Head of St. Teresa of Avila

Object belonging

One's own

Category

Terracotta sculpture

City

Rome

Location

Museo Nazionale del Palazzo di Venezia

Specific location

Room 21

Inventory

PV 13270

Material and technique

Terracotta/ patina

Author

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) and studio

Dating

c. 1650

Dimensions

30x18x11 cm.

Origin

Gorga Collection (1948)

Image copyright

SSPSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Roma

Short description

This work, in light terracotta, depicts the ecstatic expression of St. Teresa of Avila and reproduces in detail, even in its measurements (recorded in Cannata 1999), the face of the figure sculpted by Bernini in the altar of the Cornaro chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria. The accurate scale of the work, noticed during restoration in 1998-1999 (carried out by Livia Carloni), together with a highly refined rendering of the surface that is somewhat unlike Bernini’s exuberant style, means it is very difficult to pinpoint the function of the work in the context of the creative process, and to identify its author. A model for the tableau vivant of the altar is held at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg (inv. 619): this work, from the collection of the Venetian Abbott Filippo Farsetti, has divided opinion. While Androsov praised its exceptional quality and high level of detail, Fagiolo dell’Arco, Khun, Bacchi and above all Lavin have found its almost excessive accuracy a reason to doubt its attribution to Bernini. In the same way, the Palazzo Venezia head of St. Teresa poses many questions that Cannata (1999; 2003) and then Schutze (2005) have attempted to answer. They observed that the smooth modelling of the work presents a real obstacle to its attribution and proposed that the work, realized in the workshop, might have served as an “attempt to check directly in the chapel itself the effect of the composition and the light”. If the face of the saint was really executed to test its effectiveness in its final location, and was then made as a large model, it is surprising that terracotta was used where usually such models were made in stucco, given the colouration is much closer to marble. A comparison can be made with the face of Proserpina in the Cleveland Museum of Art (inv. 68101), which, though its surface is rendered similarly, is much smaller – around half the size – and for this reason corresponds to the characteristics of a model. The work in question, given its exact correspondence with the marble of the Cornaro chapel, could then be an academic exercise; but it is a theory that does not clarify, though, why its measurements match precisely with the figure in Santa Maria della Vittoria.

 Cristiano Giometti

Bibliography

P. Cannata, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (attribuito). Testa di Santa Teresa d'Avila, in M. G. Bernardini and M. Fagiolo dell'Arco (eds.), Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Regista del Barocco, exh. cat., Milan 1999, pp. 350-351, no. 66; P. Cannata, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (attribuito). Testa di Santa Teresa d'Avila, in G. Morello (eds.), Visioni ed estasi. Capolavori dell'arte europea tra Seicento e Settecento, exh. cat., Milan 2003, pp. 229-230; S. Schutze, 257.Kopf der hl. Theresa von Avila, in Barok im Vatikan. Kunst und Kultur im Rom der Päpste II 1572-1676, exh. cat., Leipzig 2005, p. 414