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Bust of the Savior
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"Work of the Month," Chrysler Museum of Art, April, 1981.
"Gian Lorenzo Bernini: 1598 - 1680," National Gallery of Art, Sept. 27, 1998 - Jan. 3, 1999.
“Bernini, ”Galleria Borghese, Rome, October 31, 2017 – February 4, 2018
Italian, 1598–1680
Bust of the Savior, ca. 1679
Marble
Gian Lorenzo Bernini was an international art celebrity. Near the end of his life, Bernini created a bust-length figure of Christ for Queen Christina of Sweden. Two other versions survive, and recently scholars have been investigating if Benini himself sculpted this, or if it was produced by his workshop. At a 2017 exhibition in Rome, the Chrysler bust was shown beside one from a church in Rome that is more polished and finished, but without the drilling in the beard, a technique for which Bernini was famous. The lower wrist in the Chrysler bust is alo more accurately carved, suggesting this bust is less likely a copy, or workshop version.
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 71.2043
Italian, 1598-1680
Bust of the Savior, 1679-1680
Marble, 36½" (92.7 cm)
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 71.2043
References: Irving Lavin, "Bernini's Death," _Art Bulletin_. 54 (1972), pp.159-186; idem, "Afterthoughts on 'Bernini's Death'," _Art Bulletin_. 55, (1973), pp. 429-433; idem "On the Pedestal of Bernini's Bust of the Savior," _Art Bulletin_, 60 (1978), pp. 548-549; _Le Immagini del Santissimo Salvatore_, exhib. cat., Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome, 1988-89, pp. 229-283.
Bernini was the greatest sculptor and architect of the seventeenth century and the major founder of Italian High Baroque style. An artistic demigod who dominated the Roman art world for more than fifty years, he was courted by kings and popes throughout his career. At the time of his death - he succumbed to a stroke in Rome in 1680 - he was revered throughout Europe.
Bernini began the marble _Bust of the Savior_ in 1679, only a year before his death. Both of his early biographers, Filippo Baldinucci (1682) and Bernini's son Domenico (1713), discuss the work at length. They record that the artist intended to present the bust - his final work - as a gift to his dear friend and ardent supporter, Queen Christina of Sweden, who was then living in Rome. Baldinucci writes:
Bernini was already in the eightieth year of his life. For some time past he had
been turning his most intense thoughts to attaining eternal repose rather than to increasing his earthly glory. Also, deep within his heart was the desire to offer, before closing his eyes to this life, some sign of gratitude to Her Majesty the Queen of Sweden, his most special patron. In order, therefore, to penetrate more deeply into the first concept and to prepare himself better for the second, he set to work with the greatest intensity to create in marble a half -length figure, larger than life-size, of Our Savior Jesus Christ. This is the work that he said was his favorite and it was the last given to the world by his hand.
According to Baldinucci, Christina refused the gift in a moment of royal self-deprecation: "The Queen's opinion of, and esteem for, the statue was so great that, not finding herself in circumstances in which it was possible to give a comparable gift in exchange, she chose to reject it rather than fail in the slightest degree to equal the royal magnificence of her intention." Bernini then bequeathed the bust to her, and, at Christina's death in 1689, it passed to Pope Innocent XI Odescalchi, in whose family it remained at least until 1713, when it was mentioned in an inventory of the Palazzo Odescalchi. By then the sculpture had achieved considerable fame, having been chosen as the official emblem of the Apostolic Hospital in Rome.
An early description of the bust states that it originally stood atop an elaborate and richly ornamented pedestal that rose more than seven feet from the floor. Constructed from Bernini's own design, the pedestal was composed of a gilded wooden socle, stepped at the top, that supported a pair of kneeling angels, also in gilded wood. The angels, in turn, upheld the bust on a base of Sicilian jasper. As Irving Lavin noted in 1972,
Bernini's _Savior_ is the first monumental marble bust since antiquity that... [was designed to]...stand free on a pedestal and include both arms. [The figure's left hand is tucked beneath the right, its wrist just visible.] It combines, in an unprecedented way for a Christian image, the living and dramatic quality of a narrative figure with the commemorative and idolous quality of a classical bust monument.
Turning his head heavenward and raising his right hand in blessing, Bernini's Christ proclaims his role as intercessor between God and man, his divine mission as _Salvator Mundi_. Though universal in its spiritual message, the bust remains an intensely personal creation, Bernini's very private tribute to the deity on the eye of his own demise. It is Bernini's last will and testament as an artist, an embodiment of his faith and hope for salvation.
Among the artist's preliminary drawings for the _Bust of the Savior_ are a black chalk study of the angels that once supported the bust (Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig) and a sheet of black chalk studies of the Savior's head and chest (Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe, Rome). A marble copy of the bust, made by an unknown artist at the time of Bernini's death, is preserved in the Cathedral at Sées in France.