Bernini's "Speaking Marbles"
On the Development of the Italian Portrait Bust from the Late Fifteenth Century through the Summer of 1632 (lecture)

Date: Sunday, August 17, 2008
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Getty Center, Harold M. Williams Auditorium
Admission: Free. Reservations required.

"Looking at a portrait is like looking in a mirror," German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote. "One sees oneself reflected." Irving Lavin, emeritus professor of art history at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, situates Bernini's sculpture in the larger history of bust portraiture. The lecture complements the exhibition Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture (on view August 5–October 26 at the Getty Center), which features portraits in marble and bronze by Bernini and his contemporaries.

About Irving Lavin
One of the world's most renowned art historians and the foremost authority on Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Irving Lavin is emeritus professor of art history at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He has written extensively on the history of art from late antiquity to modern times and is the author of numerous works on Florentine and Roman art and architecture, including Santa Maria del Fiore: The Cathedral of Florence and the Pregnant Virgin; Bernini and the Crossing of Saint Peter's; Bernini, the Savior, and the "Good Death" in Seventeenth-Century Rome; and Bernini and the Unity of the Visual Arts.

About Gian Lorenzo Bernini
In the 1600s, Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his contemporaries transformed the portrait bust into a groundbreaking art form. Known in his time as the "new Michelangelo," Bernini was a master at creating immediate, informal, and lifelike portraits, many of which are featured in the major exhibition Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture. Bernini and his contemporaries invented a new language of portraiture that masterfully depicted sitters' individualized character and vitality.

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