Mysterious Marble Skull turns out to be by Bernini
June 15 2021
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Here's an important discovery that I missed the other week.
A marble skull on display at Schloss Pillnitz, south of Dresden, has been discovered to be the work of the seventeenth-century sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The mysterious object had raised the curiosity of curators for some time, especially since the unattributed piece was known to have Roman provenance.
As the article above explains:
“Everybody had the same reaction to it,” Kryza-Gersch told the Art Newspaper. “We were standing around a table, looking at it. The question of course was—who made it? And since it has Roman provenance, someone jokingly said ‘maybe it’s a Bernini?’”
In fact, further research revealed that the skull was indeed made by the Italian master for Pope Alexander VII in the mid-17th century. “Our jokes were proven right,” the curator said.
