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In the early seventeenth century, sculptors like Pietro Bernini - and also Stefano Maderno, Nicolas Cordier) offer a fixed and frozen portrayal of their sitters. Pietro Bernini's bust of Antonio Coppola was modelled on an ancient figure on a funerary bas-relief, while the sculptor full attention was concentrated on the face. The gaunt cheeks, the thin line of the mouth drawn out in the final rictus, the sunken eyes: these details remind one of a death mask. The portrait now, as in the ancient world, was expected to refer back to the penates; in other words, to death.
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