Coat of Arms

Object belonging

One's own

Category

Terracotta sculpture

City

Rome

Location

Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia

Specific location

Room 21

Inventory

PV 13473

Material and technique

Terracotta

Author

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680)

Dating

c. 1649

Dimensions

12x9.8 cm.

Origin

Gorga Collection (1948)

Image copyright

SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma

Short description

On the day after his election as Pope, Innocent X tasked Francesco Borromini with increasing the flow of water from the Trevi Fountain to Piazza Navona, in preparation for the construction of a great new monument in the centre of the piazza. In 1647, with the work just finished, the pontiff decided to include an obelisk in the structure and asked different artists to draft proposals for the project; Gian Lorenzo Bernini was not included amongst these artists, given his past relationship with Urban VIII, but Bernini – according to a tradition that has almost beome legend – with the help of Donna Olimpia Maidalchini, managed to sneak a silver model of his idea into Palazzo Pamphilj, which Innocent valued highly and decided to commission. The almost synesthetic vibrancy of the whole composition was reproduced by Bernini in a model, now in a private collection, executed in wood, slate and terracotta, mixed with gesso, while a second prototype in cherry wood was identified in 1968 in the store of the Accademia Clementina in Bologna (Mostra di sculture e disegni scenografici del Seicento e del Settecento dell'Acccademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, eds. S. Zamboni and A. Parrochi, Bologna 1968). A good deal of the components of the latter work have been lost and now all that remains is the basin with its surrounding columns, together with the central rock and the maquette of Rio de la Plata, elements that together create an image that is very close to the final stage of the composition of the project and the beginning of work. The Bologna model, now at the Pinacoteca Nazionale, was exhibited in Rome in 1999 at the show Bernini. Regista del Barocco. On that occasion, the curator Marcello Fagiolo dell’Arco was able to identify one of the missing pieces from the Bologna model among the terracottas at Palazzo Venezia. This was a crest without a heraldic symbol, framed on either side by two cornucopias, with a shell above and “with a very expressive head at the base, slightly faun-like and Moorish” (Fagiolo dell’Arco 2002). The maquette was, then, replaced above the rocky arch in the wooden version and it matched perfectly, confirmed by the position of the hinge that was supposed to hold the crest to the central block. The terracotta in question here, which is finished with extreme precision in every detail, relates to the crest placed on the side of the fountain facing Palazzo Braschi and shows little difference to the finished work. The work is dated to around 1650, a date unanimously accepted by historians.

Cristiano Giometti 

Bibliography

C. Avery, Bernini Genius of the Baroque, London 1997, p. 228; M. Fagiolo dell'Arco, Berniniana. Novità sul regista del Barocco, Milan 2002, p. 110