Few artists have changed the history of art as dramatically as Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Even during his lifetime he was considered the greatest sculptor since Michelangelo. Consistently referred to in the literature as a precocious youth, Gian Lorenzo was a prodigy with a vision and skill beyond his years. This figure of Autumn from the Diamond collection was carved when Gian Lorenzo was between 17 and 20 years old, and he began working on one of his most celebrated sculptures, Apollo and Daphne in the Borghese Gallery, only a few years later, at the age of 22. Gian Lorenzo raised sculpture to a level never before imagined and gave life to a new aesthetic movement that dominated European art- the Baroque.

This exceptional and powerful marble of Autumn, in the guise of a bearded man of the woods, is an indisputable early masterpiece and is one of only a handful of sculptures by Gian Lorenzo and his father, Pietro. Three examples of sculptures from this period are those in the collections of The J. Paul Getty Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Carved in around 1615-1618, when Gian Lorenzo was still too young to take on independent commissions, Autumn was made for Prince Leone Strozzi, one of the Berninis’ first major patrons in Rome. The figure’s dynamism and expressiveness betray the virtuoso skill of the young genius who revolutionized the outmoded Mannerist sensibility of his father. This bold marble figure represents Gian Lorenzo’s bravura and the moment when the young sculptor began to eclipse his father in skill and conception.

Gian Lorenzo’s relationship with his father, first as an apprentice and then as a collaborator, has been the subject of discourse by scholars. Their working relationship has come into greater focus, since 1966, when Federico Zeri discovered the ‘Aldobrandini Four Seasons’, a set of marble allegories of the seasons by father and son that were likely commissioned by Prince Leone Strozzi for his villa on the Viminal Hill in Rome. Furthermore, Maria Barbara Guerrieri Borsoi’s discovery of documents pertaining to the Berninis’ commissions have expanded our knowledge of Gian Lorenzo’s early work, as have major exhibitions including the recent landmark shows Bernini at the Borghese Gallery in Rome in 2018, curated by Andrea Bacchi and Anna Coliva and the 2020 exhibition Carravaggio Bernini. Early Baroque Rome at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the latter of which was curated by Frits Scholten and which featured this figure of Autumn. Both Bacchi and Scholten have generously contributed illuminating essays on this extraordinary marble sculpture which are included in their entirety beginning on page 218 of this publication.

The first decade of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s career, from roughly 1609 to 1619, illustrates the remarkable growth of this extremely young and gifted artist. In these years he worked with his father on a series of sculptures conceived by Pietro and executed by the two of them together, including the two terms (Priapus and Flora), formerly in the Villa Borghese and today in The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Faun Teased by Cupid, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Aldobrandini Seasons, commissioned by Leone Strozzi and today at the Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati; and Boy with a Dragon, commissioned by Maffei Barberini and now in The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Prince Strozzi, the head of one of the richest banking families in Florence and Rome, was one of the first major patrons in Gian Lorenzo’s life and possessed many early works by him and his father, including Saint Lawrence in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence and the Putto with a Dolphin in The Bode Museum, Berlin. Based on their style, all of these are dated within the same years as the creation of the Diamond Autumn.

As both Bacchi and Scholten reveal, inventories of the Strozzi Villa record the presence of sculptures by Bernini, including this Autumn, which is clearly identified in the inventory of 1652. As Bacchi explains, Autumn was displayed in the ‘hall’, the most important room in the palace, and was noted as having been placed on a column of alabaster, unlike other sculptures in the villa, including the four Seasons, which were displayed on wooden pedestals. Clearly, the Diamond Autumn was held in high regard even before Gian Lorenzo reached full maturity and artistic independence.

Strozzi assembled a considerable collection of ancient sculpture, which led to his desire to own ‘modern’ works, including sculptures by the Berninis. Some were placed in the gardens, and were juxtaposed with iconographically related ancient sculptures. Bacchi suggests that the Diamond Autumn was made to complete another set of four Seasons, two of which were ancient sculptures representing the seasons that Strozzi already owned.

While it is challenging to specifically attribute portions of Autumn’s carving to one sculptor or the other, it is evident that the deep drilling and attention to surface textures correspond to those on other figures consistently ascribed to Gian Lorenzo in the literature. Certain details like the face of the protagonist here evoke the work of Pietro, however the pose of the figure and the finish of the surface correspond to Gian Lorenzo’s work. The Diamond Autumn, however, is the only example where another statue exists of the same subject that was probably fully conceived by Pietro, the Autumn from the Aldobrandini Seasons. In effect, this gives us the only possibility in the entire corpus of works by Gian Lorenzo to compare two contemporary versions of the same subject matter. In their essays, both Bacchi and Scholten explore the factors that allow us to distinguish between the treatment of these identical subjects like the dramatic pose of Autumn with his exaggerated forward movement and the treatment of the fruit and foliage, both more consistent with the work of Gian Lorenzo.

This beguiling figure’s commanding presence and bold dynamism is underscored by the creative drilling of the fruit and foliage that embellish his head, as well as its energetic thrust to the side, and the animated and progressive stance of the figure. There is a restlessness and a rippling effect of light and shadow across the surface of the marble, which creates a spirited image that is ever-changing. The bough of fruit over the head of the figure is pierced and excavated with dazzling command, creating a complex interior space. Drill-work of such spontaneity and variety is not found in the sculptures of Pietro, or indeed, in those of any artist before Gian Lorenzo.

This figure strides forward and upward, his whole body is extended, his back is arched, his head is raised and turned; and he clutches a branch to bring the ripened fruit to his mouth. The entire figure moves in one clear, continuous, ascending trajectory. There is no figure in a comparably dynamic pose in the corpus of works by Pietro alone. But interestingly, as Scholten introduces in his catalogue entry for Autumn in the Carravaggio- Bernini exhibition, there is one sculpture in a near identical pose in the oeuvre of Gian Lorenzo. This piece is a work from his mature period: the sculpture of the Moor in the Fountain of the Moor in the Piazza Navona in Rome from 1653. Especially when compared in profile, the two statues by Gian Lorenzo are remarkably similar. The steeply sloping ground under the feet, the striding placement of the legs, the forward thrust of the abdomen, the backward arch of the upper torso, and the turn of the head are extremely alike. The Diamond Autumn clearly prefigures works from the peak of Gian Lorenzo’s career.

Gian Lorenzo was a child prodigy equaled only by Mozart. Like Mozart, Gian Lorenzo’s father taught him his craft and realized that his son had far greater artistic ability, which he nurtured with paternal devotion. The Diamond Autumn encapsulates the dynamic moment when Gian Lorenzo blossoms and finds his own creative voice while still under the tutelage of his father. The iconography still retains elements of Pietro’s works, but the bold composition and the virtuoso carving of the fruits all testify to the dawn of Gian Lorenzo’s sublime genius.

AUTUMN: PIETRO AND GIAN LORENZO BERNINI

By Andrea Bacchi

The modern critical literature devoted to Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s first steps in the workshop of his father Pietro begins in 1968 with the memorable article by Irving Lavin that published several youthful works by the future great master and numerous documents concerning his activity in the second decade of the 17th century.¹ In a note to this essay, the scholar also mentioned the Aldobrandini Seasons (figs. 1-4), announcing their imminent publication by Federico Zeri.² Although the latter had already presented the Seasons at a lecture at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence on 7 June 1966,³ he only published them in a printed text in 1980, in the form of a simple newspaper article, reissued in 1982 with a single illustration showing Spring.⁴ Over these years, various scholars mentioned these masterpieces, though they were unable to reproduce them as Zeri had announced his intention of doing so in a monograph that was ultimately never published.⁵ For this reason, it was only in 1987 that the Roman scholar himself (finally) illustrated the four masterpieces in his book Dietro l’immagine, a well-received collection of lectures delivered two years earlier at a Milanese university.⁶

It is perhaps no coincidence that the very next year, 1988, in Paris, the English antiquarian Anthony Roth purchased the statue under discussion here, an Autumn strongly resembling that in the Aldobrandini collection. Roth was very familiar with Roman Baroque sculpture: in 1985 he had published an article on Lorenzo Ottoni’s Bust of Carlo Barberini (San Francisco, De Young Museum);⁷ again in 1988, he also bought the Bust of a Youth by Francesco Mochi, which was instantly acquired, in the same year, by the Art Institute of Chicago. Bernini’s Autumn, whose paternity must have been easily recognizable from a comparison with its Aldobrandini counterpart, was instead sold to Hester Diamond and made its first appearance in the critical bibliography only ten years later, in 1997, thanks to Charles Avery who mentioned it in his monograph on Gian Lorenzo, though without an illustration.⁸ Like the Aldobrandini Seasons, the Diamond Autumn thus also had to wait several years to be reproduced in print: this finally happened in 1998, when it was discussed in reference to the Borghese Terms now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York (figs. 10 and 11).⁹

Ever since these early publications, the Autumn has always been presented as a collaborative work by Pietro and Gian Lorenzo in which it is difficult, to distinguish between the contribution of the father and that of the son: this was also the position that I took in 1999.¹⁰ The point is now essentially well-established, although critical opinion may oscillate in favour of one or the other of the two sculptors.¹¹ What is certain is that this is a work of enormous importance for the history of Roman (and not just Roman) sculpture at the crucial transition from late Mannerism to the early Baroque. There can be little doubt that the Baroque emerged first in sculpture and only later in painting and architecture, and it was born precisely between 1615-1620, in the Bernini workshop, with masterpieces such as the Uffizi St Lawrence (ca. 1617; fig. 5) and the St Sebastian now in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid (1617):¹² in other words, the exact same time and place in which this statue was sculpted.

The Patron and the Purpose of the Statue

We owe to Maria Barbara Guerrieri Borsoi the most important recent discovery on this statue and its ‘sisters’, the Aldobrandini Seasons: all these marbles are documented in various early 17th-century inventories of the subsequently demolished villa on the Viminal (fig. 6) owned by Leone Strozzi (Rome 1555-1632; fig. 7), who in all likelihood commissioned them. Only in the early 19th century did the Seasons pass into the Aldobrandini collection (here we will refer to them as the 'Aldobrandini Seasons', though we now know that they originally belonged to Strozzi).¹³

Why were there two so very similar modern representations of Autumn in the same collection? It may be, as we shall see below, that Strozzi wished to create a cycle of four modern statues depicting the seasons in accordance with the most canonical of iconographies, and a second cycle, again made up of four statues, two of which were certainly ancient, now both lost (the Abundance, fig. 9), and the God of the Orchards), and one definitely modern (the Autumn), alluding to the abundance of nature.¹⁴

Several antique inventories of the villa on the Viminal have been identified: the earliest, reflecting the state of the collection immediately after its owner’s death, dates to 1632, but to interpret it correctly we must start from the later, more in-depth, inventories. The Diamond Autumn, specifically, can be clearly identified for the first time as the work described in 1652 as “Another [statue] holding on its head various fruits, resting against a tree trunk with a Scorpion sculpted beneath it, measuring about 5 palms, on an alabaster column”; the Aldobrandini Autumn was described as “Another similar Season of Autumn holds on its head various fruits with a sculpted scorpion, with beneath it a wooden stand”. Since the former was described as “resting against a tree trunk” we can distinguish clearly between the two versions with certainty.¹⁵ Both were displayed in the ‘hall’, in other words the most important room of the palace or casino that stood at the centre of the gardens on the Viminal; also here were the other three Aldobrandini Seasons and a further two statues that can be associated with them on the basis of their size and iconography. One of these stood on an alabaster base like the Diamond Autumn, whilst the Aldobrandini sculptures were all placed on wooden stands (the group thus consisted of a total of seven marbles).¹⁶ In an earlier inventory of 1642, again in the ‘hall’, we can identify four statues representing the Seasons, each on its own wooden stand, but not the second Autumn now in the Diamond collection.¹⁷ In the inventory of 1632 (drawn up immediately after Leone Strozzi’s death), “Eight different intact statues, some modern and some ancient” were generically listed as being in this room.¹⁸ It is highly likely that these eight included all of the seven described in 1652, as already suggested by Guerrieri Borsoi,¹⁹ while it is plausible that in 1642 the Diamond Autumn was not in the ‘hall’ with the cycle of the Aldobrandini Seasons, either because it was too similar to one of these or perhaps because it had been taken elsewhere, thanks to its value and prestige, before 1632.

Leone and his wife Sofonisba Savelli had had just one son, but he had died while still in infancy, aged barely two.²⁰ Strozzi had thus appointed another member of his family, Giovan Battista, his heir, though the villa on the Viminal itself was to go to his two nephews, Mario and Pompeo, sons of the marriage between Leone’s sister and Muzio Frangipani. The consequence was a long legal dispute, won by Giovan Battista Strozzi, who moved to Rome but died in his forties in 1636.²¹ The villa, however, went to the Frangipani nephews and, as we have already said, an inventory was drawn up in 1632 on the orders of the Governor of Rome as the property was contested in the court battle over Leone’s estate. In 1641, the property was assigned to Ottavio Corsini, who sublet it to Luigi Strozzi (son of Giovan Battista); during these months two inventories were drawn up (1641 and 1642). The property, left in a state of virtual abandonment by the Frangipani family, subsequently fell into disrepair, triggering a new lawsuit; in 1653 it returned definitively into the hands of the Strozzi family, following the compilation of the aforementioned inventory of 1652.²² Evidently, the property was never radically reorganized over these years, but underwent only minor modifications. No significant changes were made to the choice to keep an important group of modern and antique statues, in dialogue with each other and connected to the theme of the Nature’s cycle, in the main hall of the casino and not the paths of the garden, alongside numerous other ancient sculptures collected by Leone. We shall return to this point below. It is impossible to establish with certainty when this figure of Autumn left the villa on the Viminal, since only the Seasons subsequently in the Aldobrandini collection can be identified in the 18th-century inventories.²³

That Leone Strozzi was a patron of Gian Lorenzo Bernini is already attested by Filippo Baldinucci, author of the first printed biography of the artist (1682): the sculptor had executed one of his very first masterpieces, the aforementioned St Lawrence now in the Uffizi (formerly Contini Bonacossi collection; fig. 5), for the Florentine.²⁴ The St Lawrence can also be identified in the inventories of Villa Strozzi on the Viminal, together with another marble, the Putto Bitten by a Fish (Berlin, Bode-Museum; fig. 8), which, though absent from the biographies of the artist, had already been identified by critics as the work of Gian Lorenzo.²⁵

It is important to stress that the Strozzi inventories never named the creator of all these sculptures. Thanks to Guerrieri Borsoi’s research, then, it has emerged that Strozzi, alongside the much better known Maffeo Barberini and Scipione Borghese, was Gian Lorenzo’s most important patron during the years in which he was becoming emancipated from his father Pietro. Born in 1555 in Rome, Leone came from a Florentine family, one branch of which had moved to Rome some time earlier. His position in the city and in the Curia was initially favoured by his paternal uncle, Cardinal Lorenzo, who died in 1571; in 1592 Clement VIII appointed him General of Battles and Ordinances of the Holy Church, a post that marked the high point of his career. His substantial financial resources derived from his work as a banker, like his father before him, and these allowed him not only to purchase various pieces of real estate, but also to build and adorn a luxurious family chapel, the second on the right in the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle. Here, on the altar wall, we find a series of bronzes cast by Gregorio Rossi in 1605 based on famous inventions by Michelangelo (the Pietà in St Peter’s basilica and Leah and Rachel from the tomb of Julius II in San Pietro in Vincoli). Leone is not known to have taken a particular interest in painting, and the inventories of his collections do not suggest the existence of a true picture gallery. By contrast, as we shall see in greater detail below, he was very active on the antiquities market, assembling a remarkable collection; this interest in and admiration for ancient sculpture led to that for modern sculpture. He died in 1632 and was buried in the chapel that he had had built many years earlier.²⁶

Seasons and Fruits of Nature

Unfortunately, no payment orders survive for any of the works by Bernini discussed above, and their date must therefore be established almost exclusively on the basis of a stylistic analysis, suggesting that they belong to the same time period, around 1615-1618 (but we shall return to this point below). Guerrieri Borsoi has traced a payment made by Leone Strozzi to Pietro Bernini of 100 scudi, dated 2 January 1622, one instalment of an unspecified total sum; in March 1620 Pietro had also received 25 scudi “for a group of Satyrs”.²⁷ Clearly, only the father was still working for Strozzi at this late date, whilst Gian Lorenzo was by now virtually monopolized by the most important Cardinals in Rome, from Alessandro Peretti Montalto to (above all) Scipione Borghese.

As already noted, since their discovery by Zeri, the Aldobrandini Seasons and their close relative the Diamond Autumn have been dated to around the middle of the second decade of the century. The documents discovered by Guerrieri Borsoi have necessitated a new reflection on the problem of their chronology.²⁸ Strozzi bought his villa on the Viminal in April 1619:²⁹ the works executed by Pietro in the years immediately following, documented by the payments mentioned above, were certainly destined for this estate, but the Seasons and Autumn too, given their subjects connected to the life cycle of Nature, must have been intended for the villa, which Strozzi may have rented before he eventually purchased it.³⁰ We know that the previous owners were the Frangipane family, who, as we have seen, were relatives of Leone.³¹ On the Viminal, Leone gathered his vast and important collection of antiquities, which he had begun to assemble from 1594, as documented by the well-known Roman sculptor and antiquarian Flaminio Vacca;³² it must previously have been displayed either in the same place, or in another garden or vineyard. Just as Cardinal Scipione Borghese did in his magnificent villa at Porta Pinciana, Strozzi created a dialogue between ancient and modern sculptures in the rooms of his own pleasure palace, and in this sense the inventory entry of 1632 is unequivocal: “Eight different intact statues, some modern and some ancient”.³³ All of the statues under consideration here, the Aldobrandini Seasons and the Diamond Autumn, show signs of exposure to the elements, and it is thus certain that they were placed outdoors for periods between the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. Had Leone originally commissioned these statues for display inside his villa, as the 1632 inventory seems to suggest, he would thus have anticipated Scipione Borghese in this pioneering choice: until this period, no other significant instances of ancient and modern sculptures on display together in the closed spaces of palaces or villas are attested. But it is equally possible that when they were executed, in around 1615-1618, the statues were meant to be placed outside the casino, in direct connection with the gardens (like the Borghese Terms to be discussed below; figs. 10-11),

and that they were moved into the villa’s most important public space only some years later, when the prestige of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and of these works had increased. Ultimately, even the David in the Borghese Gallery (1623-1624), was originally ordered by Cardinal Alessandro Peretti Montalto for the gardens of his villa at Termini (not far from Villa Strozzi on the Viminal), and later placed in a room inside the villa at Porta Pinciana when Cardinal Scipione Borghese took over the commission on Montalto’s death.³⁴

The most fascinating and complex question posed by the Diamond Autumn is the close relationship with its Aldobrandini counterpart: a careful study of the 17th-century inventories is needed to resolve the problem. It seems, as already mentioned, that alongside the cycle of Aldobrandini Seasons Leone displayed another four statues iconographically associated with them thanks to their shared reference to the fertility of Nature. Belonging to the group was the Abundance (now lost; fig. 9), easily associated with Spring and described in 1642 as “A statue of an abundance holding a piece of cloth full of fruits in her hands, around seven and a half palms high”;³⁵ it was an ancient work, later drawn by a draughtsman belonging to the circles of Richard Topham (1671-1730).³⁶ Similarly, “an ancient God of the Orchards, restored, about five and a half palms high” also mentioned in 1642, belonged to the same group;³⁷ it is possible that Pietro himself restored this statue.³⁸

As we have seen, the ancient statues gathered in this cycle ranged in size from five and a half to seven and a half palms: that commissioned from the two Berninis to be displayed alongside them, in other words the Diamond Autumn, was the same size as the Aldobrandini Seasons: it was thus taller than the God of the Orchards and shorter than the Abundance, whose measurements, obviously, were not decided by Strozzi. In the 1642 inventory, the Aldobrandini Seasons were described as being six palms high, in that of 1652 as five, just like the Diamond Autumn. Evidently, those responsible for the early inventories were not particularly accurate in their measurements: consider that the 125 cm of the Diamond Autumn are equivalent roughly to five and a half palms, since a palm measured 22.34 cm. But, as noted in the inventory entry of 1632, this second group also comprised a fourth statue.

As we have said, the most interesting problem posed by the marble under discussion here is its very close relationship with the Aldobrandini Autumn.³⁹ Of the seven statues listed in the Strozzi inventory of 1652 and that seem to form a fairly homogeneous group in terms of dimensions and subjects, and that must all have been included in the shared entry of 1632 (“Eight different intact statues, some modern and some ancient”), two were probably ancient (with restorations) and five – the Aldobrandini Seasons and the Diamond Autumn – were modern. Since the first four of these formed a homogeneous cycle, why would a second version of just one of the four seasons, Autumn, have been sculpted? Among other things, it is worth remembering that Strozzi died only in 1632, and was still making payments for works to Pietro Bernini in 1622: the hypothesis that the Diamond Autumn belonged to a cycle that was never completed thus seems unlikely.⁴⁰ Furthermore, in 1652, the ‘hall’ of the villa, alongside the Aldobrandini Seasons and the Diamond Autumn, also contained “A statue with a cornucopia of fruits and a sheaf of grain measuring about 5 palms, with beneath it an alabaster column” and “A statue of a Man holding various fruits in his hand and a tree trunk, five palms high, with beneath it a wooden stand”. The latter can plausibly be identified as the “ancient God of the Orchards” mentioned in 1642 and already discussed, whilst the statue with the cornucopia and the sheaf differs from the Abundance of the 1642 inventory, “holding a piece of cloth full of fruits in her hands” (the two statues were also very different in size).⁴¹ Surprisingly, in 1652 the Abundance was not listed as being in the ‘hall’ of the villa.⁴² Since no distinction was made in the 1652 inventory between ancient and modern marbles, no definitive conclusion can be drawn regarding the origins of the statue with a cornucopia and sheaf of grain, but it is worth noting that it was the same size as the Diamond Autumn (“about 5 palms”), and that, like the latter, it stood on an alabaster column.⁴³ Its iconography was also virtually identical to that of the Aldobrandini Summer; it may have been an ancient statue of Ceres, but it was more likely a modern work, probably sculpted by Bernini like all the others.⁴⁴

Finally, it is probable that the God of the Orchards was interpreted as a Vertumnus, the god of the seasons, who was often directly associated with them. Indeed, Leone Strozzi had collected several ancient statues thought to depict this subject: according to the 1642 inventory “upon entering the hall of said Palace” there were “a Vertumnus with a lion’s paw, and a cornucopia in the left arm” and “another Vertumnus, companion to the aforementioned, about six palms high”.⁴⁵ In fact, no ancient statue certainly depicting Vertumnus is known,⁴⁶ and his iconography was a matter of debate in the 16th century; in any case, what is important is that these statues were given this interpretation in the context of Villa Strozzi. These statues, too, demonstrate the iconographical peculiarity and coherence of the display created by Leone for the sculptures in the ‘hall’ of the villa on the Viminal. The figures of the Seasons were on the one hand perfectly suited to the decoration of a villa, whilst on the other they formed an ideal counterpart to the ancient statues on similar subjects; in the marbles later in the Aldobrandini collection the reference to Roman sculpture was explicit. Very different was the group with Adam and Eve (now in Le Mans, Musée de Tessé; fig. 12), which like the others came from Villa Strozzi on the Viminal, also sculpted by Pietro Bernini, this time without the collaboration of his son Gian Lorenzo, reviving the Florentine Mannerist style: it is possible that the final payment of 100 scudi made to Bernini senior in 1622 was for this very group.⁴⁷

To sum up, in 1632 these eight statues, not described individually, were mentioned as being in the hall; in 1642 the same room contained the Aldobrandini Seasons, together with the ancient Abundance and the other ancient male statue representing Vertumnus or the god of the orchards; finally, in 1652, we again find the Aldobrandini Seasons, the Diamond Autumn, the potentially modern statue with a cornucopia and sheaf of grain (the latter both set on alabaster columns) and once again the male statue (the Abundance, as noted, was absent). The hypothesis that there were two coherent cycles of four statues each thus appears well-founded. The second, certainly more original and sophisticated, would thus have consisted of two pairs of statues: two male and two female, two ancient and two modern, all sharing the emphasis on flowers and fruit (whereas the Aldobrandini Winter lacked these attributes).

As concerns the placement of these statues and their iconography, the comparison with the pair of Terms sculpted by Pietro and Gian Lorenzo for Scipione Borghese’s villa at Porta Pinciana is also telling; they were described as follows by Giacomo Manilli in 1650:

"Two marble Terms, one representing the God of the orchards and the other Pomona, modern works by Pietro Bernini, assisted by his son, the Cavalier Lorenzo, at the time a very young man, who sculpted the fruit and flowers".⁴⁸

The two Terms, as we have said, are now in the Metropolitan Museum, and are securely dated to 1616 by the payment orders:⁴⁹ one a man with fruits and the other a woman with flowers. It is worth noting that in the passage by Bernini’s contemporary the equivalence between Vertumnus (companion to Pomona) and the “god of the orchards” was made explicit. Those marbles, sculpted for the gardens of villa Borghese, were always kept outdoors.

Since it is difficult to identify the Diamond Autumn in the 1642 inventory of the villa on the Viminal, it cannot be ruled out that at the time it was in the family’s city palace, in what is now Largo di Torre Argentina,⁵⁰ perhaps precisely because it was recognized as a work more by Gian Lorenzo Bernini than by Pietro. The lost statue with a cornucopia and sheaf of grain may have continued to be associated with it; it cannot be identified in the inventory of the villa of 1642, and in that of 1652, just like the Diamond Autumn, it stood on an alabaster column: probably, as we have seen, this was another modern statue, perhaps also sculpted by the two Berninis.

In conclusion, Strozzi may have selected two ancient marbles from his collection potentially alluding to the fertility of Nature, and then newly commissioned a further two versions of Autumn and Summer resembling their predecessors. Copying Autumn definitively sanctioned the success of this invention by Bernini which, as we shall see, had its roots in much earlier works by Pietro. It also demonstrated that this specific modern statue, called upon to create a dialogue with some very important ancient pieces (above all the Abundance), must have held an absolutely exceptional importance, especially in the eyes of Strozzi who was mainly interested in antiquity. This importance is underlined by the alabaster column on which it stood in 1652.⁵¹

The Two Berninis

Gian Lorenzo attempted to disavow his apprenticeship under his father through the biographies by Filippo Baldinucci and his son Domenico Bernini, written under his direction, almost as if he had had no teacher.⁵² Only one 17th-century printed source mentions that he first wielded his chisel on the marbles sculpted by his father, as we would naturally expect. This source is the aforementioned guide to Villa Borghese by Manilli: “[…] modern works by Pietro Bernini, assisted by his son, the Cavalier Lorenzo, at the time a very young man, who sculpted the fruit and flowers”.⁵³ These marbles of 1616 clearly present numerous points of contact with the two figures of Autumn (Aldobrandini and Diamond), especially as concerns the still life portions, which were the parts explicitly attributed to Gian Lorenzo by Giacomo Manilli. However, the invention of the seated male figure, onto which pomegranates and bunches of grapes almost cascade from above, had in its essential outlines been developed by Pietro in a group sculpted many years earlier. The Satyr with a Panther now in the Bode-Museum in Berlin (fig. 13), from Villa Corsi Salviati at Sesto Fiorentino near Florence, has been dated by Irving Lavin to the end of the century based on a payment document to Pietro of 1598, and also in connection with the description of a lost “statue in marble, resting against a tree with a putto at its top, representing Bacchus in the act of squeezing grapes” that Pietro himself sculpted in Naples in 1589.⁵⁴ Taking as certain the date of the Diamond Autumn in around 1615-1618, the shared responsibility of father and son, and the attribution of the compositional motif underlying the invention to Pietro, it remains to determine how large a role was played by Gian Lorenzo in the execution of this work.

Guerrieri Borsoi has noted that the Aldobrandini Autumn is in a position of precarious equilibrium, with the legs crossed in such a way as to leave the scorpion of the zodiac sign in view; this detail is perhaps better resolved in the New York statue in which the animal is placed more naturally between the protagonist’s feet,⁵⁵ suggesting that the Diamond statue is later than the Aldobrandini version. The other Aldobrandini Seasons are all standing, but it seems highly unlikely that the Diamond Autumn, also on its feet, originally belonged to this cycle.⁵⁶ Whilst the Aldobrandini Spring, Summer and Winter present themselves to the viewer in a static pose, the Diamond Autumn is a figure that moves forward energetically, seemingly inviting the viewer to observe him from different angles with the contrapposto movement of arms and legs.⁵⁷ The somewhat surprising decision to create a cycle of four statues of which three were standing and one seated can be explained, as already mentioned, by the fact that the figure of Autumn had an important precedent by Pietro Bernini, that now in Berlin in which the satyr was also seated. In the Diamond Autumn, the parallels with antiquity are even more obvious than those visible in the Aldobrandini Seasons: this is an almost total, heroic nude, the subject par excellence of classical statuary.

Recently, Frits Scholten has intelligently noted two important features. The position of the legs in the Diamond Autumn anticipates that of the Moor in the fountain of the same name in Piazza Navona (fig. 14), an invention by Gian Lorenzo Bernini dating to about thirty years later. Additionally, as we have seen, the high regard in which the statue was held at Villa Strozzi is clearly signalled by the alabaster column on which it was placed.⁵⁸ Seen from behind, the way in which the Diamond Autumn rests against the tree trunk behind him is strongly reminiscent of the group in the Metropolitan Museum of New York with a Faun Teased by Children (not documented; generally dated to around 1615), certainly the most spectacular product of the collaboration between Pietro and Gian Lorenzo (fig. 15 and 16).

Here we again see the motif of the male protagonist turning his head upwards, looking on the one hand towards the still life portion and on the other at the two putti climbing up the tree trunk. The Diamond Autumn also differs from the Aldobrandini version for a minor detail, the small animal moving around the fruit at the top, another virtuoso touch, reminiscent of the same detail in the Satyr with a Panther in Berlin (fig. 17).

The comparison with the masterpiece in the Metropolitan Museum is also helpful because it brings out another aspect, the contrast between the rough surface of the tree trunk and that of the protagonist’s skin, a genuine stylistic hallmark of Gian Lorenzo in both youth and maturity: see, for example, the similar contrasts in the Rape of Proserpina (1621-1622: contrast with the coat of Cerberus) and in the Apollo and Daphne (1622-1625) in the Borghese Gallery (fig. 18). Particularly illuminating is the comparison with the Bacchic group in New York, where this feature clearly betrays the hand, and the invention, of the young Bernini. Not coincidentally, in the Aldobrandini Seasons, mainly the work of Pietro, we do not see an equally refined distinction between the surfaces; it is completely absent in groups like the Adam and Eve formerly owned by Strozzi. It is also worth considering that the Diamond Autumn must have suffered to some extent from its exposure to the elements. There is a hole containing pieces of lead in the base of the statue, near the scorpion’s tail, suggesting that at some unknown period the statue may have been used as a fountain ornament.⁵⁹ It is possible, as we have already said, that it was in the gardens on the Viminal before 1652, and perhaps even before 1632, and was later moved inside the villa, together with the Aldobrandini Seasons, before the patron’s death, when Gian Lorenzo had become so famous that keeping works by the master exposed to the rain must have seemed a sacrilege.

Certainly, the Diamond Autumn is a masterful piece of sculpture, a felicitous balance between Mannerist caprice and unbridled Baroque exuberance. All its features, in both style and invention, suggest a date slightly after the Aldobrandini Seasons, and thus around 1616-1617. Though it is true that it was mainly Pietro who specialized in this genre of sculpture, we know for certain that Leone Strozzi employed Gian Lorenzo on several occasions in around 1617. The aforementioned Putto Bitten by a Fish is dated to 1617-1618, and the famous St Lawrence, a masterpiece that Strozzi may have merely purchased rather than directly commissioned, to 1617.⁶⁰ As we have already repeated several times, it is very difficult to pin down the chronology of all these works more precisely, and for this reason it is best to maintain a prudent attribution to a longer time span, around 1615-1618. It is worth considering, for example, that Hans-Ulrich Kessler, a specialist on Pietro Bernini, proposed a date of around 1614-1616 for the Diamond Autumn and of around 1619 for the Aldobrandini Seasons.⁶¹ Personally, I think it more likely that the Diamond Autumn slightly postdates its ‘sisters’.

As knowledge advances, we can now trace Gian Lorenzo’s gradual emancipation from his father in greater detail, and this is best done starting mainly from works for which we have secure documentation. The first time that Bernini junior’s name appears is in the contract for the overdoor Putti in the Barberini Chapel in Sant’Andrea della Valle, ordered from Pietro in February 1618 by Cardinal Maffeo, the future Urban VIII, with the promise to execute them in collaboration with his son.⁶² Shortly beforehand, in December 1617, Pietro had received payment, again from Maffeo, for the aforementioned statue of St Sebastian, now unanimously attributed by critics to Gian Lorenzo,⁶³ who was still too young to take on a commission of this sort independently (immediately afterwards, as we have said, the cardinal insisted that the young genius’s participation in the work be made explicit in the commissioning contract for the cherubs). Also well documented is the Boy with a Dragon now in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (fig. 19), for which Maffeo also paid Pietro in December 1617 and now thought to be a collaborative work by father and son, further confirmation of the enormous difficulty of distinguishing between the hands of the two Berninis in these years.⁶⁴

It is possible that at this time a sort of competition between the established father and the emerging enfant prodige was incited in the house of the illustrious Florentine-Roman collector. Whilst the former had created one of his absolute masterpieces in the Aldobrandini Winter, thanks in part to the almost unprecedented depiction of fire in sculpture, the son tackled the same motif shortly afterwards in the St Lawrence. Thus, the second Autumn may have marked the passing of the torch from Pietro to Gian Lorenzo. The father must have made a substantial contribution to the sculpture, as is apparent above all from the facial features of the protagonist and the treatment of the anatomy of the torso. However, other features, and the invention itself, in other words the modifications made to that of the Aldobrandini Autumn, should be attributed to Gian Lorenzo. Again, whilst on the one hand the multiple viewpoints devised for this statue suggest the Mannerist roots of Pietro’s style, on the other his energetic forward motion anticipates the fully Baroque style of Gian Lorenzo’s masterpieces: not just the Moor of the fountain in Piazza Navona, but also to some extent the David and the Pluto of the Rape of Proserpina, both in the Borghese Gallery. Even the first large Borghese group, the Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius Flee from Troy (fig. 20), for which payment was made to Gian Lorenzo alone in October 1619, still betrays the

influence, and probably the invention, of Pietro, to the extent that Filippo Baldinucci, already in 1682, described it as “the first great work that he made [...] though something of the style of Pietro his father can still be seen”.⁶⁵ Among the works of these years, though they are not securely documented, it is also worth recalling the Bust of Giovanni Battista Santoni in Santa Prassede (fig. 21), a marble that Gian Lorenzo himself considered his first autonomous work, to be dated to around 1615.⁶⁶ In this head we clearly see that Bernini junior copied from his father the typical treatment of the beard, almost in the form of tufts, that reappears in the Diamond Autumn.

Gian Lorenzo only achieved full autonomy from his father in around 1619. After this date, as we have said, Pietro returned to work for Leone Strozzi on inventions that, rather than opening up to the future, looked to the past, as Gian Lorenzo was ushering in the Baroque. But whilst it is certainly true that the Baroque was born in the Borghese house, this momentous event had its antecedents in Villa Strozzi in around 1615-1618.

-Andrea Bacchi

1. I. Lavin, Five New Youthful Sculptures by Gianlorenzo Bernini and a Revised Chronology of His Early Works, in «The Art Bulletin», 50, 1968, pp. 223-248.

2. Lavin, Five New Youthful cit., p. 234, note 80.

3. «Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz. Jahresbericht», 1966, p. 14: «7.6.1966: F. Zeri – Le Quattro Stagioni di Pietro e Gianlorenzo Bernini»; H.-U. Kessler, Pietro Bernini (1562 – 1629), München 2005, p. 368, kat. C7.

4. F. Zeri, Bernini contro Bernini, «L’Europeo», n. 43, 13 ottobre 1980; later in Id., Mai di traverso, Milan 1982, pp. 94-97.

5. Cfr. A. Bacchi, Il conoscitore laconico: Federico Zeri e i due Bernini, in Federico Zeri conoscitore, in press.

6. F. Zeri, Dietro l’immagine: conversazioni sull’arte di leggere l’arte, Milan 1987, p. 272, Figs 34-37.

7. A. Roth, A portrait bust of Maffeo Barberini, Prince of Palestrina, in “Apollo”, CXXII, 1985, 281, pp. 24-31.

8. C. Avery, Bernini: Genius of the Baroque, London 1997, p. 28.

9. Alberta Campitelli, Erme, in Bernini scultore: la nascita del Barocco in Casa Borghese, catalogue of the exhibition (Rome, Galleria Borghese) ed. by Anna Coliva and Sebastian Schütze, Rome 1998, pp. 30-31 and 24-25, Figs 3-6.

10. A. Bacchi, Del conciliare l’inconciliabile. Da Pietro Bernini a Gian Lorenzo Bernini: commissioni, maturazioni stilistiche e pratiche di bottega, in Gian Lorenzo Bernini regista del Barocco, catalogue of the exhibition (Rome, Palazzo Venezia) ed. by M.G. Bernardini and M. Fagiolo del’Arco, Milan 1999, pp. 72-73.

11. It was published as the work of Pietro alone in Irving Lavin, Bernini giovane, in Bernini dai Borghese ai Barberini: La cultura a Roma intorno agli anni venti, proceedings of the conference (Rome, Villa Medici, Accademia di Francia a Roma, 17-19 February 1999), ed. by Olivier Bonfait and Anna Coliva, introduction by Anna Coliva, Rome, De Luca, 2004, p. 143, Fig. 23, and discussed in M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, Berniniana. Novità sul regista dek Barocco, Milan 2002, p. 56. As a collaborative work in Kessler, Pietro Bernini cit., pp. 355-356, kat. C3. By contrast, as the work of Gian Lorenzo alone in Tomaso Montanari, Percorsi per cinquant’anni di studi berniniani, in “Studiolo”, III, 2005, p. 277 and again in Tomaso Montanari, “Chi perde vince”: un “Salvatore” di Gian Lorenzo e Pietro Bernini (1617-19 circa), «Prospettiva», n. 157-158, 2015, p. 180.

12. Sul San Sebastiano cfr. A. Bacchi, entry in Bernini, catalogue of the exhibition (Rome, Galleria Borghese) ed. by A. Bacchi, A. Coliva, Milan 2017, p. 42, cat. I.5 (with preceding bibliography); on the St Lawrence cfr. infra.

13. Maria Barbara Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma. Mecenati e collezionisti nel Sei e Settecento, Rome, Colombo, 2004, pp. 189-197.

14. On the Abundance, the God of the Orchards and fourth statue of this second cycle, probably modern (and in any case lost), cfr. infra.

15. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 195.

16. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., pp. 195 and 234 (the other two statues mentioned were “A statue with a cornucopia of fruits and a sheaf of grain measuring about 5 palms, with beneath it an alabaster column” and “A statue of a Man holding various fruits in his hand and a tree trunk, five palms high, with beneath it a wooden stand”); on these statues, the latter certainly ancient, the former possibly modern, cfr. also infra.

17. The statues of winter, spring and autumn, in that order, were clearly identified by the inventory, while summer must have been “A figure of a statue six palms high” listed in the same room, cfr. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 233.

18. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., pp. 230-231.

19. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 192.

20. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., pp. 12 e 14.

21. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., pp. 15-16.

22. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., pp. 73, 75 and 228. Not all the inventories mentioned are transcribed: only those of 1632, 1642 and, only partially, 1652.

23. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 222, note 359.

24. Filippo Baldinucci, Vita del Cavaliere Gio. Lorenzo Bernino, scultore, architetto, e pittore, Florence 1682, pp. 77-78; Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., pp. 197-198, 230 and 233.

25. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 200; S. Pierguidi, entry in Bernini cit., p. 72, cat. II.3.

26. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., pp. 11-15; Vittoria Brunetti, Bernini: amici e committenti. Repertorio, in Bernini cit., p. 405.

27. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 189.

28. However, the scholar immediately confirmed the traditional dating of these marbles, cfr. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 193. Of the same opinion is Tomaso Montanari, “Chi perde vince” cit., p. 180.

29. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., pp. 69 and 114, note 77.

30. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 193. After Guerrieri Borsoi’s discoveries, with respect to the payments to Pietro of 1620 and of 1622, I had suggested a later date for the Aldobrandini Seasons (Andrea Bacchi, entry in Andrea Bacchi, Stefano Pierguidi, Bernini e gli allievi, Florence 2008, pp. 138-144, cat. 5; Andrea Bacchi, Pietro and Gian Lorenzo Bernini: Bust of the Savior, New York 2016, p. 37; Andrea Bacchi, entry in Bernini cit. pp. 48-52, cat. I.7), without considering the group with Adam and Eve, on which cfr. infra.

31. The villa was sold by Laura Frangipane, a distant relative of Muzio Frangipane, the husband of Leone Strozzi’s sister, cfr. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 69.

32. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 13.

33. On this aspect of the assembly of the Strozzi collection cfr. Bacchi, entry in Bernini cit. pp. 48-52, cat. I.7.

34. M. Minozzi, entry in Bernini cit., pp. 170-173, cat. V.3.

35. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 233.

36. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 79, fig 64.

37. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 233.

38. On Pietro Bernini’s work as a restorer cfr. S. Pierguidi, entry in Bernini cit., pp. 84-85, cat. III.1.

39. It had been suggested (Frits Scholten, entry in Caravaggio Bernini. Early Baroque in Rome, catalogue of the exhibition (Vienna, Kunsthstorisches Museum; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), Amsterdam 2019, p. 257, cat. 73) that the repetition of the figure of autumn was justified by the scorpion sculpted on the base of the two statues, in other words by Leone Strozzi’s date of birth; however, he was baptized on 8 October 1555 (Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 43, note 24) and was thus a Libra.

40. This hypothesis was advanced in Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., pp. 196-197.

41. On the possible identification of these two statues cfr. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 196 (when mention is made of a Spring in a further inventory of 1643, never transcribed, this must have been the ancient Abundance, not the fourth statue under discussion here).

42. The inventory of 1652 was not transcribed in full, Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 234.

43. In addition to all those mentioned, in 1642 in the main hall, among the statues of large size, it seems that there was also “a figurine [sic.] with a raised leg, about seven and a half palms high”, Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 233. It was not specified whether this statue was ancient or modern, and in any case it cannot have belonged to the group of related works under discussion here. It is also possible that the inventory did not correctly report the size, as otherwise the description of the statue as a “figurine” would seem strange.

44. Since the inventory of 1652 is very precise in its descriptions and did not mention the animal to be associated with a sign of the zodiac, present in all the modern sculptures by Bernini (and always mentioned in the inventory itself), we must assume that this second version of Summer did not have a lion at the base of the statue.

45. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 233.

46. Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, VIII,1, Zürich und München, 1997, p. 235.

47. Cfr. note 30.

48. G. Manilli, Villa Borghese, Rome 1650, p. 4. The traditional modern naming of the two Terms as Flora and Priapus is based on a far-fetched interpretation of a passage of the description of the villa of 1750 proposed in F. Martinelli, Novità berniniane, 4, Flora e Priapo. I due Termini già nella villa Borghese a Roma, in “Commentari”, XIII, 1962, p. 268.

49. Campitelli, Erme, in Bernini scultore cit., pp. 21-22; A. Bacchi, L’apprendistato con Pietro, in Bernini cit., pp. 23-24.

50. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., pp. 82-83.

51. Scholten, entry in Caravaggio Bernini cit., p. 257, cat. 75.

52. On this point cfr. especially Cesare D’Onofrio, Roma vista da Roma, Rome 1967, pp. 89-105.

53. Giacomo Manilli, Villa Borghese, Roma 1650, p. 4.

54. Lavin, Bernini giovane cit. pp. 144-145 and A. Bacchi, entry in Bernini cit., p. 32, cat. I.1 (with preceding bibliography).

55. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., pp. 193-196.

56. Certainly, as we have said, in 1652 the Diamond Autumn, set on a base that differed from those of the four Aldobrandini Seasons, was singled out from these, but this does not completely rule out the possibility that the statues were originally, in around 1616, displayed in a different way.

57. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 195.

58. Scholten, entry in Caravaggio Bernini cit., p. 257, cat. 75.

59. Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma cit., p. 222, note 368.

60. Bacchi, L’apprendistato con Pietro cit., p. 27; Pierguidi, entry in Bernini cit., p. 72, cat. II.3.

61. Kessler, Pietro Bernini cit., pp.355-356, 367-370.

62. Lavin, Five New Youthful cit., p. 234.

63. Cfr. note 12.

64. S. Pierguidi, entry in Bernini cit., pp. 68-71, cat. II.2.

65. On the issue of recognizing Pietro’s potential role in the invention of the Aeneas and Anchises, cfr. S. Pierguidi, “Il nome del grandissimo figlio aveva evidentemente assorbito il nome del grande padre”: intorno al giovane Bernini, in “Bollettino d’arte”, XCIII/145, pp. 107-111.

66. Pierguidi, “Il nome del grandissimo figlio” cit., p. 105.

GIAN LORENZO BERNINI IN THE WORKSHOP OF HIS FATHER, PIETRO
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE 'STROZZI AUTUMN'

By Frits Scholten
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Created during the crucial adolescent years of the genius Gian Lorenzo Bernini, during the period he was working side by side with his father in the latter’s workshop, this personification of Autumn forms an important testimony of the young sculptor’s development towards artistic independence. Bernini’s process of artistic emancipation reached fruition shortly before 1620 with a series of medium-size works in which the influence of Pietro Bernini – himself a sculptor of remarkable originality and virtuosity –rapidly diminished up to the point where the collaborative nature of their studio is no longer reflected in the documents and records of payment.¹

The Autumn is situated at the heart of this Gründerzeit of both the young Bernini and of Roman Baroque sculpture at large. It belongs to a small group of sculptures executed between 1615 and 1620 in the workshop near Sta. Maria Maggiore in Rome that reveal the hand of Pietro, especially in their style and composition, yet also evince the youthful ambitions of his brilliant son in their energy and dynamism as well as of their technical bravura. While Autumn's implicit motion and the painterly qualities of its composition already speak of the young Gian Lorenzo’s personal style, the artistic personality of Pietro is still manifest.

Leone Strozzi as patron

The large scorpion at the feet of the satyr underscores the purpose of the sculpture as a personification of Autumn: it is the zodiac sign for the months of October and November and is generally associated with the season of Fall. It would thus seem very likely that the work once formed part of a set representing the Four Seasons, perhaps meant to be installed in the park of a villa.² Surprisingly, this is not the case here. The Autumn was owned by one of Bernini’s earliest patrons, the banker Leone Strozzi who kept it at his villa ‘al Viminale’ in Rome.³ It can be traced there in the inventories from 1632 through to 1774.⁴ Strozzi’s suburban residence served to showcase his rich collection of antique and contemporary sculptures, and as such it was comparable to Cardinal Scipione Borghese’s villa on the Pincio. In the words of Filippo Titi, in his Descrizione delle pitture, sculture e architetture.... in Roma: Non lungi dalla Villa Montalto è situata questa del signor Duca Strozzi Principe di Forano, dov’ è un bel casino, disegno di Giacomo del Duca, con giardino ornato di statue. Vi sono due urne di verde antico collocate nel vestibolo, due veneri, e due gladiatori, e altri marmi antichi, e alcune statue moderne di Pietro Bernini, padre del cavalier Lorenzo. Fu prima questo casino de’ Signori Frangipani, comprato poi da Leone Strozzi.⁵ (‘Not far from the Villa Montalto lies that of Duke Strozzi, Prince of Forano, a beautiful pavilion, designed by Giacomo del Duca, with a garden decorated with statues. There are two vases of verde antico installed in the entrance hall, two Venuses, and two Gladiators, as well as other ancient marbles, and several modern sculptures by Pietro Bernini, father of the cavaliere Lorenzo. The villa previously belonged to the Frangipani from whom Leone Strozzi bought it.’).

Recent studies have yielded a more precise view of Strozzi’s collection and in particular, revealed Leone's prominent role as patron of both the elder and the younger Bernini in the second decade of the 17th century. Moreover, it has become clear which sculptures belonged to the group of alcune statue moderne di Pietro Bernini, padre del cavalier Lorenzo mentioned by Titi. Strozzi seems very probably to have owned the Adam and Eve-group, now in Musée de Tessé (Le Mans), which was recognized as a late work by Pietro Bernini in 2006.⁶ In the 1632 inventory of the Villa Strozzi this rather unconventional and ambitious sculpture, with its easily recognisable debt to Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine, is listed as Due figure nude del naturale di Adamo et Eva col serpente in un gruppo moderna alta palmi otto (‘Two nude life-size figures of Adam and Eve with the serpent, in a modern group eight palmi high’).⁷ Strozzi was also the fortunate owner of a famous early work by the young Gian Lorenzo, namely the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence of c. 1617, now in the Uffizi (Contini Bonacossi Collection). It was listed in the 1632 inventory as Un San Lorenzo sopra la graticola moderno. In addition, the wealthy banker could boast possession of a set of four sculptures, representing the seasons. According to the villa’s inventories of 1632 and 1705, these four statues were not installed in the garden, as would have been expected, but inside the house.⁸ Nowadays these Four Seasons are at the Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati and are generally considered to have been invented by Pietro Bernini, with the assistance of his son in the execution, with some scholars believing that the latter had a large share in the conception of the Autumn in this ensemble.⁹ There is less agreement about the dating of this group, which varies from c. 1616 to c. 1620.¹⁰ The truth lies probably somewhere in the middle – 1617/1618 – as the sculptures lack the refinement of Gian Lorenzo’s early autonomous works from or shortly before 1619: the St Lawrence and the St Sebastian (Madrid, Thyssen-Bornemisza collection), the stunning busts of Anima dannata and Anima beata (Rome, Spanish Embassy to the Holy See), and the monumental group of Aeneas, Anchises and Ascanius in the Galleria Borghese. Stylistically, on the other hand, the Seasons conform well with Pietro’s works from 1614 and 1616.¹¹

An autonomous Autumn

The present Autumn was thus one of six (or perhaps even seven, see below) sculptures from the workshop of Bernini & Son in the Villa Strozzi; but given that they included a complete set of Four Seasons (the ensemble now in Frascati), the presence of a second, Autumn is remarkable and difficult to understand. Why did the banker own two versions of the same subject, both works from the workshop of the Berninis and both conceptually somewhat similar? Perhaps an explanation might lie in Leone Strozzi’s horoscope, if Scorpio was his astrological birth-sign or in his ascendant.

Although the dimensions of both personifications of Autumn are nearly identical, their scale is not: the standing satyr measures 125 cm in height, the seated satyr is even a few centimetres taller. If the latter was shown standing, like the three other seasons in the set, he would be almost life size. In other words, because of its pose and size, the present Autumn - standing and independent - would paradoxically match the Frascati-set much better than the seated one. Does this imply that the standing satyr was initially intended as part of the set of the Four Seasons, and for unknown reasons discarded in favour of the seated version? In other words, was a work perhaps largely conceived by the young Gian Lorenzo, replaced by his father's seated version? Or did the standing Autumn-satyr enter the Strozzi collection at a later moment, as we know that the St. Lawrence did? In any case, it was destined to live a life on its own, without the company of its three fellow seasons.

The standing Autumn's special status is reflected in the way it was displayed in the sala of Strozzi's villa. According to the inventory of 1652 it was one of only two sculptures to have been mounted on a special and probably costly base, an alabaster column-shaped pedestal: Un’altra [statua] che tiene s.a testa diversi frutti appoggiata ad un tronco sotto scolpitoci un Scorpione di palmi 5 in circa s.a una colonna d’alabastro (‘Another [sculpture] that carries on its head various fruits, leaning against a tree trunk with a scorpion carved below, of c. 5 palmi [heigh] on a column of alabaster’).¹² Its counterpart, on a similar base and of the same height, was listed as Una statua con una cornucopia di frutti e con un fascio di grano – evidently a personification of the Summer or of Abundance. Since the two were displayed next to each other and installed on identical bases, one wonders whether they could have been conceived as a pair and both produced by Bernini & Son. Their extraordinary pedestals were probably adapted from a spolium, an antique Roman column of so-called alabastro fiorito.¹³

Gian Lorenzo?

One of the reasons for attributing the present Autumn to the younger Bernini are the diversi frutti that hover like a cloud above the satyr’s head. This abundant and varied festoon – with an anecdotal ghiro or dormouse stuck between the grapes, preparing himself for a long period of hibernation -- is a tour de force in marble of a type that can be seen in several other works from the Bernini bottega during this period. For example, a similar display of technical virtuosity occurs in the Frascati Spring, Summer and Autumn, in the splendid Faun teased by children in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in two monumental herms - Priapus and Flora – dating from 1616 and made for the garden of the Villa Borghese (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art). A remark on this latter pair, made in 1650 by the steward of the Borghese villa, Giacomo Manilli, provides an important argument in ascribing the present Autumn to Gian Lorenzo. According to Manilli the two herm figures were Opere [...] moderne di Pietro Bernini, aiutato dal Cavaliere Lorenzo suo figliuolo, all’hora giovinetto, il quale vi scolpì i frutti et i fiori (‘… modern Works […] by Pietro Bernini, assisted by his son, the Cavaliere Lorenzo, then a very young man, who sculpted the fruits and flowers’).¹⁴ There can be little doubt that Manilli was right.

As sculptural bravura passages of a very painterly nature, the sumptuous fruits and flowers held by Priapus and Flora in their hands and on their heads are discrete masterpieces in their own right. They might invite the viewer to make a comparison with Caravaggio’s Boy with a Basket of Fruit inside the Villa Borghese, or with his other early still lifes from the 1590’s. Was the ambitious young Bernini here entering into an artistic paragone between scultura and pittura? Whatever the case, the frutti et i fiori typically are the kind of decorations that could be entrusted to a skilful young sculptor during his training. They would provide a significant technical challenge, and at the same time offer him sufficient freedom of artistic invention. It is not inconceivable that Gian Lorenzo carved them en taille directe, an idea which may seem less uncomfortably modern when one realises that around 1615 Pietro had made a unique (and experimental?) marble bozzetto.¹⁵ The fruits and flowers would have offered the young sculptor excellent possibilities to train himself in the carving of flat, sharp or bulbous shapes. With the help of a drill he could explore grades of depth to enhance the dramatic effects of chiaroscuro, and his skills with the chisel could be honed by the suggestion of the different textures of grapes, pomegranates, peonies, roses or vine leaves. The same is true for the fruit hanging above the satyr in the present Autumn, which in its execution resembles similar passages in the Faun Teased by Children as well as in three of the four Seasons at Frascati. Given these similarities and because of the remark by Manilli, all these delicate vegetal and floral carvings are likely to be by the hand of Gian Lorenzo.

Another argument in favour of an attribution of the Strozzi Autumn to Gian Lorenzo is offered by its dynamic pose. The satyr seems to make a double movement, upwards as well as stepping forward. While the satyr pushes off with his proper right foot against the tilted side of the ground, he has already climbed forward to a slightly higher part of the natural plinth with his left. At the same time his right arm grasps the top-heavy ‘explosion’ of ripe fruits from the symbolic tree trunk behind him. Because of this upward and forward dynamism, the sculpture is conceptually completely different from the seated Autumn in the Frascati ensemble despite superficial similarities. Although the latter shares the upward-straining pose of the upper part of his body with the standing satyr, he rests frozen on a rocky base, reprising an invention of some twenty years earlier: Pietro's seated Satyr and Panther in Berlin (Bode-museum).¹⁶ Seen from the left the Autumn-satyr’s posture recalls the energetic Faun Teased by Children, generally considered to be the fruit of close collaboration between Pietro and his son, while frontally and from the rear the satyr is reminiscent of Pietro’s athletic Adam in Le Mans. In view of the traditionally static depiction of the seasons, this dynamism of Autumn is remarkable and underpins the idea that the young Gian Lorenzo may have had a free hand in the work. Furthermore, this idea is supported by the fact that the same combination of upward and forward movement recurs, admittedly more subtly, in the Moro, a mature work by Bernini for one of the fountains in the Piazza Navona (1653-1655). In conclusion, the Strozzi Autumn can be regarded as one of Gian Lorenzo’s earliest independent works, most likely dating from c. 1616 and created under the aegis of Pietro, but with a considerable input of his own. It betrays his emerging lifelong fascination with movement, narrative and painterliness in sculpture to arouse the constant meraviglia of his viewers. A testimony of the young Bernini’s burgeoning talents and of the artistic promise that soon would take shape in the series of monumental and ‘pictorial’ works he produced for the Villa Borghese.

1. Hans-Ulrich Kessler, Pietro Bernini (1562-1629), Römische Studien der Bibliotheca Hertziana 16, Munich 2005, pp. 452, 453 (documents nos. 177-181): payments for Gian Lorenzo’s Aeneas-group to both father and son. In 1682 Baldinucci still characterised the group as un po’ alla maniera di Pietro

2. Kessler 2005, p. 355

3. F. Scholten & G. Swoboda (eds.), Caravaggio – Bernini. Early Baroque in Rome, Vienna & Amsterdam 2019, pp. 256, 257, 297 (no. 73)

4. Maria Barbara Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma. Mecenati e collezionisti nel Sei e Settecento, Roma 2004, pp. 194, 196, 234; also P. Marseglia, ‘Per Diletto e per decoro: Le collezioni romane della famiglia Strozzi’, Studi di Storia dell’Arte XIII (2002), pp. 149-176

5. Filippo Titti, Descrizione delle pitture, sculture e architetture.... in Roma, Rome 1763, p. 434

6. Philippe Malgouyres, ‘Adam, Eve et le serpent, un groupe inédit de Pietro Bernini’, Revue de l’art 151 (2006), pp. 65-71

7. Maria Barbara Guerrieri Borsoi, Gli Strozzi a Roma. Mecenati e collezionisti nel Sei e Settecento, Roma 2004, p. 229; Andrea Bacchi, ‘The apprenticeship with Pietro’, in: Cat. Rome, Galleria Borghese, Bernini (Andrea Bacchi & Anna Coliva, eds.), Rome 2017, pp. 23-31, espec. p. 26 and fig. 3

8. Guerrieri Borsoi 2004, pp. 230, 233

9. Cf. Kessler 2005, pp. 367-371; cat. Rome, Galleria Borghese, Bernini (A. Bacchi & A. Coliva, eds.), Rome 2017, no. 1.7 (entry by Andrea Bacchi)

10. Montanari, ‘Chi perde vince: un Salvatore di Gian Lorenzo e Pietro Bernini (1617-19 circa)’, Prospettiva 157-158 (2015), pp. 176-191, espec. p. 180 (c. 1616); Kessler 2005, p. 371 (c. 1619); Bacchi in cat. Rome 2017, cat.no. I.7 (c. 1620)

11. Kessler 2005, p. 371

12. Guerrieri Borsoi 2004, p. 234

13. Cf. Gabriele Borghini (ed.), Marmi antichi, Rome 1998, pp. 142-145

14. Giacomo Manilli, Villa Borghese fuori di Porta Pincia, Rome 1650, p. 4; Bacchi in cat. Rome 2017, p. 23

15. Cat. Rome 2017, no. I.2

16. Scholten & Swoboda 2019, no. 72