Portrait of Pope Urban VIII Barberini

For more than a century the Corsini family believed this was a Pietro da Cortona. Their inventories from 1771 onward give it to him, and so does the list drawn up when the collection passed to the Italian state in 1883. The mistake had a reason. Cortona painted a full-length portrait of the same pope, now in the Capitoline Museums, and the two compositions are very close.

The correction was written on the canvas itself. Urban VIII's left hand rests on a letter, and the address reads, To His Holiness Our Lord Urban VIII, from Guido Abbatini. It is a signature and a dedication at once, by a painter who worked mostly in fresco and rarely on easel pictures. The face helps to date it. In Cortona's portrait the beard is still dark. Here it has gone completely white, which points to the last years of the pontificate, around 1640, when Urban, pope since 1623, was past 70. The Barberini bees appear on the chair, and a drawing by Abbatini of the same face served for a print by the French engraver Sébastien Vouillemont, dated 1642.