The Art Gallery of Ontario has just recieved Bernini’s Corpus, donated by collector Murray Frum. Cast around 1650, the sculpture was seen as one of the most significant Old Masters works still in private hands. Corpus was traced back to Bernini’s own collection.

Bernini (1598-1680) is considered the most important sculptor, architect, draughtsman and painter of the 17th century. He was a celebrated child prodigy who trained in his father’s studio and carved his first portrait at age ten. Except for a six-month period in 1665 in Paris when he worked on designs for the Louvre, he worked exclusively in Rome.

Sorry to be crude, but once you’ve seen this:

You’ll be forever humming “it’s fun to be at the…” Surprisingly, it’s not a work by (VoCA favorite) Maurizio Cattelan, who made this cheeky piece in 1996:

Maurizio Cattelan, Untitled, 1996. Image: designboom.com

after Lucio Fontana’s famous series Concetto Spaziale from the 1960’s, where the Arte Povera artist literally broke through the surface of the canvas:

Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale, Attesa, 1966. Image: mapage.noos.fr

The artist at work. Image: speronewestwater.com

The addition of the Bernini to the AGO compliments Peter Paul Rubens’s monumental The Massacre of the Innocents, c.1611-12, purchased in 2002 by Ken Thompson and donated to the AGO as part of the Thompson Collection: