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Portrait of a Young Man

Creator

Italian Artist · 1598–1680

"Rare man, sublime artificer, born by Divine Disposition and for the glory of Rome to illuminate the century," wrote Maffeo Barberini, Pope Urban VIII, of the great Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Born in 1598 in Naples, Bernini was a child prodigy, receiving his early training in sculpture from his father and completing his first bust at the age of ten. He arrived in Rome at the age of sev

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Date: 1630
Medium: Red and white chalk
Culture: Italian
Department: Drawings
Institution: Getty Museum

Unlike Gian Lorenzo Bernini's usual polished portraits, this study of an unidentified man is a free, spontaneous characterization. Bernini drew the young man with great liveliness, ease, and even looseness, especially in the shirt collar. By depicting the man gazing directly out with boldness and animation, Bernini created an active exchange between sitter and viewer, just as he did in his sculpture. Bernini rarely used red chalk without black. Here he added small amounts of white chalk, giving luminosity and greater substance to the image as if the nose, lips, chin, and collar were reflecting a natural light source.

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