The bronze and porphyry portrait of Pope Urban VIII by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Tommaso Fedeli

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The bronze and porphyry portrait of Pope Urban VIII by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Tommaso Fedeli

by STEFANO PIERGUIDI

THE BRONZE AND porphyry bust of Pope Urban VIII, still in the collection of the Barberini family (Figs.9–12), was mentioned

by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger in his travel notes of 1687–88,1 and is described in several guides to Rome dating from the end of the seventeenth century onwards as one of the most exceptional pieces in the collection at the Barberini palace at the Quattro Fontane in Rome.2 Always said to be the work of Bernini, or made ‘after Bernini’s design’, the bust was relegated to workshop status by Stanislao Fraschetti in 1900, a judgment that was reconfirmed by Rudolf Wittkower.3 Recently, thanks to an archival discovery, Tomaso Montanari has been able to identify the portrait as one of the items on the list of Bernini’s work drawn up by his son Pier Filippo Bernini in 1675–76, following his father’s instructions, a catalogue subsequently published, with a few modifications, as an appendix to Bernini’s biography by Filippo Baldinucci in 1682.4 Thus, the bust is one of only five portraits of Urban VIII that Gian Lorenzo wished to record for posterity among his works.

On that list the bronze and porphyry bust is described simply as ‘di metallo’, and in the possession of ‘Abb.e Braccese’. It appears in the will opened in Rome on 26th January 1685 of the abbé Giovanni Braccese, who had served as secretary to several members of the Barberini family:

made to the sculptor Tommaso Fedeli for making the ‘mozzetta di porfido’, a cape made of porphyry.7 Other documents in the Barberini archive make it possible to substantiate Bacchi’s suggestion and to attribute the sculpting of the porphyry bust to Fedeli, made by order of Taddeo Barberini and paid for in three instalments between August 1630 and March 1631; the involvement of Bernini in making the portrait, documented by the payment, confirms the autograph status of the bronze head, as Braccese recorded in his will.

The document noted by Bacchi, which was found by Marilyn Aronberg Lavin8 but never transcribed in full, is an order for payment (contromandato) in the account books of Taddeo Barberini, signed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini: 15 scudi as the completion of the 55 scudi paid to Tommaso Fidele [sic], which is the agreed price for the porphyry mozzetta of Our Lord [the Pope] made at my command for the aforementioned piece, having given him 40 scudi with two orders of payment, of 20 scudi each, that will be paid upon receipt.

According to Montanari’s thesis, the work could have been commissioned by Braccese himself, who owned it in the mid1670s and who left it in his will to Cardinal Carlo Barberini, whom he had served as secretary. It is first cited in Carlo’s inventory in 1692 (without any reference to Gian Lorenzo Bernini).6 Montanari’s hypothesis suggests a later date for the bust than that of c.1632 proposed by Andrea Bracchi; to Bracchi we owe the connection between the bust and the payment of March 1631

Therefore, we are not dealing with the payment for a piece of porphyry consigned to the sculptor,9 but with the balance of the payment for making ‘della mozzetta di porfido di N.S.re’, that is, for a headless bust of the pontiff:10 the head to be cast in bronze, if that had not already been done, on a model furnished

by Bernini, who was responsible for ordering the payment to the specialist porphyry carver. The payments to Fedeli were correctly recorded among Taddeo Barberini’s accounts, but were not easily traced, because they are found in the last account book of Taddeo’s father, Carlo Barberini, dated 1629–30, after Carlo’s death in Bologna on 26th February 1630. Taddeo’s accountants continued to use his father’s account book for the two first payments ‘a buon conto’, each of twenty scudi, dated 20th August and 8th November 1630, in which ‘a porphyry bust’ is mentioned.11 The third payment, the one cited by Aronberg Lavin, is dated 26th March 1631, and appears in the first of Taddeo’s own account books.12

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As a legacy I leave to the aforementioned most eminent Cardinal Carlo Barberini, my master, the porphyry bust with the metal head of Urban VIII of blessed memory, the head, by Cavalier Bernini.5

N. Tessin: Travel notes 1673–77 and 1687–88, ed. M. Laine and B. Magnusson, Stockholm 2002, p.306.

2 A. Bacchi: ‘Ritratto di papa Urbano VIII Barberini’, in idem, et al., eds.: exh. cat.

I marmi vivi: Bernini e la nascita del ritratto barocco, Florence (Museo Nazionale del Bargello) 2009, p.254, with earlier bibliography.

3 S. Fraschetti: Il Bernini: la sua vita, la sua opera, il suo tempo, Milan 1900, pp.145–46; R. Wittkower: Bernini: the sculptor of the Roman Baroque, rev. ed. London 1995, p.244, cat.19 (7).

4 On Bernini’s works, see C. d’Onofrio: Roma vista da Roma, Rome 1967, pp.434–38 (for the bust p.434, no.21); T. Montanari: ‘Bernini e Cristina di Svezia: alle origini della storiografia berniniana’, in A. Angelini, ed.: Gian Lorenzo Bernini e i Chigi tra Roma e Siena, Cinisello Balsamo 2008, p.403; F. Baldinucci: Notizie de’ Professori del Disegno da Cimabue in qua, 1st ed. 1681–1725, ed. F. Ranalli, Florence 1845–47, V, p.696; T. Montanari: ‘Ritratto di papa Urbano VIII Barberini – Addendum: un nuovo documento sulla provenienza dell’opera’, in Bacchi, op. cit. (note 2), pp.256–58.

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‘Per raggion di legato lascio al suddetto eminentissimo signor cardinale Carlo Barberini mio signore il busto di porfido con testa di metallo della santa memoria di Urbano VIII, di mano, la testa, del cavalier Bernini’; ibid., p.256.

6 M. Aronberg Lavin: Seventeenth-century Barberini documents and inventories of art, New York 1975, p.450, no.559; Montanari, in Bacchi, op. cit. (note 2), pp.256–57.

7 Ibid., p.256.

8 Aronberg Lavin, op. cit. (note 6), p.16, doc. 132.

9 ‘. . . scudi quindici a comp.o di scudi 55 pagati a Tommaso Fidele che importano il prezzo d’accordo della mozzetta di porfido di N.S.re fatta di mio ordine per d.o pezzo havendoli datoli scudi 40 di moneta con 2 mandati di scudi 20 l’uno che con ricevuta verranno ben pagati’; Bacchi, op. cit. (note 2), p.256.

10 For Fedeli, see D. Di Castro: ‘Tommaso Fedeli, virtuoso del porfido’, Antologia di Belle Arti 43/47 (1993), pp.150–57.

11 ‘un busto di porfido’; Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Archivio Barberini (hereafter cited as AB), Computisteria 8, fols.83r and 93r.

12 AB, Computisteria 192, fol.21r.

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A PAPAL PORTRAIT BY BERNINI AND FEDELI

9. Portrait of Pope Urban VIII, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Tommaso Fedeli. c.1631. Bronze head and porphyry mozzetta, 81 by 80 by 35 cm. (Collection of the Barberini family heirs, Rome). the burlingto n ma g a z i n e

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A PAPAL PORTRAIT BY BERNINI AND FEDELI

No payments to Bernini can be connected to the bronze head, but this is not surprising. On 1st October 1623, Gian Lorenzo was nominated director of the Foundry of St Peter’s, Rome, by Urban VIII, the Barberini pope, the brother of Carlo and uncle of Carlo’s three sons, Cardinal Francesco; Taddeo Barberini, Prince of Palestrina; and Cardinal Antonio.13 Thereafter, there are no records of specific payments for a single commission like that of the casting of the bronze head of the pope: there is a payment for a pedestal for the other bronze portrait of Urban VIII in the Vatican Library, but not one addressed to Bernini.14 From the moment that Bernini received the lavish fees for the Baldacchino in St Peter’s, starting from June 1624,15 there is no trace of any more payments either for marble busts, including those of the pope, or those of Monsignor Francesco di Carlo Barberini (National Gallery of Art, Washington) and Antonio Barberini the elder (Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini, Rome).16 It is important to emphasise that the payment to Fideli is signed by Bernini; if Gian Lorenzo himself ordered that payment it was because it concerned a work for which he was responsible. Moreover, comparing the payment and the countersigned order indisputably demonstrates that Fedeli had made a mozzetta in porphyry for a bust of the pontiff (‘di N.S.re’): this did not include the head, which almost certainly would have been made in bronze, according to a tradition which is attested by only one other example, Alessandro Algardi’s Portrait of Innocent X (Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome). The extreme rarity of such a work makes it virtually certain that the bust made in 1631 for Taddeo is the one still in the collection of the Barberini heirs: otherwise, one would have to suppose that in the seventeenth century there were two almost identical bronze and porphyry busts of the pope in the same collection, one of which was never mentioned in any inventory.

The bronze and porphyry bust does not appear in the inventory of the goods of Taddeo of 1648–49 after his death in 1647,17 but that inventory does not seem to be a full record of the collection of the late Prince of Palestrina; neither of the two versions of the Portrait of Carlo Barberini are listed (that by Francesco Mochi, now in the Museo di Roma, and the replica formerly in the Barberini collection and now in a private collection). These works appear for the first time in the inventory of the goods of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, Taddeo’s younger brother, in 1671, although Taddeo was the heir of his father, Carlo.18 Thus, although it is not possible to establish with certainty when the bronze and porphyry bust came into

Braccese’s possession, it is possible to propose a hypothesis. At the time that they fled from Rome in 1645–46 following the death of their uncle the pope and the family’s disgrace, the brothers Taddio, Antonio and Francesco would have been able to take with them to France all, or at least some, of the family portrait busts, manifestations of the Barberini’s former glory.19 In 1648–49, when Cardinal Francesco drew up the inventory of the possessions of his brother Taddeo, who had died in Paris in 1647, there was no portrait bust in either of his residences in the city or in the country. Although they genuinely had to flee, the Barberini would certainly have been able to take some of their property with them: this is the only way to explain the absence of these portraits from the family inventories.20 Taddeo’s eldest son, Carlo (1630–1704), could have brought back to Rome the bronze and porphyry Portrait of Urban VIII and given it, at an unknown date, to his secretary Braccese, who, in his will, ‘restored’ the bust to his master, who outlived him. Something very similar to that is recorded in documents concerning the large painting by Pordenone of The dispute over the Immaculate Conception (1530–31; Capodimonte, Naples) that Odoardo Farnese gave to his master-of-ceremonies Claudio Scotti, and who, in his will of 1616, left it back to his master.

Montanari has admitted this possiblity, although remaining sceptical, given that Braccese did not give the provenance of the bust in his will, whereas Scotti specified that the painting he was leaving to Odoardo had come from his master’s collection.21 The bronze and porphyry Portrait of Urban VIII may have first passed into the possession of Cardinal Antonio (who also obtained the two versions of the Portrait of Carlo Barberini), and from him passed into the hands of Braccese, who, before working for Cardinal Carlo, had served as Antonio’s secretary, possibly staying with him until his death in 1671.22 In that case the silence in Braccese’s will over the bust’s provenance would be more understandable, since it had belonged to the abbé for many years and had not been given to him by Carlo.

On the death of his father, Carlo, in 1630, Taddeo inherited all his official positions, including that of the General of the Church and Governor of Borgo and Castellano of Castel Sant’Angelo.23 Thus, he became the principal lay representative of the papal family, second in importance only to his elder brother, the cardinal-nephew Francesco. His social elevation might have been signalled by Taddeo commissioning an exceptional work, almost without precedence in seventeenth-century sculpture: a porphyry and bronze bust of his uncle, to whom all the Barberini family owed their fortune.24 Datable therefore to

13 W. Chandler Kirwin: Power matchless: the pontificate of Urban VIII, the Baldachin, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, New York 1997, p.101.

14 D’Onofrio, op. cit. (note 4), p.434, no.20; I. Lavin and M. Aronberg Lavin: ‘Duquesnoy’s “Nano di Créqui” and two busts by Franchesco Mochi’, The Art Bulletin 52 (1970), p.141, note 65; Aronberg Lavin, op. cit. (note 6), p.54, doc.415; p.125, no.15; H. Tetius: Aedes Barberinae ad Quirinalem descriptae – Descrizione di Palazzo Barberini al Quirinale. Il palazzo, gli affreschi, le collezioni, la corte, ed. L. Faedo and T. Frangenberg, Pisa 2005, p.221.

15 M. Spagnolo: Bernini: il baldacchino di San Pietro, Modena 2006, p.23, with previous bibliography.

16 The chronology of these busts listed in the Barberini inventories is much discussed, see Bacchi, op. cit. (note 2); and S. Pierguidi: ‘I busti degli avi nelle collezioni seicentesche dei Barberini (con una revisione della cronologia dei ritratti di Bernini degli anni Venti)’, Bollettino d’arte 98 (2013), pp.34–42.

17 Aronberg Lavin, op. cit. (note 6), pp.188–218.

18 Ibid., p.335, nos.986 and 988; on the two versions of the Portrait of Carlo Barberini, see Lavin and Aronberg Lavin, op. cit. (note 14), p.140, note 58.

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Antonio left Rome in disguise in September 1645, and his father and his brother Francesco followed on the night of 16th–17th January of the next year; see L. von Pastor: Storia dei Papi, XIV, Innocenzo X, Alessandro VII, Clemente IX, Clemente X (1644 – 1676), Rome 1961, pp.41–43.

20 The two portraits of Carlo Barberini, one by Francesco Mochi (Museo di Roma) and the copy after it (private collection, Milan), are absent from Antonio’s inventory of 1644, although Mochi’s portrait of Antonio Barberini (Toledo Museum of Art), clearly a pendant of the bust in Rome, is listed in that inventory; see Aronberg Lavin, op. cit. (note 6) p.188, no.829. The portraits of Carlo Barberini are documented among the possessions of Antonio Barberini in 1671, so they must have previously belonged to Taddeo; their absence from the inventory of 1648–49 is otherwise inexplicable.

21 Montanari, in Bacchi, op. cit. (note 2), pp.256–58; L. Sickel: ‘Pordenone, Annibale Carracci and the last will of Claudio Scotti’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 147 (2005), pp.743 and 745.

22 Montanari, in Bacchi, op. cit. (note 2), pp.256–58; Braccese is recorded still in the service of Cardinal Antonio in 1661; see S. Santangelo: ‘Dal carteggio del cardinale Antonio Barberini junior: Maratti e Sacchi in dono al conte di Brienne’, Studi di

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A PAPAL PORTRAIT BY BERNINI AND FEDELI

10. The bronze head of the pope in Fig.9 removed from the porphyry mozzetta.

11. Fig.10 seen from the back.

12. Detail of Fig.9 seen from the side.

around 1631, Fedeli’s and Bernini’s Portrait of Urban VIII could have slightly predated the other busts of the pope attributable to Gian Lorenzo. The most important of these, according to the sources, was certainly the marble bust mentioned in the famous letter of Lelio Guidiccioni dated 4th June 1633, and in another letter by Fulvio Testi of January 1633, unanimously identified with the bust described by Girolamo Teti in his Aedes Barberinae of 1642 in Palazzo Barberini, which at that date was inhabited only by Cardinal Antonio, Taddeo’s younger brother. The portrait listed in the cardinal’s inventory from 1644, specifically identified as Gian Lorenzo’s work, is probably that now in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica at Palazzo Barberini or the other autograph version in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.25 Dating from a little later, in the autumn or winter of the same year, just before the payment for its pedestal, is the bronze version formerly in the library of Palazzo Barberini, also cited by Teti and now in the Vatican library.26 The other marble version, listed next to the first version in 1675–76, may be possibly identifiable with one of the busts of the pope in the collection of Cardinal Francesco, perhaps one of the two already mentioned in Ottawa and Rome.27 The version in the house of Angelo Giori in the same

list has not yet been identified, but may probably have dated from the first years of the 1640s, at the time of the commission given to Bernini for the bronze bust of the pope for the city of Camerino and still in the Palazzo Comunale there; Giori was elected a cardinal only on 13th July 1643.28 The commission for the bust recorded in Guidiccioni’s letter was later than Taddeo’s commission for the bronze and porphyry bust. It is not possible to establish with certainty if Bernini made the model of the head of the pope to be cast to complete the porphyry bust already sculpted by Fedeli, or if this was made at the same time as the marble version cited

by Guidiccioni in his letter: the stylistic and compositional qualities of the portraits of Urban VIII already mentioned (Palazzo Barberini; Biblioteca Vaticana; Barberini family; Ottawa) are so similar that it is impossible to arrange them in chronological order. In any case, it is probable that at the start of the 1630s the three sons of Carlo Barberini commissioned portraits of their uncle the pope more or less contemporaneously. Yet it is possible that it was not the more discerning collectors, Antonio or Francesco, who took the lead, even if they later asked Bernini to provide a marble version, but rather their brother Taddeo.

Memofonte 8 (2012), p.50.

23 A. Merola: ‘Barberini, Taddeo’, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Rome 1964, VI, p.180.

24 One possible source of inspiration for Bernini, or for his patron, could have been the ‘testa di metallo con busto di porfido vestito di metallo dorato grande più del naturale et antica di Marc’Aurelio Imperatore’ listed in the Ludovisi collection by Fioravante Martinelli c.1660–63, and now in Palazzo Chigi, Rome; see Bacchi, op. cit. (note 2), pp.255–56.

25 D’Onofrio, op. cit. (note 4), pp.382, note 13; p.434, no. no.18; R. Wittkower: ‘A new bust of pope Urban VIII by Bernini’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 111 (1969), pp.60–64; Aronberg Lavin, op. cit. (note 6), p.182, n. no.684; Tetius, op. cit. (note 14), p.467; D. Franklin: catalogue entry in A. Bacchi, C. Hess and J. Montagu, eds.: exh. cat.

Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture, Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty Museum) 2008, pp.135–36, cat. no.2.5; Bacchi, in idem, op. cit. (note 2), pp.246–48, no. no.10.

26 See note 14.

27 See note 25; D’Onofrio, op. cit. (note 4), p.434, no.19; Aronberg Lavin, op. cit. (note 6), p.257, nos.992 and 994: in this inventory there are certainly busts by Bernini, such as that of Maffeo Barberini’s father, Antonio (no.993), but without

an attribution to Bernini, and it is very probable that one of the two busts of Urban VIII listed in that inventory was the work of Gian Lorenzo; see Pierguidi, op. cit. (note 16) p.39.

28 D’Onofrio, op. cit. (note 4), p.434, no.17; Wittkower, op. cit. (note 3), pp. 243–44, no.19/6. The bust was among the Cardinal’s goods sent for sale from 1669 ownwards; see S. Corradini: ‘La collezione del cardinale Angelo Giori’, Antologia di belle arti 1 (1977), p.93, and therefore cannot be identified (as has been suggested) with the one in the Galleria Spada documented in the post mortem inventory of Bernardino Spada; see R. Cannatà and M.L. Vicini: La Galleria Spada: genesi e storia di una collezione, Rome 1992, p.64. Among Bernini’s portraits of Urban VIII which have the greatest probability of being identified with those on the list of 1675–76, apart from those already cited, should be mentioned the marble bust in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini, Rome, whose autograph status is not universally accepted; see A. Bacchi and C. Hess: ‘Creating a new likeness: Bernini’s transformation of the portrait bust’, in Bacchi, Hess and Montagu, op. cit. (note 25), p.35; and T. Montanari: ‘Bernini per Bernini: il secondo “Crocifisso” monumentale; con una digressione su Domenico Guidi’, Prospettiva 136 (2009), pp.18–20. the burlingto n ma g a z i n e

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