An exclusive bust of Bernini will be among the protagonists in the exhibition of the Milanese antique dealer Carlo Orsi at the International Biennial of Antiques in Florence. This is the bust of Urban VIII Barberini, Rome 1658 (Bronze 101,5×78) from the Corsini Collection in Florence.
Perhaps no patron-artist relationship of the seventeenth century (to refer to a famous critical category focused on by Francis Haskell) has given rise to so many busts, in marble and bronze, like the one that linked Gian Lorenzo Bernini to Urban VIII, and it is surprising how the two biographies of the great Roman Baroque artist do not dwell more on those masterpieces.
Domenico Bernini reports that:
[...] at the same time the Pope wanted his portrait from him in marble and in metal, of which he then had to make many others.1
The two busts, in marble and bronze, were almost certainly the same ones mentioned by Girolamo Teti in the Aedes Barberinae (1642)2 in turn identifiable with one today in Palazzo Barberini and with the one in the Vatican Library. Filippo Baldinucci does not even mention Bernini's portraits of Urban VIII at all, but in the list of the artist's works published as an appendix to his biography, based on a list dated around 1675 made available to the author by Pier Filippo Bernini,3 are mentioned:
Two of Pope Urban VIII
More of the same
More metal.4
The first two were evidently two versions of the same invention, while the "Other of the same" must have had a different appearance: Baldinucci, therefore, implicitly reiterated the superimposability of the first two, almost indistinguishable, with respect to the third example.5 The other autographed version of the first invention was to be the bust now in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa;6 while the third marble bust could have been the one, which unlike the other two depicts the pontiff with the mozzetta and the stole, still today in Palazzo Barberini.7 And it was precisely from that invention that other bronze castings would in turn derive, including the one in question here.
The bronze bust of Urban VIII from the Corsini collection (height 101,5 cm; width about 78 cm) appears gilded in the corbel and in the small bee, a heraldic allusion to the Barberini, which dominates it; the quality of the fusion, although not meticulously cold finished in every detail, is nevertheless very remarkable and the sculpture retains the expressive force of a terracotta intact. Conducted with a sprezzatura aimed above all at bringing out even the slightest chromatic modulation even in the bronze, the bust mixes descriptive subtleties such as the small veins under the eyes with details rendered in a summary but very effective way such as the eyebrows, barely sketched, or the fur border of the mozzetta and camauro, treated in an almost impressionistic way.
The portrait is found in Florence with the Corsini princes where it arrived in the second half of the 1835th century by marriage, following the wedding of Anna Barberini and Tommaso Corsini (1919-1858), celebrated in XNUMX, although it is not possible to indicate exactly the moment when the work left Rome (the hereditary issues of the Barberini Corsini were not yet completely closed in the XNUMXs). Reported for the first time by von Pastor in the History of the Popes,8 the bust has not attracted significant attention in Bernini's studies. For Valentino Martinelli, it was only a "mediocre replica" of the bronze bust in the Louvre9 and also Rudolf Wittkower classified it, together with the one lost and known through a plaster copy of Santa Maria di Monte Santo in Rome, as “casts from Bernini's model corresponding to the Louvre bust.”10The latter was requested of the sculptor between 1655 and 1656 by Antonio Barberini and was later donated to the King of France. In a letter dated 11 November 1655, the cardinal wrote to Gian Lorenzo "please [...] let me merge the other head of the Serenissima Memoria di Urbano" (the letter from Barberini to the sculptor, already reported by Sandrina Bandera Bistoletti in 1999 , was transcribed by Anne Lise Desmas, and published in its entirety for the first time, and commented, by Tomaso Montanari in 2009).11 The cardinal asked that the "other head" of Urban VIII be cast, and in a second letter of March 1656 he mentioned that work again: "I still intend that it be prepared for the 2nd casting of the head of the holy memory of pope Urban.")12 The bronze that arrived in the Corsini collection was precisely one of those two fusions, while the other is to be identified with the specimen today in the Louvre.
The two bronzes must be related to the payment ordered by Bernini himself, in July 1658, in favor of "Jacomo Erman Ebanista [...] for invoices and ebony for a Scabello made for the servant of His Eminence Mr. King Card. Antonio Barberini…to place a half bronze statue above it representing the effigy of the glo.me. d'Urbano 8.o.”13 In the inventory of the assets of Cardinal Antonio Barberini in the Palazzo ai Giubbonari near Campo dei Fiori, drawn up in 1671, we therefore find a "Head and Bust and Metal Peduccio of a Portrait of the Happy Memory of Urban VIII with his Scannellato Ebony Stool, with three Metal relief bee… Hand of the Knight Bernino.”14Marilyn Aronberg Lavin hypothesized that it was the same bust present in 1692 in the Palazzo alle Quattro Fontane, in the First Room of the Audience, "a Portrait of Urban VIII: in metal with its foot in gilded metal with a small metal bee in the middle with its pedestal of Scanellato ebony, and gilded with three little gilded metal bees under the base in the bust"15. The presence of the small bee in the corbel seems to confirm that it is the bronze now held by the Corsinis, as it cannot be identified with the one now in the Louvre, documented in Paris as early as 1672; this detail also does not occur in the version today at Blenheim.16
Montanari has noticed that in that same inventory of 1671, where a bronze bust by Bernini of Urban VIII with his ebony stool is mentioned for the first time, another metal "Portrait of the Fe Ma of Urban VIII" also appears ( not referred explicitly to Bernini, and estimated at 50 scudi, compared to the other which, with the precious stool, had been valued at a good 260 scudi). This second specimen was conserved in the "Vigne", where however, as underlined by Montanari, other important pieces were found, i.e. the two versions of the Bust of Carlo Barberini (one signed by Francesco Mochi, recognized as such in the inventory, now in the Museum of Rome; the other probably a replica, now in a private collection: and the estimates were respectively 200 and 60 scudi) and also the Bust of Antonio Barberini, also by Mochi (but the inventory, which also recorded an estimate of 150 scudi, did not specify it, perhaps because it implied the same attribution as the previous one) today in the Toledo Museum of Art.17
It is not possible to establish with certainty which of the two was the bronze sent to France as a gift to Louis XIV in 1672, immediately after the death of Cardinal Antonio (Montanari 2009, pp. 6-8).18. In the inventory of the royal collections of 1684, in fact, that bust was mounted on an ebony stool equipped with three metal bees, just like the one ordered by Bernini himself in 1658,19 but it has already seen itself as the remaining specimen
in Rome, dated 1692, it also had a very similar base: it can be deduced that a second version had been made, so that both bronzes, completely similar, were provided with a base of the same preciousness. The bronze mentioned in the 1692 inventory can then be identified with the one seen only a few years earlier in the Palazzo alle Quattro Fontane (in the "audience hall of knights and prelates"), by Nicodemus Tessin, during his stay in Rome in 1687-1688 : “vom Cav: Bernini… Urban VIII in brontz.”20 Not surprisingly, the bust was placed next to the aforementioned marble bust of the pontiff's brother, Carlo Barberini, also believed to be Gian Lorenzo from the Swede but actually Mochi. Despite the substantially different estimates received by the two pieces in the 1671 inventory, the events of the busts of the Louvre and of the Corsini are practically superimposable, and on the other hand the two letters of 1658-1659 demonstrate unequivocally how both were ordered directly by Cardinal Antonio to Gian Lorenzo.
The circumstance that the pedestal, executed by order of Bernini, was made in 1658 may lead us to think that the bust also belongs to this same moment. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the model for this composition must have been linked to the portraits of the pope made by Gian Lorenzo around 1630. As late as 1681, in Bernini's house, two terracotta busts of the pope were kept, one generically remembered, the other so described: “a portrait of Pope Urban Eighth made of baked clay with his bust, and foot gilded.”21. Perhaps one of these was precisely the model from which Bernini had been able to draw various bronze versions over the years. The pontiff's face can be compared to that of the bust already mentioned in the Vatican Library (probably connected to a document of 1632)22 and to the one with the porphyry bust, from the same years.23 The structure of the bust, on the other hand, with the mozzetta decorated by the stole, is linked to that of the marble today in Palazzo Barberini, without however punctually resuming it.24 According to Montanari, however, this bust would be later (and not autographed), reconnecting to the portraits of Alexander VII also executed by Bernini.25 In other words, it would have been a renewal of that portrait formula that Gian Lorenzo had elaborated in the XNUMXs specifically for Urban VIII, updated to the new times. If materially the Palazzo Barberini bust may not have been entirely by the master's hand, the new invention was equally exceptional and successful, already perfected in the fourth or sixth decade, but in any case under Bernini's direction. As always under his direction, as unequivocally attested by the letters cited above, the casting of those two bronzes commissioned by Cardinal Antonio was carried out, perhaps even superior, in quality, to the marble specimen in Palazzo Barberini, their probable model.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
L. von Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters, 16 vols. in 22 volumes, Freiburg im Breslau 1886-1933, XIII, I, 1928, p. 250 (Italian translation with the title History of the popes in the period of the Catholic Restoration and the Thirty Years War: Gregory XV (1621-1623) and Urban VIII (1623-1644), Rome 1961, p. 253);
V. Martinelli, The portraits of popes by GL Bernini, Rome 1956, p. 31;
R. Wittkower, Gian Lorenzo Bernini: The Sculptor of the Roman Baroque, London 1955, p. 186 cat.19 (4a);
R. Wittkower, Gian Lorenzo Bernini: The Sculptor of the Roman Baroque; 3rd ed. [rest. anast.], with addenda by H. Hibbard, T. Martin, M. Wittkower, Oxford 1981 (Italian translation by S. D'Amico with the title Bernini. The sculptor of the Roman Baroque, [with bibliographic updates and historical-critical note by G. Arbore Popescu], Milan 1990); 4th ed. with the title Bernini: The Sculptor of the Roman Baroque, London 1997, p. 243, cat. 19 (4th);
P. Zitzlsperger, Gianlorenzo Bernini. Die Papst- und Herrscherporträts. Zum Verhältnis von Bildnis und Macht, München 2002, p.170, n.16;
A. Bacchi, Portrait of Urban VIIIin A. Bacchi, C. Hess, J. Montagu (ed.), Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture, exhibition catalog (Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008; Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 2008-2009), Los Angeles 2008, pp. 138-141;
AL Desmas, Checklist of Bernini's Portrait Bustsin Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture, Los Angeles and Ottawa 2008-2009, cit., p. 288, A18b;
A. Bacchi, Portrait of Urban VIII Barberini, in A. Bacchi, T. Montanari, B. Paolozzi Strozzi, D.Zikos (ed.), The living marbles. Bernini and the birth of the Baroque portrait, exhibition catalog (Florence, Bargello National Museum), Florence 2009, pp. 260-263;
A. Bacchi, in Sotheby's Italia Fiftieth Anniversary, The exhibition, 11-20 December 2018, Milan 2018, pp. 56-61;
Pastor 1901-1933, XIII, I (1928), p. 250; Wittkower 1955, p. 186 cat.19 (4a); Martinelli 1956, p.31; Wittkower 1997, p. 243, cat.19 (4a); Zitzlsperger 2002, p. 170, n.16; Bacchi in Los Angeles-Ottawa 2008-2009, pp. 138-141; Desmas in Los Angeles-Ottawa 2008-2009, p. 288, A18b; Bacchi in Florence 2009, pp. 260-263.
EXHIBITIONS
Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture, 2008, p. 138-141; Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture, 2008-09, cat. no. 2.6, pp. 138-141; Florence, Bargello National Museum, Living marbles: Gian Lorenzo Bernini and the birth of the Baroque portrait, 2009, cat. no. 13, pp. 260-263; Milan, Sotheby's, Sotheby's Italia Fiftieth Anniversary, The exhibition, 11-20 December 2018.
Furthermore, in the Carlo Orsi stand there are other important works: a painting by Domenico SMOKE (Siena, 1486 – 1551) “Holy Family with the Young St. John the Baptist” oil on panel (86.2 x 75 cm); a painting of John the Baptist MORONI (Albino, c. 1521–79/80)”Portrait of a Gentleman in a Fur-lined Coat and Black Cap, Oil on canvas (65 x 55 cm); a sculpture of Maximilian SOLDIERS Benzi (Montevarchi, 1656 – 1740) “Bacchus (after a sculpture by Jacopo Sansovino in the Bargello” Bronze 33.4 cm high
