the Holy See, 1943. Exhibitions Rome 1998, nos. 13–4; Rome 1999, nos. 32a–b; Madrid 2014–15, nos. 1–2. Bibliography Baldinucci 1682, 105; Wittkower 1955, 177, 179, no. 7; Wittkower 1966, 177, no. 7; D’Onofrio 1967, 104, 436, nos. 69–70; Fernández Alonso 1979–80, 667–74; S. Schütze, in Bernini scultore 1998, 148–69, nos. 13–4; Lavin 1993, It. trans. 1994, 193–231; Bacchi 1999, 74; Montanari 2009c, 84–8; García Cueto 2011; D. Rodríguez Ruiz, in Bernini, Roma 2014, 76–81, nos. 1–2; García Cueto 2015.
The two heads “d’anima beata” and “d’anima dannata” appear in the list of autograph works compiled under the careful direction of Gian Lorenzo himself between the end of 1675 and the beginning of 1676 (D’Onofrio 1967), where they are said to be located in the sacristy of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli. Although in the list of marble statues the two heads are recorded after much later works, the great artist clearly remembered them as youthful masterpieces, and may have personally annotated the entry with the words ‘aged twelve’ (“D’anni 12”). Bernini, as is well known, systematically backdated his earliest sculptures, and he seems to associate the Blessed Soul and the Damned Soul with the period in which he produced Aeneas and Anchises and the bust of Cardinal Bellarmine (also apparently sculpted ‘aged twelve’), datable respectively to 1618–19 and 1623–24. The cardinal’s bust was part of a monument on which his father Pietro also worked, and this is perhaps the reason why Gian Lorenzo gave it such an early (and inaccurate) date. According to Lavin, a terminus ante quem for the two heads is provided by the will of Monsignor Pedro de Foix Montoya, drawn up in December 1619, which cites ‘two half bodies of statuary stone’ (“dos medios cuerpos de piedra de estatuas”). Although inventories of this nature are not necessarily known for their attention to detail, the distance between the two marble heads and the half figures in stone seems significant (Fernández Alonso 1979–80, 668). Around 1621–22, Montoya did commission Bernini to produce a portrait bust for his funerary monument to be erected in San Giacomo degli Spagnoli, the church of the Spanish nation (Orazio Torriani was entrusted with the architectural project in the spring of 1623, assisted by the stonemason Santi Ghetti). However, an early record of the Blessed Soul and the Damned Soul is found an inventory drawn up in 1637 (and later updated, perhaps in 1653), which lists the items in the church sacristy: ‘two heads, one representing a soul in glory and the other a soul in suffering’ (“dos testas que representan una el ánima en
gloria y la otra ánima en pena”). Montoya is not mentioned as the patron; instead, the document indicates that the two heads—correctly attributed to Bernini (Fernández Alonso 1979–80, 671)—were given to the Arciconfraternita della Santissima Resurrezione based in San Giacomo by Fernando Botinete y Acevedo (1565–1632). Usually regarded as an intermediary between Montoya and the confraternity (still by Schütze, in Bernini scultore 1998 and Rodríguez Ruiz, in Bernini, Roma 2014), Botinete must actually be considered the first owner of the two works, and may have commissioned them (Fernández Alonso 1979–80, 671; García Cueto 2015, 39–40). David García Cueto (ibid., 42, 52 note 24) has recently published an even older mention of the two heads found in the inventory of Botinete’s assets,
44 I. THE APPRENTICESHIP WITH PIETRO
drawn up in 1632: ‘two marble statues, that is, two white heads with their pedestal in another color, which are a nymph and a satyr’ (“dos estatuas de marmol digo dos caveças blancas con su pedestal de marmol de otro color que son una ninfa y un satiro”). This important discovery raises a question—were the two heads originally sculpted by Bernini as a satyr and a nymph, or as depictions of a soul in Hell and another in Heaven? According to García Cueto (ibid., 45–6), the originally secular iconography of Bernini’s creation was reinterpreted a posteriori when the heads were displayed in the religious context of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli: this would support Tomaso Montanari’s recent theory of a ‘censorship’ that extended to the works produced by Gian Lorenzo during the years of the Bar-
berini papacy (2016, especially 3–47). In fact, Lavin’s reconstruction of the iconographic tradition of the Quattuor novissima (1993), to which Gian Lorenzo’s sculptures seem to relate, still appears totally convincing. There is too strong a link between the two sculptures and other depictions of blessed and damned souls, at least one of which—the engravings of Alexander Mair, dating to 1605—precedes Gian Lorenzo’s debut as an artist. And it is important to stress that Bernini himself, at the end of his career, endorsed an interpretation of the heads as a Blessed Soul and a Damned Soul. Although the terminus ante quem provided by the Montoya inventory has been seriously cast into doubt, the dating of these heads to around 1619 remains the most convincing, by virtue of the fact that Gian Lorenzo himself considered them to be from the very start of his career, and based on stylistic comparison between—for instance—the Blessed Soul and the more sensual and expressive face of Proserpina in the second Borghese group. Tackling an iconographic theme whose roots lay in the late Middle Ages, Bernini exploited the opportunity to conduct an extremely modern physiognomic study, which has always been associated with the work of Caravaggio (consider, above all, the Uffizi Medusa). Andrea Bacchi
45 I. THE APPRENTICESHIP WITH PIETRO
IV.3. Gian Lorenzo Bernini Bust of Pope Gregory XV 1621–22 marble; 78 (with socle) × 66 cm Paris, Musée Jacquemart-André, MJAP-S 861
Provenance Rome,Villa Borghese, Stanza del Moro (in 1762); Rome, Borghese Collection; Florence, Stefano Bardini; Bardini sale (London, Christie’s, 5 June 1899, lot 479), purchased by Colnaghi & Co., London, for 650 pounds sterling; purchased from Colnaghi by Nélie Jacquemart-André, Paris. Exhibitions Milan 2002–03, no. 19; Los Angeles–Ottawa 2008–09, no. 1.4. Bibliography Catalogue 1899, I, 69, lot 479, II, pls. 21 (no. 370), 71 (no. 1145); Krohn 1916, 60–1; Muñoz 1917a, 51; Faldi 1953b, 312, 315, docs. XII–XIII, XV–XVI; Martinelli 1955b, 654–5; Wittkower 1955, 181, no. 12.3; Martinelli 1956a, 18; Wittkower 1966, 180, no. 12.2; La MoureyreGavoty 1975, no. 194; Bacchi 1996, 778; Dombrowski 1997, 292, at no. B.7; Minozzi 1998a, 435–6, docs. 50–3; Ferrari, Papaldo 1999, 488; S. Schütze, in Gian Lorenzo Bernini 1999, 326, at no. 41; Zitzlsperger 2002, 164, no. 4; T. Montanari, in Due collezionisti 2002, 116–9, no. 19; F. Petrucci, in Papi in posa 2004, 76; F. Petrucci, in Papi in posa 2005, 102, at no. XXV; C. Hess, in Bernini 2008, 97–9, no. 1.4; Bassett 2011, 129–31; D’Apuzzo 2017, 333, 337.
In 1955 Valentino Martinelli was the first to identify the bronze bust of Gregory XV in the Musée Jacquemart-André as the one that Sebastiano Sebastiani executed for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, along with the portrait of Paul V now in Copenhagen (cat. no. IV.4). Both works are documented by payments made to the founder ‘upon Bernini’s order’ (“con ordine del Cavalier Bernini scultore”) between 25 September 1621 and 3 September 1622 (Faldi 1953b, 315, docs. XII–XVI; see also Minozzi 1998a: the payment specifically mentioning the bust of Gregory XV is dated 20 November 1621). Rightly judging the bust preserved in Paris to be “of the finest quality”, “a genuine work, a masterpiece by Bernini”, Martinelli corrected the assertions of Muñoz (1917a) and Faldi (1953b, 312), who had instead suggested as a candidate the Gregory XV in bronze from the Stroganoff collection (now in the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh; fig. 22). The provenance of the Paris bust from the Borghese residence is confirmed by the catalogue for the 1899 auction organized in London by Christie’s on behalf of the Florentine antiquarian Stefano Bardini. In addition to its quality, we must also note that the base is decorated in precisely the same way as that of the Copenhagen Paul V, with the pontifical coat of arms on a square background with a punch-textured surface, an element that is instead missing on the other known versions in bronze (as already noted by Martinelli 1955b, 658 note 30; again, see cat. no. IV.2). The bust of Gregory XV cast in bronze by Sebastiano Sebastiani is based on the marble portrait that was commissioned from Bernini by Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi shortly after his uncle was elected pope in early February 1621 and was completed before June, when the sculptor was knighted in the Order of Christ. Unfortunately lost, this work is known through a later version, requested by the cardinal in 1627 and now at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto (fig. 18). Scipione Borghese’s commission of a bronze bust of the reigning pope, and moreover one that
was derived from his first official portrait, illustrated the cardinal’s desire to show his deference to the power of the new pontiff elected after his uncle’s death. The Paul V and Gregory XV made together by Sebastiani and with similar bases were perhaps intended to form a pair in the Villa or Palazzo Borghese as a symbol of continuity between the two pontificates. Unfortunately, this display is not confirmed by any known inventories or other sources. Traces can be found only of the Gregory XV, described in 1762 in the Stanza del Moro at the Villa Borghese:‘A bronze bust with his head and a socle representing Pope Gregory XV on a carved and gilt wooden stool with the arms of Cardinal Ludovisi’ (“Un busto con sua testa e pieduccio di bronzo rappresentante Papa Gregorio XV sopra uno sgabellone di legno intagliato e dorato con arme del cardinal Ludovisi”; Minozzi 1998b, 445). The Gregory XV at the Musée Jacquemart-André and the Paul V in Copenhagen (cat. no. IV.4) are the first known bronze busts made after a model by Bernini and they demonstrate how magnificently his portraiture—already of exceptional caliber, for an artist who was barely twenty—could be transcribed and circulated in this material. However, a slight difference in quality can be noted between the two bronzes, particularly in certain details such as the heads of the apostles on the cope, more refined for Paul V thanks to better modeling of the wax, and the punch-textured surface behind these figures, compared to somewhat imprecise treatment for Gregory XV because it was not cold-worked after casting; this could be why Sebastiani was paid more for the portrait of the Borghese pope than for the other work (Bassett 2011). The bust preserved in Paris is exceptionally important, as it is the only portrait of Gregory XV that is accurately documented among extant ones: it offers a unique starting point to study the other bronze versions and to try to identify the second bust of the pontiff that Sebastiano Sebastiani executed, probably after Bernini’s same model, for Giuseppe Acquaviva (see cat. no. IV.2). Anne-Lise Desmas
112 IV. THE BIRTH OF A PORTRAIT SCULPTOR
IV.6. Gian Lorenzo Bernini and workshop Bust of Pope Urban VIII 1623 Carrara marble; 82 × 65 × 27 cm (socle in giallo di Siena marble, H. 16.5 cm) Rome, San Lorenzo in Fonte
Provenance Rome, Quirinal Palace, until 1626–27; transferred, possibly in 1628, to San Lorenzo in Fonte. Exhibitions Rome 1999, no. 43. Bibliography Fraschetti 1900, 149; Muñoz 1911, 192 note 1; Muñoz 1917b, 187–8; Martinelli 1955a, 34–5, 38–9; Wittkower 1955, 184, no. 19.1a; Nava Cellini 1960, 12; Wittkower 1966, 184–5, no. 19.1a; Bacchi 1996, 779; Dombrowski 1997, 23, 296–7, no. B.11; Ferrari, Papaldo 1999, 183; S. Schütze, in Gian Lorenzo Bernini 1999, 327–8, no. 43; Tiberia 2000, 24; Zitzlsperger 2002, 165, no. 5; Bacchi, Desmas 2008, 293, no. D1; T. Montanari, in I marmi vivi 2009, 226–8, at no. 5; Curzietti 2012, 163–4; Montanari 2016, 26–7.
This portrait of Urban VIII—born Maffeo Barberini—is an exception in the corpus of Bernini’s marble busts of this pope, given that it is the only one portraying him with his head bare and wearing a cope, whereas all the other ones show him with the camauro and the mozzetta, sometimes adorned with a stole. Only one other bust, but in this case in bronze and with the tiara on his head, depicts the pope wearing the cope: the one executed for Spoleto Cathedral, for which Gian Lorenzo and the founder Ambrogio Lucenti were paid between 1640 and 1644 (V. Casale, in Gian Lorenzo Bernini 1999, 329–31, no. 45). Discovered in the small church of San Lorenzo in Fonte by Fraschetti (1900), who considered it to be a work by Bernini and judged the head to be “very fine”, the bust was instead considered by Muñoz to be an “evident replica made after Bernini’s original by one of his assistants” (1917b, 187).Valentino Martinelli (1955a) was the first to recognize it correctly (especially thanks to the yellow marble socle and the pedestal decorated with the Barberini bees, still preserved; fig. 23) as the one described in an inventory of Cardinal Francesco Barberini dated 1626–27—‘at Monte Cavallo […] A head of His Holiness Pope Urban, that is, a head and bust with its yellow marble socle over a walnut-colored stool with touches of gold and the coat of arms’ (“a Monte Cavallo […] Una testa della Santità di N.S. Papa Urbano cioè testa e busto con suo piede di marmo giallo sopra un scabellone tinto di noce toccato d’oro con arme”)—and that Fraschetti had cited but without identifying it as the one from San Lorenzo in Fonte (1900, 146 note 1; see also Aronberg Lavin 1975, 76–7, no. 56). Martinelli, who considered it by Bernini, thus suggested very compellingly that, at the pope’s behest, the bust and its pedestal had been transferred from the Quirinal Palace to the church of San Lorenzo in Fonte, restored thanks to his generosity (the religious congregation there even adopted the name of Urbana in 1628). The attribution of this marble portrait to Gian Lorenzo has been interpreted in various
ways in Bernini studies, perhaps because the depiction—unusual for Urban VIII and thus without any close terms of comparison—gives the pope a singular expression, with his eyes widened, an aspect accentuated by the grime on the work, which darkens and overly emphasizes the wrinkles on his forehead and around the eyes. Some scholars, such as Wittkower and Dombrowski, think Finelli collaborated in its execution. Vitaliano Tiberia considers the bust to be contemporaneous with Saint Bibiana (1624–26), given that the type of surface treatment on the portrait, which included an amber patina detected after it was restored in 1999, shows many parallels with what he was able to observe on the statue. Jacopo Curzietti (2012) very cautiously proposed setting the bust in relation to a document he found attesting to a payment to Bernini on 30 September 1625 from Carlo Barberini, the pontiff ’s brother, for ‘two marble heads made with the features of Our Lord [the Pope]’ (“due teste di marmo fatte con l’impronta di Nostro Signore”); but, such a late date does not seem compatible with the style of the work. Recently Tomaso Montanari (2009c and 2016) carefully reexamined this bust, studying it in parallel with the one of Cardinal François d’Escoubleau de Sourdis (Bordeaux, Musée d’Aquitaine), who stayed in Rome between the spring of 1621 and that of 1622, and suggested that the portrait, which he feels is wholly by the artist, may represent Maffeo Barberini when he was still a cardinal, and thus before he was elected pope on 6 August 1623. Although the cope, a cloak used during pontifical Masses and solemn ceremonies, can be worn by the entire clergy and not just the pope, the cases of Cardinal de Sourdis and Cardinal Barberini were quite different. Montanari finds it hard to imagine that, for one of the first official portraits of the pope, Bernini would have taken up decorative elements already used for a French prelate a few years earlier: consequently, he thinks that the bust of San Lorenzo in Fonte is earlier than or contemporaneous with that of Sourdis (made before he returned to France in the spring of 1622 or a
122 IV. THE BIRTH OF A PORTRAIT SCULPTOR
VI.10. Gian Lorenzo Bernini Portrait of Pope Urban VIII c. 1632 oil on canvas; 67.4 × 50 cm Private collection
Provenance Barberini collection, Rome. Exhibitions Rome 2000, no. 28. Bibliography Grassi 1945, 33, no. 8; Grassi 1962, 198; Sutherland Harris 1977a, 59–60; L. Mochi Onori, in Gian Lorenzo Bernini 1999, 431, at no. 209; Mochi Onori, in I segreti di un collezionista 2000, 46–7, no. 28; Fagiolo dell’Arco 2001b, 227, 230; Petrucci 2003a, 143–44; Petrucci 2006, 108.
When, in 1950, Valentino Martinelli attributed to Bernini the Portrait of Urban VIII acquired by the state from Luigi Leggeri and now on display in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, he also implicitly released from the conditioning burden of an attribution to Andrea Sacchi the group of at least three other similar and inextricably connected works, two of which were at the time still held by members of the Barberini family. It was Hans Posse who, in 1925, attributed the painting on display here to Sacchi, dismissing earlier doubts expressed by Incisa della Rocchetta (1924, 64): it was the age of the first modern descriptions of the Roman artist’s style and of the verification of traditional attributions that had become consolidated on the basis of inventory documents. But not only was there no solid critical edition of these (the complete publication and knowledge of the 17th-century Barberini inventories would only become available in 1975, with the Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art of Marilyn Aronberg Lavin), but the information they contained was liable to lead to misunderstandings in terms of naming, which could only be cleared up by examining stylistic traits. Martinelli was the first person to link the former Leggeri painting, and the similar versions belonging to the Barberini family, with Mellan’s etching of the likeness of the author for the 1631 edition of Urban VIII’s Poemata, where Bernini’s creative responsibility was explicitly declared. In so doing he demonstrated the paternity of the paintings similar to it, and the idea of associating the inventory references to portraits of the pope ascribed to Sacchi was conclusively dropped. At that point, even if there continued to be differences of opinion regarding attribution, it was not in any case possible to look outside Bernini’s immediate circle.This was the kind of differentiation made by Martinelli: he judged one of the paintings belonging to the Barberini family, published by Posse, namely the one “on display at the Galleria Barberini” (a different work from the former Leggeri piece now in the Galleria d’Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini) first to be a late copy (1950, 99, no. 1) before subsequent-
ly (1956, 30) attributing it to Bernini’s assistant Carlo Pellegrini. The idea that this painting might be by Bernini was raised by Grassi, who, accepting the reference deriving from Mellan’s etching, acknowledged (1962) that the possibility that these three portraits of Urban VIII “might be by Bernini cannot be excluded”. In 1977, Sutherland Harris, who also, on the basis of photographs, included the one lost in the aerial bombing of the Palazzo Colonna di Marino, considered all four to be by Bernini. She arrived at this conclusion while establishing the catalogue of Sacchi’s works, from which they were therefore definitively expunged. In 1999 and 2000, Mochi Onori, having studied the painting on display here when it was restored prior to the exhibition on the collecting of Cassiano dal Pozzo, firmly attributed it to Bernini, dating it to around 1625–30, earlier than the etching; she admired its extraordinary quality, and the density and quickness of touch, both in the treatment of the drapery and of the face. Petrucci initially confirmed that it was by Bernini (2003a), recognizing its high quality and detecting stylistic affinities in the application and use of color with other paintings from the early 1630s. Subsequently, however (2006), he judged it to be a fine product of Bernini’s school, a faithful transposition onto canvas of a sculpture by Bernini—the first version of the marble bust of 1632, in Ottawa—rather than the replica of a painting. Montanari (2007) followed his lead, judging the work to be by a pupil, perhaps Carlo Pellegrini. I would tend to rule out that the variations in the posture of the pope with respect to Mellan’s etching or to the former Leggeri canvas can be traced back to a free modification on the part of a studio assistant. It is too intrinsic to a sequence of observations of the model or inventive touches regarding his position pertaining to a single original inspiration. It does not therefore seem to me possible to trace it back to anyone but Bernini—without the necessity for the pope to be present and to pose—given his hyperbolic mnemonic powers and the possibility that the different canvases developed drawings rapidly sketched from real life. Nor does the work in question have the traits of a copy. Cleaning of the canvas in 1999, which confirmed a level of quality already appreciated in the past (the work has been known to me since the end of the 1980s), revealed a rapid and very confidently executed work, even though the paint is not laid on with the same degree of quality as the former Leggeri canvas. The application also carries traces of the typical features of the autograph paintings of those years,
220 VI. THE PAINTINGS
complexity and the coexistence of different affective expressions in the blurred luminosity of the instant, while the canvas now at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica has a more complete definition of volumes, such as to establish with greater perfection the poetic aim of a rendered monumentalization of a transitory aspect such as the expressive instantaneousness of the figure. In 1956, Martinelli had grasped the iconic and stylistic revolution achieved by Bernini with his portraits of Urban VIII from the beginning of the 1630s, both sculptural and pictorial, pointing to their individual psychological personification of power as the most original figurative version offered up by the artist to Barberini’s absolutism, achieving an even higher level in his painting than in marble. Luigi Ficacci
including the supplementing of brushstrokes with the heavy use of fingers to obtain subtle blending effects of the paint, moving towards an application that goes beyond the distinction between linear profiling and a measured application of color in the interior masses. The evident fingertip marks in the paint, which, far from being concealed, are made explicit as in a clay bozzetto, displays a degree of intentionality discernible, for instance, in the so-called biblical Elder (Montanari 2007), or in other paintings that can be associated with the same tonal inspiration and with the same few years at the beginning of the 1630s. A greater initial conciseness of execution has always suggested to me that it was painted even before the former Leggeri work, like an abbreviated version designed to capture the psychological 221
VI. THE PAINTINGS
T
1. D’Onofrio 1977, 202. 2. Gobbi, Jatta 2015, 194. 3. Negri Arnoldi 1980, 174–6.
he seemingly endless bibliography on Gian Lorenzo Bernini has recently been further expanded by a series of major exhibitions and publications. Sculpting in Clay, on view between 2012 and 2013, was a painstaking, in-depth and chiefly technical survey of Bernini’s clay preparatory models for his marble sculptures and was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, with a catalogue edited by C.D. Dickerson III, Anthony Sigel and Ian Wardropper. Also in 2012, an international conference, Material Bernini, was held in Toronto, the proceedings for which were published in 2016, edited by Evonne Levy and Carolina Mangone. The volume Disegni di Bernini e della sua scuola, on the drawings preserved at the Vatican Library, was published in 2015 and edited by Manuela Gobbi and Barbara Jatta. The exhibition Il laboratorio del Genio. Bernini disegnatore, held at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome and curated by Giovanni Morello, Sebastian Schütze and Jeannette Stoschek, also dates to 2015 and presented around 120 drawings that are preserved in Leipzig—they were acquired in 1713, a couple of decades after the artist’s death (1680), partly coming from the collection of Christina of Sweden. The exhibition took place more than eighty years after the publication of Heinrich Brauer and Rudolf Wittkower’s catalogue of drawings (1931) and more than thirty years after the exhibition curated by Irving Lavin for Princeton and other American locations (1981). And then there is the recent research on individual little-known or completely unknown works, including Andrea Bacchi’s work on the Matilda of Tuscany, a small bronze formerly in the Barberini collection (2013), and Tomaso Montanari’s attribution to Bernini of the bronze Christ now in the collection of the National Gallery of Ontario in Toronto (2009a; 2016). All of these initiatives were focused on the technical development of Bernini, a multifaceted artist who worked in every conceivable area: from large-scale structures—the Baldachin and Throne in Saint Peter’s, the colonnade for the Basilica square, the tombs of the Barberini and Chigi popes, the decoration of the Ponte Sant’Angelo, fountains and chapels—to small projects, like the design of papal medals and liturgical vestments for the priests who served in the Basilica, luxurious works like the mirror with the winged figure of Time for Christina of Sweden, religious vessels, furnishings, carriages and stage sets.Works that were made over the course of more than sixty years in a workshop active under eight papacies and that required superlative design and organizational skills due to their sheer number and diversity. In the preparatory phases of exploring and defining his works Bernini produced a vast quantity of drawings, studies and, in the case of architecture, wooden models; presentation drawings and models, like the one for the Four Rivers Fountain, perhaps made in silver;1 dies for casting, papier-mâché molds, reduced-scale models and even full-size models, the latter used to test the effect of proposed designs in situ: two models with papier-mâché figures to assess the visual impact of the Baldachin in the center of the crossing (1627–28 and 1631),2 as well as the angels for the Cathedra Petri (1659–60, 1661–63; Vatican Museums, Pinacoteca). And then there was his use of stucco, a highly malleable material like clay and wax and a true technical specialization, with various mixtures and framing, for the bold decoration of cupolas and naves (Santa Maria del Popolo, 1655–61; Sant’Andrea al Quirinale, 1662–65). This was a clear reversal of the position held a century earlier by Michelangelo’s followers: the art of sculpture was not that of ‘taking away’ (“per forza di levare”) but rather that of ‘putting on’ (“per via di porre”). And the use of the clay study or model became widespread, being later recognized—over time, gilded or burnished—as a work of art in itself.3 These exploratory phases, which were focused on developing solutions, were followed by the hard work of marble—from the selection of the blocks to the roughing out and the finishing—which Bernini never fully gave up, not even in his final years. The 249 VIII. THE SCULPTOR’S TRADE
Fig. 46 Pietro Bernini Coronation of Clement VIII Aldobrandini Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore, Pauline Chapel
close connection between his sculpture and painting led the artist, from his earliest works, to render the marble so malleable that it created a level of illusion until then possible only on canvas, examples including the flames of the Saint Lawrence (1617), Proserpina’s tears (1621–22) and Daphne’s hair (1622–25). Then there is the encounter between decoration and architecture, with the need to find new technical solutions, namely for the casting of the twisted columns for the Baldachin (1629; fig. 51) or the hidden lighting of the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (1647–51; fig. 48); or, again, the need to deal with a structural problem, like the presence of the window in the apse of Saint Peter’s, which he resolved to his own advantage, rendering the planning even more demanding and involving a vast group of collaborators, orchestrated by Bernini himself. The young Bernini learned how to use drills, chisels, mallets and gravers while working with his father, picking up the tricks of the ‘trade’. His technical training began in the Pauline Chapel at Santa Maria Maggiore, where his father Pietro, who had moved with his large family from Naples to Rome in 1605 or 1606, was working on the monumen250 Maria Giulia Barberini
IX.8. Gian Lorenzo Bernini Salvator Mundi c. 1663 red chalk, black chalk and gouache on detached plaster; 87 × 82 cm Rome, Private collection
Provenance Formello, Palazzo Chigi; Prince Agostino Chigi, until the late 1990s; Rome, Galleria Alberto Di Castro; private collection, 2002. Bibliography Tomassetti 1913, ed. 1976, 141; Golzio 1939, 153; Martinelli 1950, 182, fig. 193; Fagiolo dell’Arco, Fagiolo 1967, no. 195; Lavin 1981, 51 note 24; Sutherland Harris 1982, 393; V. Martinelli, in L’Ariccia del Bernini 1998, 121; Bernardini 2001, 148; Fagiolo dell’Arco 2002, 131–3, pl. g figs. 133, 135; Petrucci 2003a, 139–40, fig. 10; Petrucci 2005, 199, fig. 184; Petrucci 2006, 90–2, fig. 83, 361, no. 43; Petrucci 2009b, 34–5, pl. 18.
This work from the Palazzo Chigi in Formello, executed in red and black chalk on plaster, has technical and stylistic affinities with the Saint Joseph and Christ Child of the Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia. Since its rediscovery in 1939 by Vincenzo Golzio, critics have judged it to have formal properties compatible with Bernini’s idiom. The traditional attribution to the artist had actually been recorded even earlier by Giuseppe Tomassetti, though he misinterpreted the subject due to the work’s dismal state of repair and poor legibility: “On the second floor […], in the wall of a room by the kitchen, is a fresco of a woman’s head with a turban, emerging from some cracks in the plaster and believed to be by Bernini”. Detached from the wall by Sigismondo Chigi prior to the sale of the palace to the Rome-based company Sicom in 1975, it was later acquired from his son, Agostino Chigi, by the Alberto Di Castro gallery at the end of the 1990s, before entering the current private collection in 2002. The building, now occupied by the Museo dell’Agro Veientano, was bought by the local council of Formello in 1982. Major restoration work has been carried out over the last twenty years, also on the series of wall decorations dating to the Chigi period. Recently, thanks to local accounts, it has been possible to ascertain that the work was originally on a wall in a second-floor room of the tower (Petrucci 2009b, 35, pl. 21:2*). The piece can be defined as a ‘mixed-media’ work, because the red-chalk drawing is overlaid with lines in black chalk, gouache brushstrokes and sfumato worked directly with the fingers. In his landmark study of Cardinal Flavio Chigi’s patronage, Golzio specifies that “on a wall in a room is a drawing of a male head executed with a confident hand and expansive lines, certainly the work of a painter familiar with Berninian models”. The piece was attributed to Bernini by Valentino Martinelli, and confirmed by Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco and Marcello Fagiolo, Irving
Lavin, Ann Sutherland Harris and the present writer. On the other hand, the attribution is not accepted by Maria Grazia Bernardini. However, all trace of it had been lost, to the extent that Martinelli, in 1998, remembered “the compelling portrait of a male head in Formello (Palazzo Chigi) traced in red and black chalk on a wall, which I published in the far-off 1950 […], but which I fear (hoping to be wrong) has unfortunately been destroyed since the second world war”. The piece was drawn to scholarly attention by Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco in 2002, when it reappeared in the current private collection, framed and with the plaster attached onto a rigid support. At my suggestion, Fagiolo dell’Arco proposed that it depicts a figure of Christ. The attribution and identification of the subject are borne out by the drawing in the Devonshire Collection in Chatsworth, reported as an autograph work of Bernini by Rudolf Wittkower, who related it to the then-lost bust of the Savior. The attribution of the drawing was confirmed by Marc Worsdale and myself, while Michael Jaffé proposed the name of Pietro Dandini (Wittkower 1955, 265; Worsdale 1983, 62, fig. 4; Jaffé 1994, I, 51, no. 17; Petrucci 2003a, 139, fig. 11; Petrucci 2005, 199, fig. 183; Petrucci 2006, 90, 92, fig. 82). The drawing, which is a mirror image of the red-chalk work (as are some of Bernini’s drawings in relation to the Saint Joseph of Ariccia), actually has little to do with the rediscovered bust of the Savior (Rome, San Sebastiano fuori le Mura; cat. no. IX.10), since it is datable to the early 1660s. It might correspond to the ink work formerly in the collection of Cardinal Flavio Chigi, described in the 1692 inventory as ‘the head of the Holy Savior, by the hand of the Cavaliere Bernini’ (“la testa del Ss.mo Salvatore, mano del S.o Cav.re Bernino”; Petrucci 2005, 199, 482, no. 292). It is plausible, as Fagiolo dell’Arco held, that the wall decoration can be dated to 1663, when restoration work was carried out at the Palazzo Chigi of Formello, and at the same time
326 IX. THE BUSTS: FROM MATURITY TO THE FAREWELL TO SCULPTURE
as the sister work of Ariccia, suggesting that Bernini may also have been involved in some way, at least in terms of ideas, in the reno-
vation of the building commissioned by his friend and patron Flavio Chigi. Francesco Petrucci 327
IX. THE BUSTS: FROM MATURITY TO THE FAREWELL TO SCULPTURE
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