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Bacchanal: A Faun Teased by Children

and Pietro Bernini Italian
ca. 1616–17
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 534
The complex composition of intertwined figures, skillfully carved in the round from a narrow block, is the most ambitious marble made in partnership by Gian Lorenzo and Pietro Bernini. Based on ancient sarcophagi, this bacchic revel already shows Gian Lorenzo’s boldness in challenging antiquity. He tests the limits of sculpture and renders a host of motifs in different textures of marble: the supple children, one sticking out his tongue; the smooth, muscular tension of the toothless faun; and the tree’s bark and juicy fruits. This group was recorded in the inventory of Gian Lorenzo’s home at the time of his death.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Bacchanal: A Faun Teased by Children
  • Artist: Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Italian, Naples 1598–1680 Rome)
  • Artist: and Pietro Bernini (Italian, 1562–1629)
  • Date: ca. 1616–17
  • Culture: Italian, Rome
  • Medium: Marble
  • Dimensions: Overall (confirmed): 52 1/8 × 29 × 18 7/8 in., 529 lb. (132.4 × 73.7 × 47.9 cm, 240 kg)
  • Classification: Sculpture
  • Credit Line: Purchase, The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, Fletcher, Rogers, and Louis V. Bell Funds, and Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, by exchange, 1976
  • Object Number: 1976.92
  • Curatorial Department: European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Audio

Cover Image for 80. Bacchanal: A Faun Teased by Children

80. Bacchanal: A Faun Teased by Children

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Jackie Terrassa: This was a collaboration between two artists working together: a younger Bernini learning from his father, who was also a master. The other thing that's amazing about this sculpture is the artists have punctured the marble to create space in between the forms. How does an artist take a piece of stone and make it feel like it's flying, make it feel like the figures are twisting and throwing each other around? Every single detail of the sculpture has some different treatment in terms of the texture of the marble and how that is finished.

Narrator: You can see this at the back of the sculpture. Look at the baby falling off the panther, especially his arm.

Luke Syson: The texture is actually like that of the tree. It looks almost as if his arm is a little branch growing off it. The sculptors are really thinking about how to give the sense that the act of creating is happening before your eyes.

Narrator: Gian Lorenzo Bernini was the most prominent sculptor of the seventeenth-century Italian Baroque.

Luke Syson: The Baroque artists were very interested in expressive movement, and the way in which transitory emotions can be expressed permanently through movements of the body and so on.

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