Corpus (sculpture)

A sculpture of the body of Christ by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Bernini sculpted it from bronze in 1650 and held onto it in his private collection for 25 years.

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.

Bernini made three sculptures named "Corpus". One belongs to Spain, part of the Spanish royal family's official collection. The other went missing during the Napoleonic wars.

In January 2007 Toronto real estate developer Murray Frum negotiated to buy the sculpture from an art dealer in the United States and donated the sculpture to the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Value

"Corpus" is said to be worth $50 million in the current art market.

References