Head of Proserpina (1650–1700): Art, History and Details

Head of Proserpina (1650–1700) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Italian, 1598–1680).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This work was long thought to be a fragment of a preliminary study for a large-scale marble sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in Rome depicting Pluto, the god of the underworld, dragging Proserpina away to be his wife. Bernini’s finished studies never had the scrape marks visible on the cheek, indicating another sculptor’s hand. The work was owned by Bernini’s family, and his many studio assistants often copied his work. This terracotta therefore may be by one of the more significant sculptors of this group. The subject conveys fleeting expressions of sadness, fear, and surprise, and would have interested sculptors learning to convey complex emotions.

Object facts

• Title: Head of Proserpina
• Date: 1650–1700
• Creator attribution: Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Italian, 1598–1680)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: terracotta
• Dimensions: Overall: 15.2 x 10.3 cm (6 x 4 1/16 in.)
• Collection: Sculpture
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1968.101

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1968.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 56, no. 1 (1969): 3–50.
• Hawley, Henry. “A Terra-Cotta Model for Bernini’s Proserpina.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 58, no. 4 (April 1971): 107–111.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.