FG FINE ART LTD
Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Napoli, 1598 - Roma, 1680
Four Screaming Heads
Gilded bronze on a marble base
15,5 cm (24,5 cm including the base)
Provenance
Roma, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680)
Roma, Paolo Valentino Bernini (1648-1728)
Roma, Prospero Bernini (1694-1771)
Roma, Mariano Bernini (1734-1789)
Roma, Francesco Bernini (1769-1841)
Roma, Prospero Bernini (1780-1858)
Roma, Vincenzo Galletti (1810-1893)
Roma, Augusto Giocondi and his heirs
Exhibitions
Roma, Sala degli Orazi e dei Curiazi, Palazzo dei Conservatori, Esposizione berniana, 1899
Londra, The Victoria and Albert Museum, Italian Bronze Statuettes, 27 July - 1 October 1961
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Meesters van het Brons der Italiaanse Renaissance, 29 October 1961 - 14 January 1962
Firenze, Palazzo Strozzi, Bronzetti italiani del Rinascimento, February - March 1962
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Caravaggio and Bernini: Early Baroque in Rome, 15 October 2019 - 19 January 2020
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Caravaggio and Bernini: Early Baroque in Rome, 14 February 2020 - 7 June 2020
Violent and incisive, in a way that had never been experienced in the art world before Bernini, these four heads in gilded bronze have always been considered an example of expression of the excesses of the Baroque. Dating between 1650 and 1655, they were initially created for his own carriage and casted from the same model, and their wide open and almost protruding eyes, strongly arched eyebrows, mouth open in a cry, hair and beard divided into edgy locks are an admirable example of representation of the desperation’s motion. Their atrocious scream seems so real that it can be heard by the spectator, denoting a strong horror on the face which is at the same time amazement and surprise.
It will be Bernini himself, at an unspecified time, who will remove them from the carriage to include them in his personal collection and place, as the first inventory recalls, in the saloon of the noble apartment of his palace in via della Mercede together with a “portrait of Pope Urban VIII made of terracotta” and a “portrait of Cardinal Borghese in baked clay”.
Our grotesque heads can therefore boast an uninterrupted provenance, having remained in the ownership of Bernini's heirs to this day.
In fact, upon his death in November 1680, Gian Lorenzo Bernini left his personal collection to his son Paolo Valentino. This was kept in the residence in Via della Mercede 11, in the rione III Colonna of Rome.
In the inventory of 1681, the first redacted after the artist's death, the sculptures are reported as "four bronze heads with their stone feet. A piece of metal throws the Sun all gilded into it”.
Upon Prospero's death, his son Mariano succeeded and on 12 August 1771 he had drafted a new inventory. Thanks to the latter we know the layout of the rooms and the collocation of the works in the palace in via della Mercede, where our heads were placed in the antechamber and described, as "four heads of golden metal cast on the original model of Bernino with the feet of White and black”.
After Mariano's death (1789) the inheritance passed to his son by his first marriage Francesco, who upon his death in 1841 left it, as documented, to his brother Prospero Junior, son of Mariano by his second marriage.
On 19 May 1858, upon the death of Prospero Bernini, a new inventory was drawn up this time at Via del Corso 151, where in the bedroom, on "a carved and gilded wooden table in stone covered with ponsella green" our bronzes described as "four small busts of good gilded metal".
Upon Prospero's death, having no male heirs, the hereditary axis passed to Vincenzo Galletti, husband of his daughter Concetta Caterina, last of the Berninis, who died in 1866.
Of their children, only Teresa Galletti survives who married Augusto Giocondi, from whom Caterina Giocondi was born who in turn married Francesco Forti in 1890. Carlo, father of the current owners, was born from these.
Finally, on 20 February 1964, the last Catalogue and estimate of the paintings and sculptures owned by the Forti family and coming from the succession of Casa Giocondi, heir of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, was drawn up by Giuliano Briganti.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
G. Baracconi, I rioni di Roma, Città di Castello 1889, pp. 350-351
La civiltà Cattolica, Serie XVII volume VI, Roma1899, p. 472
S. Fraschetti, Il Bernini, la sua vita, la sua opera, il suo tempo, Milano 1900, pp. 197-199, 431
Italian Bronze Statuettes, exhibition catalogues, London 1961, n. 187
Meesters van het Brons der Italiaanse Renaissance, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam 1961 no. 182
L. Berti, M. Moriondo Lenzini, Bronzetti italiani del Rinascimento, exhibition catalogue, Firenze 1962, N. 180
J. Pope-Hennessy, Italian Bronze Statuettes, in The Burlington Magazine, Feb., 1963, Vol. 105, No. 719, p. 71 J. Pope-Hennessy, Essays on Italian Sculpture, 1968, p. 198
G. Briganti, Catalogo e stima dei dipinti e delle sculture di proprietà della famiglia Forti e provenienti dalla successione di Casa Giocondi erede di Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 20 febbraio 1964, typewritten
A. Forti, Nel trecentesimo anno della morte. Ricordi del Bernini in casa Forti, in “Strenna dei Romanisti”, XLI, Roma, 1980, pp. 196-205
R. Wittkower, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, The Sculptor of the Roman Baroque, 3rd ed. Oxford, 1981, p. 271
C. Acidini Luchinat, Gian Lorenzo Bernini: il testamento, la casa, la raccolta dei beni, Firenze 1981, pp. 52, 108
J. Montagu, Roman baroque sculpture: the industry of art, New Haven, 1989, pp. 188-189
V. Martinelli, L’ultimo Bernini 1665-1680: nuovi argomenti, documenti e immagini, Roma 1996, pp. 254
C. Avery, Bernini. Genius of the Baroque, London, 1997, p. 132
T. Clifford, Effigies and ecstasies. Roman Baroque sculptures and design in the age of Bernini, cexhibition catalogue, Edinburgh 1998, pp. 39, 92
M. Fagiolo Dell’Arco, L’immagine al potere. Vita di Bernini, Bari 2001, p. 294
V. Martinelli, Gian Lorenzo Bernini e la sua cerchia. Studi e contribuiti (1950 -1990), Napoli1994, pp. 451 -452
E. Tamburini, Gian Lorenzo Bernini e il teatro dell’arte, Firenze, 2012, p. 209
R. Carloni, Palazzo Bernini al Corso: dai Manfroni ai Bernini, storia del palazzo dal XVI al X secolo e della raccolta di Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Roma 2013, pp. 163-164, 241, 266, 268, 278
F. Scholten, Caravaggio and Bernini. Early Baroque in Rome, catalogo della mostra, Monaco, Londra, New York 2019, pp. 278-279, 299
G. Policicchio, L’Esposizione berniniana a Roma nel 1899. Il riscatto del Barocco in una mostra liberale, in “Inside the Exhibition. Temporalità, dispositivo, narrazione”, Roma 2022, p. 98
The first scientific attribution of the bronzes is due to Fraschetti, in his fundamental monograph on Bernini, the first ever dedicated to our artist.
In 1961, the works are visible to the general public, as Bernini's autographs, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, on the occasion of the Italian Bronze Statuettes exhibition which was followed in the same year, by the exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the following year by that of Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Bronzetti italiani del Rinascimento.
In more recent times the four works were exhibited, again as works by Gian Lorenzo, at the exhibition Caravaggio and Bernini: Early Baroque in Rome at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (2019) and the Rijksmuseum (2020) together with around seventy masterpieces by Caravaggio, Bernini and his contemporaries.
The artworks are declared of exceptional historical and artistic interest and are not available for export outside of Italy.
A full fact sheet is available on request.