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Article: In the moment: Michael Cole on Gian Lorenzo Bernini.(FROM THE VAULT)
- Article from:
- Artforum International
- Article date:
- May 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 Artforum International Magazine, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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BY THE TIME OF HIS DEATH, Gian Lorenzo Bernini had produced more portraits than any sculptor since antiquity. In an oeuvre that ran from semiautonomous marble gallery sculptures to multimedia installations, portraits were a rare constant. It was the one genre in which the artist worked from the beginning to the end of his career--from the Bishop Giovanni Battista Santoni he carved for Santa Prassede in Rome, probably at around the age of twelve, to the central figure of the tomb he designed for Pope Alexander VII in Saint Peter's Basilica, nearly seven decades later.
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Bernini had been told since his youth that he was destined to be ...