Museo Nazionale del Bargello

Following the exhibition, Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture, organised by the J. Paul Getty Museum of Los Angeles and the National Gallery of Ottawa (August 5, 2008 - March 8, 2009), Florence too, pays tribute to the artist and his exceptional qualities as a portraitist.
With the bust of Costanza Bonarelli, the Bargello National Museum possesses the most exciting and famous testimony of the breakthrough that Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) brought to the genre of portrait sculpture.
Compared to the Los Angeles and Ottawa show, this new exhibition manifests a strong identity all its own, starting from the decision to concentrate on the portraits that Bernini sculpted from his early youth. It is divided into two sections:

1) Bernini the Portraitist: the beginning and rise
2) The "Talking Portraits" (1630-1640)
which correspond to the museum's two rooms devoted to the show.
The portrait sculpture had an extraordinary diffusion in Rome in the first half of the seventeenth century. It was conceived in the sixteenth century mainly as a state-portrait with a strong official connation. Its innovation occurred in a little more than twenty years, between 1615 and 1640. Thanks to Bernini, it progresses from stern and stiffly formal images to figures which seem to breathe and even converse with the viewer. They are the so-called "talking portraits".
The exhibition presents a direct and fascinating comparison with several works by the major protagonists of painting of the time who were active in Rome (Rubens, Carracci, van Dyck, Velasquez, Vouet, Valentin de Boulogne, Pietro da Cortona). Bernini seems to relate to them and, at times, even to be inspired by them. Two paintings (Portrait of Urban VIII and Self-portrait from the Uffizi) also permit us to get acquainted with Bernini the portraitist, also in painting.
The Florence show therefore sheds light on the most significant phase of the artist's self-portrait activity, the one of his full mastery, represented by Costanza Bonarelli, the Portraits of Urban VIII and of Scipione Borghese, and of other personages of the papal court.
This same period also witnesses the emergence of the figure of Giuliano Finelli, Gian Lorenzo's student and "aide". The exhibition presents some of his greatest portraits: such as the bust of Maria Barberini Duglioli from the Louvre, the portrait of Francesco Bracciolini from the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the portrait of Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger from Casa Buonarroti (Florence).