Bust of Pope Urban VIII

In 1633 the writer Lelio Guidiccioni described what it was like to stand in front of this marble. The slight movement of the head and shoulder, he wrote, makes you feel you are on your knees before a speaking portrait of the pope, who with a kindly gesture of blessing is telling you to rise. Bernini carved it in 1632 or 1633, about ten years into the reign of Urban VIII. The museum points to the small things that keep the stone alive. The lips seem about to part. There is stubble on the cheeks. One button of the mozzetta, the short papal cape, has not been done up all the way. The irises are cut in with the point of the drill. The bust stayed with the pope's family, the Barberini, until the Italian state bought it from them in 1969.