Bust of Pope Clement X Altieri

When Emilio Altieri was elected pope in 1670 as Clement X, he was nearly 80, and much of the work of government passed to Cardinal Paluzzo Paluzzi Altieri, whom he had adopted into his family. Bernini, by then in his seventies, worked for them. For the cardinal's family chapel he carved the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni, and this bust was meant for the Altieri palace. It was planned for a niche above the bookcases of the library, so that the pope would seem to lean out from a balcony to greet the people below, framed by the folds of a stucco curtain held up by cherubs, also to Bernini's design. The moment is the apostolic blessing. In his left hand Clement holds a petition, and with his right he makes the sign of the cross that goes with the words Benedictio Dei omnipotentis, the blessing of almighty God. The marble was delivered after the pope died in 1676, and it stayed with the Altieri until the Italian state acquired it from their palace in 1997. The museum thinks it may never have been quite finished. Look at the hand. The support that still props it up and the small bridges of stone left between the fingers are the kind of thing a sculptor would normally cut away at the very end.