THE GETTY MUSEUM PAYS TRIBUTE TO BAROQUE PORTRAIT SCULPTURE OF BERNINI’S GENIUS

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the most relevant artist of all baroque art, the one who was able to embody and translate in images the ideals and thrills of his era, dominating undisputed the Roman artistic scene for more than sixty years, becomes “peace ambassador” between Italy and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. After various confrontations, ended at the beginning of the year, on the restitution by the US museum of stolen Italian masterpieces (the Getty displayed 40 pieces that came from the illegal market and therefore belonged to our country), the exhibition dedicated to Bernini is a ploy to sign a new chapter on cultural relations between Italy and the United States.
“Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture” is the first large exhibition dedicated to this seventeenth-century artist from North America, and it is the first that includes his busts.
The exhibition, edited by Catherine Hess, curator of sculpture at the Californian museum, by Andrea Bacchi and Jennifer Montagu, will be inaugurated next 5th August at the Getty Museum, where it will stay until 26th October, to then be repeated by the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa (25th November 2008 – 8th March 2009).
The exhibition, organized in chronological order, displays about 60 works: 15 drawings by Bernini together with thirty sculptures and 15 oils by the same artist and others engaged on the Roman scene of the time, including François Duquesnoy, Giuliano Finelli, Alessandro Algardi, Guercino and Diego Velàzquez. Among Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s masterpieces the busts of particular figures stand out, such as Carlo Barberini, pope Urban VIII Barberini, pope Clement X Altieri, pope Alessandro VII Chigi, cardinal Scipione Borghese, cardinal Richelieu and some self-portraits.
The critical debate about Bernini’s portrait sculpture had already been dealt with in Rome in 1999 during the memorable exhibition “Gian Lorenzo Bernini, regista del Barocco” and since then this important matter in the artist’s career has been in some way put aside. At last the Getty is offering the chance to follow up on this essential theme of the history of art. Indeed, before the advent of Bernini, the “bust” was destined to immortalize popes, emperors or to dower funeral monuments, whereas the artist divulged the idea that even cardinals and the aristocratics could be portrayed.
The genre of bust-portraits made Bernini’s artistic and economic fortune, mainly for his artistic revolution connected to the psychological rendering of the subject’s personality, whether it was a famous person or a common mortal. For all his life he was asked to execute portraits of popes, sovereigns, nobles, and for the most important and influent people of his time. Virtuosity and imitation of life were the qualities that important customers asked the sculptor for. For Bernini, who was an acute observer, the secret to best represent a human character was to stop it, immobilize it in a moment of life and represent it in that moment.
The event of Los Angeles will be articulated in six theme sections, which will cover Bernini’s entire artistic career. Starting from “Young Bernini”, passing by “Barberini Rome” and the gallery of fifteen drawings by Bernini.
The main attraction of the exhibition is the section “Speaking Likeness: intimacy and immediacy in portrait sculpture”, which is about the artist’s ability to freeze models in a fleeting moment of their existence. To follow: “Bernini’s mark” and finally “Absolute art for absolute powers”, where an elderly Bernini emphasizes in his characters a meaningful realistic power. The exhibition, as mentioned, will offer visitors sixty works: a third of them are lent from Italy. Agreements involve the Museo del Bagello in Florence, the Vatican, some private (Barberini heirs), but also the British Museum, the Louvre and other European and American museums.
So for a few months the Getty will pay tribute to Gian Lorenzo Bernini, one of the greatest Italian artists of the seventeenth century. Not only, but for autumn (once the exhibition on Bernini will be over) another very Italian programme is scheduled: an exhibition dedicated to seventeenth-century painting in Bologna: Guido Reni, the Carracci and Guercino.
(translated by Giorgina Arcuri)

From 5th August to 26th October 2008
BERNINI AND THE BIRTH OF BAROQUE PORTRAIT SCULPTURE
at The J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center Drive - Los Angeles, CA 90049 - 1679
Web: www.getty.edu
Email: info@getty.edu
Opening times: Tuesday to Thursday and Sunday from10.00 am to 6.00 pm;
Friday and Saturday from 10.00 am to 9.00 pm;
Closed on Monday.