Sleeping Putto

In November 1626 the new basilica of Saint Peter's was consecrated, and the work of furnishing it went on for years. The Fabbrica of Saint Peter's, the office in charge of the building, had commissioned an altarpiece for it from Guido Reni, and around 1627 or 1628 he painted this sleeping child in fresco to show its officials what he could do in that technique. The story is recorded in the diary that Paul Fréart de Chantelou, the French courtier assigned to Bernini, kept of the sculptor's journey to France in 1665. Reni, it says, painted it pour s'essayer, to try his hand. Cardinal Francesco Barberini, nephew of Pope Urban VIII, admired how freely and surely the little figure was painted. Bernardino Scala, a chaplain of the pope, then had the fresco cut from the wall in the Fabbrica's rooms, where it had probably been made, and gave it to the cardinal. The fragment, a little more than half a metre square, was set into an elaborate frame that survives with it. A Barberini inventory of 1738 to 1740 describes the foreshortened sleeping putto under glass, in a carved and gilded frame with garlands of fruit and, in the middle, the Barberini bees.