Head of a man in a helmet and red cloak, probably a portrait of the artist as Alexander the Great

When this painting first surfaced on the art market in the 1970s, it had yet to be connected with Gian Lorenzo Bernini, one of the most important artists of the Italian Baroque. Its author remained unidentified until a 2004 exhibition at the Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia, where Francesco Petrucci first recognized it as an early self-portrait by Bernini, suggesting a date of circa 1621-23 (loc. cit.). This was only shortly before the artist’s greatest patron, Cardinal Maffeo Barberini (1568-1644), was elected to the Papacy. Under Pope Urban VIII, Bernini was to obtain a veritable monopoly over Papal and Barberini family commissions. Since its reconstitution to Bernini’s oeuvre, Alvar González Palacios suggested an alternate attribution to Pietro Dandini (loc. cit.). This idea was repeated by Tommaso Montanari in his 2007 monograph on Bernini (loc. cit.). In his 2015 publication, Petrucci indicated that Sandro Bellesi, author of the Pietro Dandini catalogue raisoneé, rejected the attribution to the Florentine artist and reaffirmed the painting’s Roman origin (loc. cit.).

Gian Lorenzo began his career in the workshop of his father, the Mannerist sculptor Pietro Bernini, at the early age of eight according his biographers Domenico Bernini and Filippo Baldinucci. His earliest securely dated work, a marble bust (Basilica of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, Rome), was completed in 1612, when the artist was just fourteen years old. By the time he executed this painting, Bernini was receiving important commissions from the powerful Barberini, Borghese and Ludovisi families, who equally employed him to restore ancient Roman sculpture. As Petrucci first contended in 2004 and again in his subsequent publications on the painting, Bernini’s restoration work would have informed him of the heroic imagery that was employed in Classical depictions of Alexander the Great, which, in turn, aided his conception of the present work (loc. cit.). The broad brush strokes that form the curled locks of hair recall ancient sculptures which so accurately describe the conqueror’s famous Anastole hairstyle. The plump lips, the contours of the nose and the large, expressive eyes correspond to another youthful self-portrait datable to the same period, this time portraying the artist in guise of David, now in the Galleria Nazionale D’Arte Antica, Rome (fig. 1). Both self-portraits exhibit the hallmarks of Bernini’s pictorial style, noting striking similarities with the artist’s drawings, including their rapid execution, abbreviated forms and a taste for the unfinished.