Dramatic discoveries of previously unknown works by major sculptors are very rare. However, we publish here Maichol Clemente’s discovery of a hitherto undiscussed important work by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the genius of the Roman Baroque. His white marble ‘Andromeda and the sea monster’ (c.1616—17; private collection) was sculpted when Bernini was about eighteen or nineteen years old. It is a remarkable sculpture that demonstrates all the invention and bravura associated with his prodigious creations and represents a major addition to our understanding of his formative years, when he was emerging from the influence of his father, Pietro Bernini. It is also has the additional fascination of being a work that was offered to Jean-Baptiste Colbert, First Minister of Louis XIV, and later formed part of the collection of the Prince of Soubise.
Earlier Italian sculpture also features prominently in the November issue. Paula Nuttall provides a richly nuanced study of Michelangelo’s ‘Bruges Madonna’ – considering its patronage, facture and critical fortunes. Meanwhile, Marco Scansani publishes for the first time a fragment from a terracotta sketch by Donatello, which probably dates from his period of work in Ferrara in 1450. We also touch on modern Italian sculpture and its wider reception, as Sharon Hecker considers a pioneering collector of Medardo Rosso’s works in Britain.
Leading this month’s book reviews, an impressive catalogue of silver in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, is assessed by Philippa Glanville, who notes that two early eighteenth-century wine coolers that now form part of the Louvre’s collection were re-discovered in a New York restaurant in the 1980s, where they were being used as champagne buckets.
Finally, Pierre Rosenberg writes about the new catalogue of French paintings in the National Gallery of Scotland; clearly with the recent Olympics in mind, he muses on which collections of such paintings around the world might receive medals and concludes that Edinburgh would score highly in such art-historical games.
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