Bernini's Busts

Bernini, 1598-1680, was a genius. He was a child prodigy too, introduced at the age of 8 to the first of the many Popes he met, who told his father that this child would soon outstrip him as a sculptor. Like Leopold Mozart, the father didn't mind this comment, apparently.

Today I saw the exhibition of Bernini's portraits on display at the National Gallery along with a few pieces by his contemporaries. Aged nearly 82 when he died, Bernini had competed with a great many other Baroque artists. His was a period of European history when portraits came into their own, because they were status symbols—Louis XIV of France and his court had a great many done—as well as being a means of showing the both spiritual and the sensual side of humanity. What the exhibition notes called "naturalism" had a high priority in the taste of those days, Bernini having grown up under the influence of Caraveggio. Then there was the impetus from Rome, the Catholic Church galvanised into Counter Reformation by the Protestant opposition. Most of Bernini's busts seem to have been of Cardinals or Popes, the VIPs. One of the Popes, Urban VIII, said to Bernini (who'd had him under observation for ten years before giving his marble face and beard amazing vitality):

You were made for Rome and Rome for you.

In my ignorance I hadn't realised that Bernini was not only a great sculptor but a consummate painter too, who put his first ideas down as chalk sketches. In the first gallery was his self portrait at 25 years old, rather alarmed at the sight of himself in his mirror, it seems, but very alive. In the last gallery two other self portraits were juxtaposed, one of them a study in chalks (from the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford) of his young self, dated 1625, and the sketch beside it showing him as an old man in 1665 (this latter portrait came from HM the Queen's collection).

The marble busts in the show seem to sparkle, so white is the stone, and when you look at them closely you can see the lifelike detail that makes them so extraordinary: the pockmarks on the cheeks of a Cardinal who'd once suffered from acne or smallpox, the stubble of a growing beard. One bust depicted Bernini's elderly mother, a dignified lady with a Roman nose and a mole on her top lip, carefully rendered. You'd think the medium of marble would make the limbless figures stiff, dead looking; on the contrary, it's hard to believe this is not flesh itself, about to move. Of course, the sculptors of the day had standard ways of tricking the viewer into thinking their creations were alive. A wrinkled sleeve implied movement of the implied arm. A half open mouth signified that the subject was about to speak. When you think of the Ecstasy of S. Teresa di Avila and what that depiction implies, ... But that was a whole figure. Here in Ottawa we are limited to seeing busts. In one of the exhibition rooms a film was being shown about the Saint Teresa sculpture, but it was running on a 50 minute loop and I didn't have time to watch more than a short section. "Art is all about passion" said the narrator. I'll be back there shortly to watch the rest.