Bust of Antonio Barberini the Elder

On 25 June 1559 a Florentine named Antonio Barberini was killed in Via Giulia in Rome, perhaps by assassins working for the ambassador of Cosimo I de' Medici, duke of Florence. He had republican sympathies, was hostile to the Medici, and had left Florence to travel for years around Italy on the family's business. In 1623 his great-nephew Maffeo became Pope Urban VIII, and the family set about honouring him. In 1629 they put up a memorial to him in San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, the Florentines' church in Rome, with a more modest copy of this bust. This marble, an idealised portrait made more than 60 years after his death, was ordered from Bernini and probably carved in large part by his assistant Giuliano Finelli. It was meant for the gallery of family worthies collected by the pope's nephew, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, and his inventory of 1651 lists it. The face is very close to Bernini's posthumous bust of the Venetian cardinal Agostino Valier, with the eyes opened wider, the nose larger and the mouth fuller. Below, a heraldic bee unfurls a scroll, perhaps meant to carry his name.