Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture Curators: Catherine Hess, Andrea Bacchi, Jennifer Montagu; Organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum in association with the National Gallery of Canada; The National Gallery of Canada; Nov. 28, 2008–Mar. 8, 2009
First, a heartfelt thank you to the anonymous looter who made this exhibit possible. Last year the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles returned 40 pieces of dubious provenance to Italy and in a gracious gesture of reconciliation, the Italians put together this travelling show.
And what a show it is. Not only portrait busts and sketches by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), but sculptures by contemporaries whose works occasionally surpass that of the master himself. Still, it's the imprint of this giant of the Italian Baroque that binds the exhibit together. Without his extraordinary creativity his disciples would have been trapped in a moribund style.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Portrait of Thomas Baker (1637–1638). Marble. 135 (height) × 70 (width) × 40 (depth) cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England. Although marble busts date from antiquity, Bernini brought a fluidity and realism to the form that, some argue, has yet to be replicated. Image by: National Gallery of Canada
Bernini was the most successful architect of 17th-century Rome, renowned for his monumental sculptures and church architecture, including, most memorably, the huge colonnade that embraces St. Peter's Square. His talents had an equally large and expansive reach. Besides being an architect, he was a playwright, theatrical designer, painter and intimate of popes and kings. The portrait busts were a mere sideline, but as with everything he did, he took the genre in a new direction and influenced a generation.
What distinguished his work was the injection of movement and life into a hitherto static art form. Robes swirl and dance as if caught by the wind. Heads tilt inquisitively to the side, lips apart, as if they're about to speak. In some cases the irises and pupils of the eyes are deeply carved so that shadows give them the illusion of depth and reflectivity. You can see tiny hairs on the cheeks of Alexander VII, chiselled with clinical fastidiousness. These works are as lifelike as any sculptor — even Michelangelo — has achieved to date.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Portrait of Costanza Bonarelli (1636–1638). Marble. 80 (height) × 70 (width) × 20 (depth) cm. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, Italy. This sensuous likeness of Bernini's lover is a startling testament to the artist's ability to capture his subjects in action. Lips gently parted, Bonarelli appears to be on the verge of speaking. Image by: National Gallery of Canada
The amazing thing is that these are not only precise, literal likenesses. They exude a convincing sense of personality, all the more impressive when you realize that many of the busts were carved using paintings by other artists as reference, not the living subject. In some cases, the subject had been dead for many years and he had to rely on a death mask.
His contemporary and competitor for the same slice of patronage pie, François Duquesnoy, is hardly a name that rings down the ages, but, who knows, perhaps it should. Spend a few minutes looking at his bust, A Dwarf in the Service of the Duke de Créquy, and it's unlikely you'll ever forget his enormous talent. This small masterpiece traces the physiognomy of a nameless attendant in the Duke's retinue — a late-middle-aged man with proportionate dwarfism. The first question is of course, “Why him?” In this roomful of popes and kings, a servant?
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Maffeo Barberini, Pope Urban VIII (c. 1632). Marble. 94.7 (height) × 68.8 (width) × 34.3 (depth) cm. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. Remarkably, Bernini created the illusion of flesh from stone. Image by: National Gallery of Canada
The answer is the sculpture itself. This tiny fellow positively radiates personality — a canny intelligence mixed with a wary deference. This was a man who could tiptoe through the minefield of 17th-century court politics and turn a disability into a strategic advantage. To Duquesnoy he must have been an irresistible subject.
It's tempting to imagine what Bernini would have produced had he been alive today. Compare his work to that of a realist sculptor such as Ron Mueck, whose art was featured at the national gallery last year (CMAJ 2007;176:1314-5), and it seems unlikely he would have embraced his dark, introspective formulations. Bernini was too much a man of his era — the Baroque, with its hallmarks of exuberance, unbounded confidence, drama and religious certainty.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Self-Portrait (c. 1625). Black and red chalk, heightened with white chalk. 27.5 × 21.5 cm. Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford, England. Purchased (Hope Fund), 1944. This is the first major Bernini exhibition seen outside Italy. Image by: National Gallery of Canada
More likely he would have felt more comfortable as an architect, designing buildings with wild, roiling surfaces — á la Frank Gehry. In fact, if you were to enlarge some of his drapery to building-sized proportions, you'd have a pretty close approximation of a Gehry facade.
The principal difference between now and then, though, is that Bernini's primary medium, in both architecture and sculpture, was marble. These busts are nearly 400 years old. Somehow it's hard to imagine the work of today's artists being in such pristine condition even 100 years from now.
Footnotes
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Mr. King is an Ottawa artist and writer, whose most recent accomplishment is playing the last 2 movements of Beethoven's piano sonata, Opus 111 (minus those impossible right-hand trills).