Camillo Astalli, dito o cardeal Pamphili

Velazquez was in Rome in 1650, sent by King Philip the Fourth to buy paintings and sculpture for the Spanish court, and while there he painted the pope, Innocent the Tenth, in the portrait that still unnerves people who stand before it. This is a lesser-known sitter from those same months. Camillo Astalli had just been raised to cardinal by that very pope in September 1650, a distant relative suddenly handed the Pamphili name and enormous influence. Barely of an age for it, and fond of all things Spanish, he asked Velazquez for a portrait. You can read the speed of the brush in the red silk of his robes. His luck did not hold. Within four years the pope turned against him and stripped away both the name and the office.