Re: Interior Shots
Not really about the project per se, but still rather significant - from the Star:
AGO gets $50M sculpture
January 11, 2007
Martin Knelman
Arts Columnist
After two years of intrigue, poker-faced negotiating and scholarly sleuthing, the Art Gallery of Ontario has landed a spectacular prize: a full-length, life-size crucifixion sculpture by the Italian Old Master Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
This rare baroque treasure, called Corpus, is a gift of the Frum family. Cast in 1650, it is said to be worth $50 million in the current art market. Bernini, generally considered the greatest sculptor of the 17th century, created it for himself and held onto it for 25 years.
"It's so overwhelming, you just have to sit down after you see it," says Murray Frum, the Toronto developer, art collector and key AGO board member who bought the piece from a U.S. dealer after pursuing it for two years, then turned it over to the AGO as a gift from his family.
"It's a thrilling moment for us," says Matthew Teitelbaum, CEO of the gallery. "And we've decided not to wait for our reopening after the Gehry transformation. Instead we will include it in a show we are doing this summer giving people a preview of what to expect from the new AGO."
Bernini is known for his work at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, especially an immense gilt-bronze baldachin (ornamental canopy) with twisted columns, created between 1624 and 1633, as well as Vatican papal tombs. But he's best loved for several great fountains in Rome.
For a collector like Frum – who has already donated more than 80 pieces of primitive African sculpture to the AGO – the chase and conquest are part of the thrill. He was smitten as soon as he saw the piece because of its beauty, simplicity, emotion and scale (1.7 metres high).
"I felt it didn't belong in a private home," Frum explained yesterday. (Not that Frum's architecturally notable house, with sumptuous gardens and art, is a typical home.) "To me, this piece belonged in a public institution."
He let Teitelbaum know he was pursuing it. But the AGO had to wait for the game to play out.
It involved complicated bargaining between Frum and a U.S. art dealer, as well as questions of authenticity, against the background of a red-hot international art market.
And there was a special element of intrigue. The credentials of the piece had to be verified. Corpus had gone missing for a long time and was in the hands of a French collector who thought the artist unknown.
After being recorded in the Perugia region of Italy circa 1790, it had been "lost" for over 100 years, until it surfaced in Venice in 1908. Later it fell into private hands in the U.S. But at that point it was misidentified as a work from the school of Giambologna.
It was not until 2002 that it was recognized as a Bernini. And it took until 2005 for the provenance to be definitely and directly linked to Bernini.
The AGO owns another Bernini, a smaller marble bust of Pope Gregory XV (1621) donated in 1997 by Joey and Toby Tanenbaum.
According to Frum, Bernini made three Corpus sculptures. One belongs to Spain, part of the Spanish royal family's official collection.
The other went missing during the Napoleonic wars. None of the three has ever been on public display before arriving in Toronto.
"It's hard to believe it is made out of bronze," says Michael Parke-Taylor, the AGO's acting curator of European art, referring to the delicate finish.
According to Teitelbaum, that reflects the goal of baroque artists to bring the divine into the realm of human experience.
For the moment, the sculpture is in a huge storage crate in the AGO basement. When the AGO's renovation is completed two years from now, both Berninis are sure to be among the most talked about pieces in its permanent collection, along with the Peter Paul Rubens masterpiece Massacre of the Innocents (1611), donated by the late Ken Thomson.
"After you have been a collector for a while," says Frum, "the challenge is to find pieces that truly excite you. This one did."
mknelman@thestar.ca
AoD
