The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna has attributed a painting shelved in storage since 1989 to Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the Italian Baroque master far better known for sculpture and architecture than for pictures on canvas. The portrait, titled "Portrait of an Old Man," will anchor an exhibition opening in December.
The nearly life-size painting shows an elderly, white-haired man gazing intently out of a dark background. It entered the museum's collection in 1920 attributed to the French painter Philippe de Champaigne, then was reassigned over the decades to a string of other names — an anonymous Roman artist, the French painter Jean Jouvenet, the Flemish painters Jacob Ferdinand Voet and Erasmus Quellinus, and, most recently, the Italian painter Giovanni Battista Gaulli, known as Baciccio. Without a confident attribution, the work was pulled from view in 1989.
A sculptor's eye, applied to paint
Museum curator Gudrun Swoboda built the case for Bernini through close comparison with his accepted works, arguing the portrait betrays the hand of a sculptor working in paint. According to The Art Newspaper, she pointed to how the lips are "moulded with precision" and how the face seems built up "like clay," describing the whole as carrying "a sense of the sculptural" distinctive to Bernini's approach.
Scientific examination reinforced the attribution: technical analysis found two different hands at work, with Bernini responsible for the head and collar while a second painter — possibly his son Paolo, who also painted — completed the garment below. The clothing and collar style point to a date around 1670, when Bernini was 71 and nearing the end of his life.
Bernini, who died in 1680, is one of the defining figures of Roman Baroque art, celebrated chiefly for architectural works like the colonnade of St. Peter's Square and sculptures such as "The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa." His paintings are rare: fewer than 20 are currently accepted as authentic, making any addition to that list significant for scholars of the period.
The portrait will go on view as the centerpiece of "Bernini: Painter and Sculptor," running December 2 through April 4, 2027, at the museum's Palais Lobkowitz location. The show will place it alongside other rare Bernini paintings, including a self-portrait from Florence's Uffizi Gallery and a self-portrait drawing from the Royal Collection, giving visitors a rare chance to see the sculptor's brushwork alongside his far more famous marble.
