Testaments to a Baroque Prodigy

What the Caesars left undone in Rome, one baroque genius, Gian Loren zo Bernini, tried in the 17th century to finish singlehanded. He was as famous in his day as Michelangelo had been in his, and justly so. For in a lifetime he not only completed St. Peter's by adding its embracing colonnade; he also churned out sculptural piazzas by the dozen, did work for eight popes and sculpted six.

He was a man for all the arts. A contemporary English diarist, John Evelyn, noted that Bernini once "gave a public opera wherein he painted the scenes, cut the statues, invented the engines, composed the music, writ the comedy and built the theater."

In his art Bernini reached for totality, and his ultimate goal, on which he spent 81 years, was to turn all Rome into one magnificent work of baroque art. He not only thought in grandiose terms, he also started amazingly young. Last week Irving Lavin, 39, art-history professor at New York University, announced discoveries in Rome that appear to be accomplished sculptures done when Bernini was as young as ten, an age when most children are still mastering their letters.

At Rome's American Academy, Lavin revealed five new sculptures that he attributed to Bernini: a small boy with dragon, two marble putti in the Barberini chapel in the Church of Sant' Andrea della Valle, plus two portrait busts from Confraternita della Pieta (a 17th century charity hospital demolished in 1937), long forgotten in the cellar of an adjacent church. Each is stamped with the baroque characteristic of the human presence hyperpersonified, with anatomy in strain, gestures exaggerated, details made into drama.

Lavin found the Bernini bust of Antonio Coppola, a benefactor of the hospital, through hints in a 19th century inventory, confirmed by minutes of a 1612 meeting at which a blank check was given to Confraternita's treasurer to pay Bernini. Its twin, of Benefactor Antonio Cepparelli, was done a decade later. Drill holes in the eyes heighten their lifelike aspect, and the craggy hand of Coppola that emerges from the cloak, as if from no possible shoulder, adds to the theatrical immediacy of the long lost work. Lavin believes that the Coppola bust was done by Bernini at age 13. Highly improbable? Yes, except for the dating, and the fact that the prodigy went on to rebuild Rome.

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