ATTRIBUTED TO GIAN LORENZO BERNINI (NAPLES 1598-1680 ROME)

This striking portrait was first published by Francesco Petrucci in 2006, who stated in the catalogue that the attribution to Gian Lorenzo Bernini was first proposed by Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco (op. cit.). Petrucci compared the boy's physiognomy to the head of Bernini's marble David (Villa Borghese, Rome), which Baldinucci also proposed as a self-portrait, comparing it in particular to the Self-Portrait as Alexander the Great (Private collection, Rome; ibid, p. 308) and Self-Portrait previously with Salander-O'Reilly, New York (ibid., p. 306), both of which Petrucci considered to have been painted by Bernini, comparing the execution of the latter to the present work. Although the attribution and identification of the sitter have been disputed (see Montanari, loc. cit.), Bernini's accepted oeuvre is characterised by his speed of execution, pictorial abbreviation, sensitivity to the natural and a taste for the unfinished, all of which can be identified in the present portrait.