[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/bernini.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen the exhibition \u201cBernini\u2014Painter and Sculptor\u201d opens at Vienna\u2019s Kunsthistorisches Museum on Dec. 2, a painting newly attributed to the prolific Baroque master will be the star of the show. Until recently, Portrait of an Old Man<\/em>, previously credited to an unknown artist, sat in a storeroom at the museum, reports The Art Newspaper<\/em>. \u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tGian Lorenzo Bernini is widely known as an architect and sculptor. He designed several large, ornate components of St. Peter\u2019s Basilica in Rome, including the exterior piazza and colonnade. He was, for a time, the cathedral\u2019s official architect. Some of his best-known and most dramatic works include a marble sculpture of David intended to one-up Michelangelo\u2019s (on view at the Galleria Borghese in Rome) and the career-defining Ecstasy of Saint Theresa<\/em>, in Rome\u2019s Santa Maria della Vittoria church.<\/p>\n \n\tHe also made hundreds of paintings, though fewer than 20 known to be by Bernini survive. The Kunsthistorisches Museum has held Portrait of an Old Man<\/em> since 1920, when a local art collector who had purchased it 20 years earlier gifted it to the museum. At the time, it was thought to be by Philippe de Champaigne, a French artist and contemporary of Bernini. Attribution changed many times over the decades until it was eventually attributed to an anonymous artist. It had been in a museum storeroom since 1989.<\/p>\n \n\tGudrun Swoboda, curator of \u201cBernini\u2014Painter and Sculptor,\u201d told the Art Newspaper<\/em> that she zeroed in on the sculptural way in which the previously unidentified artist painted the musculature of the subject\u2019s face and mouth. The paint was applied as if \u201cbuilding up and modelling a face in clay,\u201d she said. The sitter\u2019s mustache is also notably sculptural. Swoboda also pointed to similarities between the corners of the mouth in the painting and those of Bernini\u2019s marble Bust of Louis XIV<\/em>, and to the angle of the lighting and the gaze found in a self-portrait drawing by Bernini, owned by the Royal Collection Trust.<\/p>\n Portrait of an Old Man <\/em>will be shown in Vienna alongside 10 international loans; the exhibition closes in April 2027. Swoboda has also edited a book about \u201cthe thrilling investigation behind the attribution.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/rare-portrait-bernini-newly-attributed-baroque-master-vienna-december-1234795503\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/bernini.jpg?w=1024″] When the exhibition \u201cBernini\u2014Painter and Sculptor\u201d opens at Vienna\u2019s Kunsthistorisches Museum on Dec. 2, a painting newly attributed to the prolific Baroque master will be the star of the show. Until recently, Portrait of an Old Man, previously credited to an unknown artist, sat in a storeroom at the museum, reports The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2107229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2107229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2107229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2107229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2107229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}