A portrait long kept in storage in Vienna has been attributed to Gian Lorenzo Bernini. It goes on public view for the first time in December 2026.
At the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, a portrait of an elderly man that entered the collection in 1920 and had been kept in storage since 1989 because its authorship was disputed has finally been given an author. Curator Gudrun Swoboda attributed it to Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the celebrated Baroque sculptor who, as it turns out, also painted.
Over the past century the painting had been ascribed to Philippe de Champaigne and to anonymous Italian, French and Flemish masters. The new attribution rests on stylistic parallels with Bernini’s bust of Louis XIV, the sculptural handling of the face and technical analysis.
It goes on public view for the first time in the exhibition Bernini: Painter and Sculptor at Palais Lobkowitz, from 2 December 2026 to 4 April 2027, alongside the artist’s self-portrait from the Uffizi.
Source: The Art Newspaper
Illustration: Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Self-portrait, c. 1623. Galleria Borghese, Rome.
