Baccanale: fauno molestato da cupidi

and Pietro Bernini Italian
ca. 1616–17
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 534
Dotato di uno straordinario talento, Gian Lorenzo Bernini si formò nella bottega del padre Pietro, artista versatile. In tale periodo padre e figlio collaborarono a diverse sculture di marmo, in cui si manifestano chiaramente le ambizioni e il valore del figlio. Il gruppo qui rappresentato è la scultura più ambiziosa di quel periodo e testimonia l’interesse del giovane artista per la creazione di gruppi di figure intrecciate tra loro e diverse superfici: si noti la tensione dei muscoli del fauno, la bocca priva di denti, i putti paffuti, la corteccia dell’albero e il grappolo di frutti succosi. Ispirata ad antichi sarcofagi, questa scena bacchica mostra la fusione di classicismo e naturalismo tipica dell’arte a Roma alle soglie del Barocco.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Titolo: Baccanale: fauno molestato da cupidi
  • Artista: Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Italiano, 1598-1680, e Pietro Bernini, Italiano, 1562-1629
  • Data: ca. 1616
  • Materiale e tecnica: Marmo
  • Dimensioni: Alt. 132,4 cm
  • Crediti: Acquistato, donazione di The Annenberg Fund Inc., fondi Fletcher, Rogers e Louis V. Bell, e donazione di J. Pierpont Morgan, con permuta, 1976
  • Numero d'inventario: 1976.92
  • Curatorial Department: European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Audio

Disponibile solo in: English
Cover Image for 80. Bacchanal: A Faun Teased by Children

80. Bacchanal: A Faun Teased by Children

Body Language

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Jackie Terrassa: This was a collaboration between two artists working together: a younger Bernini learning from his father, who was also a master. The other thing that's amazing about this sculpture is the artists have punctured the marble to create space in between the forms. How does an artist take a piece of stone and make it feel like it's flying, make it feel like the figures are twisting and throwing each other around? Every single detail of the sculpture has some different treatment in terms of the texture of the marble and how that is finished.

Narrator: You can see this at the back of the sculpture. Look at the baby falling off the panther, especially his arm.

Luke Syson: The texture is actually like that of the tree. It looks almost as if his arm is a little branch growing off it. The sculptors are really thinking about how to give the sense that the act of creating is happening before your eyes.

Narrator: Gian Lorenzo Bernini was the most prominent sculptor of the seventeenth-century Italian Baroque.

Luke Syson: The Baroque artists were very interested in expressive movement, and the way in which transitory emotions can be expressed permanently through movements of the body and so on.

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