The mythological goddess of the hunt, Diana, reclines in a forest setting with her hunting dogs, Syrius and Phocion, observing a hunt underway in the middle ground below. Diana (or Artemis, in Greek mythology) was revered as an inaccessible maiden, an avid huntress, and the patroness of wild animals, forests, and hills. This painting was commissioned in about 1690 by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, the powerful nephew of Pope Alexander VIII. For several decades, Ottoboni was one of the great artistic patrons in Rome. Both of Diana's dogs are certainly individual portraits of household pets dear to the Cardinal. One wears the heraldic device of the Ottoboni family on his collar. The setting is in the Alban hills, an area about sixty miles from Rome. View Text Item

It all started in late December of 1998 when the director's administrative assistant, Jon Severson, brought me an almost illegible fax. "He wants you to read it right away," Jon said. Although "he" was indeed the Institute's director, Evan Maurer, such an urgent request was unprecedented. The reason, however, was immediately apparent. This was a loan request for the Institute's bronze bust of Pope Clement X, herein attributed to Gianlorenzo Bernini, for an exhibition covering Bernini's vast output, to take place in Rome over the summer of 1999. The previous attribution to another sculptor, Domenico Guidi, had long been accepted, but now this fax indicated we might actually have a Bernini!

Why all the excitement? Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) was a multi-faceted genius, the artist most responsible for the creation of Baroque Rome, the great capital city as we know it today. Although primarily a sculptor, Bernini was at the same time an architect, painter, theatrical designer, and poet. The premier artist in Rome during the reigns of seven popes, Bernini was a first-rate impresario who produced many innovative works of sculpture, and several great churches and palaces. He orchestrated such grandiose projects as the colonnade embracing the piazza in front of St. Peter's basilica. For fifty years every artist in Rome, willingly or unwillingly, had to bow to his eminence. Who would not be eager to own a work by this unparalleled artist?

The new attribution, we learned in the exhibition catalogue, has been made by an Italian scholar, Francesco Petrucci. When the smudged pages of his entry came through by fax, I translated the convoluted phrases from the Italian and found that Petrucci's opinion is based on both documentary evidence and stylistic analysis—two common tools used by art historians to reason out an attribution.

According to seventeenth-century sources, Bernini executed four portrait busts of Clement X (Emilio Altieri, 1590-1676): three in marble and one in bronze. A bronze portrait bust "by Cav. [Cavaliere] Bernini" was first noted in the travel diary of a German traveler, Nicodemus Tessin, who saw it in the Altieri family palace in Rome in 1688. Another art historian, Eleanora Villa, recently uncovered documents in the Altieri archives recording payments made in 1671 to the painter Giovanni Battista Gaulli for the casting of a bust of the pope "all in metal." This paper trail convinced Petrucci that this documented bronze portrait was none other than the Institute's sculpture, created by Bernini but with Gaulli responsible for the casting process. Since the Institute owns one of Gaulli's major paintings, Diana the Huntress (about 1690), pictured on page 8, Petrucci's joint attribution is ideal.

Whereas today the collaborative—rather than strictly individual—production of a work of art is uncommon, in Bernini's era it was the norm. In order to produce his numerous commissions, Bernini relied on the many highly skilled artists and craftsmen in his large workshop, who worked under his close supervision in conformance with his distinctive style. But Gaulli's involvement was puzzling. Why did Bernini choose a painter to oversee the precarious process of bronze casting, and why did his own name not appear among the payments? Eleanora Villa suggests the following intriguing explanation.

In 1670, Bernini abruptly fell from papal favor when his brother, Luigi, was charged with sodomy and exiled. In order to obtain the pope's pardon of the criminal charges against his brother, Bernini executed several sculptures gratis for the Altieri family. Villa contends that Bernini trusted Gaulli, an artist of stature patronized by the papal family, to oversee the completion of the portrait on his behalf, whereas Bernini himself received no recompense. Gaulli may also have provided a painted portrait of Clement X to serve as the prototype, now lost but documented by an engraving in the British Museum in London.

Assuming that we could reasonably accept this complicated solution, I set about with Catherine Futter, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts' Associate Curator in the Department of Decorative Arts, Sculpture, and Architecture, to explore the stylistic connections between our sculpture and others more securely associated with Bernini. We found no shortage of salient characteristics: the high quality of technical execution, the expressive vitality and naturalism of the modeling, the acute psychological insight, the ermine-lined cape slightly arched as if to accommodate the right arm raised in blessing, and the hyper-realistic detail of the half-buttoned button.

Still, Catherine and I were dubious. Much of the sculpture's history cannot be explained. Is this indeed the portrait whose last recorded sighting in the Altieri palace dates to 1725? Or is it another work altogether? We do know that ours was one of four papal busts in the collections of Baron Gustave de Rothschild in Paris and then Brussels in the nineteenth century, that were subsequently acquired by four American museums in the late 1950s through a New York dealer. According to one theory, the Rothschild group can be identified with a group of four papal busts included in the interior decoration that Bernini designed in 1676 for the church of Santa Maria di Montesanto in Rome, one of the twin churches in Piazza del Popolo. (The original four busts disappeared in the latter nineteenth century—when so many works of art were spirited away from Italian churches to be purchased by foreign collectors—and were replaced by plaster replicas.)

I wrote to curators at two of the other three museums, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Cleveland Museum of Art, for photographs and information. (Only the bust in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, signed and dated by Melchior Caffà, has an unassailable attribution.) We are especially interested in the bust of Clement IX in Detroit, currently attributed to Bernini but cast by the sculptor Girolamo Lucenti, since Anthony Clark, a former director of The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and an Italian Baroque expert, had proposed Lucenti as its author. We also contacted the archivist of Rothschild and Sons in London, hoping that they still had records concerning the acquisition of the papal busts by Baron Gustave, but she could locate none.

The obvious next step was to go to Rome and see for ourselves. In May, Catherine accompanied the bust to Rome for the Bernini exhibition and was able to see other examples of Bernini's sculpture, both in the exhibition and throughout the city. Then in July, I had the chance to visit the exhibition in its entirety. In one gallery, a corridor had been created in which a dozen busts of cardinals and popes were lined in two facing rows. This dramatic installation afforded the perfect opportunity to examine these individual examples for stylistic comparisons.

I also went to Santa Maria di Montesanto, and strained to see any similarity to our bust in the plaster bust of Clement X, dusty and dimly lit: obviously an inferior replica, but probably modeled on the same prototype. And I traipsed around Rome to see all available sculptures by Bernini.

To our own surprise, Catherine and I both came away with a similar opinion—we are now confident that this is a work by Bernini, likely produced in collaboration with another artist. In the Institute's sculpture we see the same superlative standard of quality that distinguishes other works by Bernini. Whether this is the same bust that was cast by Gaulli is the less certain part of the equation. As a further step in resolving that issue, we obtained from the British Museum an engraving after a now lost portrait of Clement X by Gaulli, which possibly served as the model.

Art history can only be as scientific as fate permits. Until we have more evidence in hand, the Bernini attribution must remain an opinion, not a fact. In the meantime, we are waiting to hear from several international authorities on Bernini's sculpture who have promised to send us their views—favorable or unfavorable—concerning the proposed attribution. The portrait of Clement X is now back home and will be on view in Gallery 330, next to Gaulli's painting. We invite you to come see it and draw your own conclusions.

Jane Satkowski is Research Associate in the Curatorial Division of The Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Related Images

Portrait of Pope Clement X Altieri, about 1671
Attributed to Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), in possible collaboration with Giovanni Battista Gaulli.

Engraving after a portrait of Pope Clement X Altieri by Giovanni Battista Gaulli, about 1670. Copyright, The British Museum, London.

The partially-fastened button, a signature detail of Bernini's papal portraits, was often copied by his contemporaries.

Giovanni Battista Gaulli (called Il Baciccio) (1639-1709), Diana the Huntress, about 1690. View Text Item

The chaste huntress Diana is shown in forest setting with her hunting dogs, Syrius and Phocion. A bow and quiver, also referring to the hunt, lie in front of them. Diana was an ancient Italian goddess of fertility and vegetation and was often associated with woods, hence she was also a goddess of hunting. She was also identified with Luna, the Italian moon goddess, and with the Greek goddess Artemis, no distinction being made between the two in terms of their attributes and powers. Artemis was revered as the everlasting virgin, an inaccessible maiden, an avid huntress, and the patroness of wild animals, of forests, hills and beasts. Under her special protection were pre-nubile girls and women in childbirth. She was thus the giver and taker of life.

Both mythological subjects and landscapes were popular genres in Cardinal Ottoboni's collection of paintings. Diana here occupies a grassy hill overlooking a sylvan setting in the Alban hills, an area some 60 miles south of Rome which was a favorite retreat of the Cardinal. Beyond lies the Mediterranean sea, situated between the forest and distant mountains, perhaps reminiscent of the Ligurian coast off Gaulli's native city of Genoa. The goddess seems to be resting while she gazes at a hunt underway in the middle ground below her, indicated by tiny, sketchy figures of maidens and animals, which include wild boars. Both of Diana's dogs are certainly individual portraits of household pets dear to the man who commissioned the painting.

Diana's reclining form is enhanced by the structure and color scheme of the composition. A strong diagonal divides the composition into triangular halves; Diana and the dogs are crowded together in the left foreground triangle. The warm, glowing palette is typical of Gaulli's later works, and the succession of color changes serve to separate and define the foreground, middle ground and background. The figure of Diana is bathed in light. The luminous quality of her white garment and rosy skin and of the white dog's pristine coat are set off by the deep blue of her cloak and the dark browns and greens of the forest vegetation, which in turn contrast with the pale, hazy blue of the distant sea and mountains. The strong, angular folds of Diana's garment, with crisp edges (often rolled over to reveal both the outer and the inner surface) is a stylistic development derived from the expressive sculptural forms of Gianlorenzo Bernini.

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Finally we are beginning to have a clear idea of what Gaulli was doing in the latter part of his life when Carlo Maratta was getting some of the best commissions for paintings for the churches of Rome. He was carrying out some of the best commission for the palaces, among them the Ottoboni Diana.Giovanni Battista Gaulli, called Baciccio (1639-1709), is still known above all for his religious paintings. He has by no means regained the eminence he once enjoyed in his own day as a portraitist, and he is only beginning to be recognized for his mythologies. All of these paintings—portraits and pagan themes alike—have been out of sight in private collections for centuries and are just now beginning to come to light. Certainly one of the most important examples of this whole group of late works done for private patronage is the large, handsome Diana that once belonged to the Ottoboni and is now in The Minneapolis Institute of Arts.¹The painting is in every way typical of Baciccio's work around 1690. The strong, angular garment folds with crisp edges (often rolled over to reveal both the outer and the inner surface) is a development out of the sculpture of Bernini. The same treatment of garment folds appears in the St. Ignatius in Glory which Baciccio painted at the Gesù in 1685.² The fresco also provides examples of another Bacicciesque motif seen in the Diana at Minneapolis: the fingers arched up and a row of dimples running across the back of the hand. Still another characteristic of Baciccio, and one that is not at all typical of late Seicento painting in general, is the combination of large foreground figures (here the Diana) with tiny figures in the background (here the nymphs of Diana taking part in a boar hunt). The motif appears in Baciccio's paintings almost from the beginning. We find it, for example, in his St. John at S. Nicola da Tolentino, a canvas that can be dated about 1670. It reappears in his work intermittently, throughout his life.³But his palette is his signature. Gaulli is one of the great colorists; his colors are unmistakable. Our eye is drawn at once by the strength of the blues: the royal blue of Diana's cloak, the brilliant blue of the cliffs coming down to the sea (recollections of Baciccio's Ligurian home), the gentler but still insistent blue of the sky, and the clouds that are neither white nor gray (as we might expect) but also blue. The landscape in the middle distance is green intermixed with tans and browns. Here Baciccio tends to crowd the darks to offset the blues all around them. Another aspect of color scheme is Baciccio's bold cangiantismo. Diana's inner skirt is a gleaming white that shades off into pale, cold blue, then changes suddenly, on its undersurfaces, into a bewildering variety of reddish browns. Cangianti appear even in the tiny figures in the background. The archer nearest Diana wears a blue robe touched up with rose in the highlights. Such touches of staffage in the sunlit clearing provide us with a lyric interlude.⁴ In short, the palette is typical of what we should expect of Baciccio in the decade from 1685 to 1695. The colors are still very strong, but they are cooler than what we have seen previously and laid on with smoother, more concealed brushwork. The flesh tones are still rosier than they will be at the very end of Baciccio's life. But Diana's face has a certain paleness and dryness about it, a powdery, rouged effect, that is idiosyncratic of Baciccio's last phase.The animals in the painting are usual for Baciccio, but they are not without precedent. There is a dog in his first major work, The Madonna with St. Anthony and St. Roch in S. Rocco in Rome.⁵ These are finer. Impasto gleams across the reddish brown coat of the furry dog on the left. The greyhound is white suffused with soft pink. Both figures are obviously individual portraits: dogs dear to the man who commissioned the painting. One carries on his collar a heraldic device: two double-headed eagles. This, as we shall see, allows us to identify the patron as Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667-1740).Almost immediately after he ascended the papal throne in October of 1689 Alexander VIII raised his nephew, Pietro Ottoboni, then twenty-two years old, to the rank of Cardinal. The Ottoboni pope died a year-and-a-half later thus depriving his nephew of the full fruits of his nepotism, but the young man went on to become the last great art patron of Baroque Rome.⁶ Francesco Trevisani, Maratta's successor, did endless paintings for him, and he commissioned works by Sebastiano Conca, Guiseppe Maria Crespi, and Sebastiano Ricci. The Ottoboni Cardinal sponsored an important opera company. He himself on occasion provided the librettos and no less an artist than Filippo Juvara designed the stage sets. He also encouraged Baciccio.“Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, nephew of Pope Alexander VIII, had high regard and affection for Gaulli” wrote Ratti in 1769, adding that “he [the Cardinal] wished him [Gaulli] to make a portrait of his uncle the Pope.”⁷ He also commissioned him to do his own portrait, which though it can no longer be traced, was, judging from the engravings of it,⁸ almost handsome. The Diana he commissioned from Baciccio was likewise long thought to be lost until it was rediscovered n London in 1968.⁹ Pascoli wrote in 1730 in his Life of Gaulli: “When Alexander VIII ascended the throne he [Gaulli] made some pictures for Cardinal Ottoboni, nephew of his Holiness. That of Diana was extraordinary. His Eminence then gave it with three others no less extraordinary than the first to Abbot Adami, by whom these precious jewels are still jealously guarded.”¹⁰ Ratti adds “Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, nephew of Pope Alexander VIII . . . commissioned him to paint various narrative paintings, some of which, through the gracious give of the cardinal, passed into the hands of Abbot Adami . . . Among these paintings, that of Diana the Huntress is superb.”¹¹The large scale of this Diana, its completely finished appearance, and above all the double-headed Ottoboni eagles on the greyhound's collar are convincing evidence that this is the one Ottoboni painting by Baciccio, apart from the portraits, that both Pascoli and Ratti thought sufficiently impressive to name.¹² It must have been done about 1690. Pascoli implies that Baciccio painted it during the brief pontificate of Alexander VIII and this, as we have seen, is entirely consistent with the palette. The canvas is the equal of anything we have by Baciccio on a secular theme. Minneapolis can be proud of having acquired it.Robert Enggass is Professor of Art History at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of The Painting of Baciccio (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1964), Italy and Spain 1600-1750, Sources and Documents in the History of Art, with Jonathan Brown (Prentice-Hall, 1970), and numerous articles for The Burlington Magazine, the Art Bulletin, the Art Quarterly, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Paragone, Bollettine d'Arte, and Commentari.Endnotes

1. 69.37. The Frances E. Andrews Fund. Oil on canvas, 5’2 3/4” x 6’10 5/8”.
2. R. Enggass, The Painting of Baciccio, Giovanni Battista Gaulli, 1639-1709 (University Park, Pa., 1964), p. 178, fig. 97.
3. Enggass, p. 147, fig. 18. Cf. The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Academia di San Luca, Rome, p. 150, fig. 19; Adoration of the Shepherds S. Maria del Carmine, Fermo, p. 123, fig. 29; Death of St. Francis Xavier, Sant'Agostino, Ascoli Piceno, p. 123, fig. 46; Preaching of John the Baptist, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, p. 123, fig. 125; St. Francis Xavier Preaching, Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, Rome, p. 141, fig. 136.
4. In this section the surface has been abraded, producing a certain transparency. Thus the legs of the nymphs read through the body of the deer.
5. About 1633-1666. See Enggass, p. 147, fig. 2.
6. Francis Haskell, Patrons and Painters (London, 1963), pp. 164-166.
7. My translation from Raffaello Soprani and Carlo Giuseppe Ratti, Vite de' pittori, scultori ad architetti genovesi . . ., Vol. II (Genoa,1769), p. 82. One version is now in Venice in the Corrado Collection, for which see Enggass, p. 159, and fig. 113.
8. See Enggass, p. 171. The engravings are by R. V. Auden Aerd and B. Farjat.
9. Enggass, p. 169, under “Lost Works” lists “Diana as Huntress. . . for Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni.”
10. My translation from Lione Pascoli, Vite de'pittori, scultori ad acchitetti moderni, Vol. I (Rome, 1730), p. 203.
11. My translation from Soprani-Ratti, Vol. II, p. 82.
12. In the city of Rome the double-headed eagle is a much rarer heraldic motif than one might suspect. Among the coat-of-arms of the many popes it appears nowhere except on the Ottoboni escutcheon.

Referenced Work of Art

1. Giovanni Battista Gaulli. Italian (1639-1709). Diana The Huntress, ca. 1690. Oil on linen, 63-5/8” x 83-1/4”. The Frances E. Andrews Fund, 69.37.

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