Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) is undoubtedly one of the greatest artists of the 17^th century. Architect, sculptor and painter, Bernini created a huge and varied corpus of artworks. The current course will focus on one side of the roman artist carrier for which he won international fame during his lifetime: the sculpted portraits. Those works are commonly known as the Ritratti parlanti (Italian for “speaking portraits”) for the way in which Bernini often presented the figures he sculpted: a moment before (or after) speaking. The course will follow (more or less) the chorology of Bernini’s work but will also address questions of patronage, style, innovation and continuity.