To visualize lifesize or colossal marbles, the great Roman Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) began by making small, spirited clay models. Fired as terracotta, these studies and related drawings preserve the first traces of the thought process that evolved into some of the most famous statuary in the city, including the fountains in the Piazza Navona and the angels on the Ponte Sant'Angelo.
The Metropolitan Museum (New York, USA) will present this autumn an exhibition that assembles for the first time some fifty of these bozzetti and modelli, as well as thirty chalk or pen sketches alongside three small-scale bronzes and a marble group. Through connoisseurship and a comprehensive campaign of scientific examination, the selection of models addresses the issue of what separates the hand of the master from the production of his large workshop.
Bernini: Sculpting in Clay will include other outstanding loans from international museums such as the Musée du Louvre, Paris, the Vatican Museums, the Museo del Palazzo di Venezia, Rome, the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle.
Dates: from October 3 to January 6.
Location: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028. USA
Opening hours: from Tuesday to Thursday from 9.30am to 5.30pm. Fridays and Saturdays from 9.30am to 9pm. Sundays from 9.30am to 5.30pm.