Follower of Pietro Berrettini, called Pietro da Cortona

The Palazzo Barberini was started in 1625 by Carlo Moderna (1556-1629) and was completed on his death by the rising star Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1629) who worked on the project until its completion in 1633. The entire palazzo was designed to reflect the rise to power of the Barberini family, and more particularly Maffeo Barberini, who was elected Pope Urban VIII in 1623. The centrepiece of the palazzo was Bernini’s impressive salone, and for which the papal nephew, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, commissioned the leading Baroque artist of the time, Pietro da Cortona, to paint the vault following a concetto provided by the poet Francesco Bracciolini (1566–1645).

The ceiling, completed between 1633-39, was not only a statement of the arrival of the Barberini family as the most important Roman family of the period, it was also a celebration of the virtues and ideals that the Barberini Papacy was to aspire to and to govern by. The Barberini impressa (three bees), surrounded by an imperial laurel wreath, are being crowned with the Papal tiara, at the command of Divine Providence, by the personification of Immortality. The scheme is designed to reflect the flourishing of the society achieved beneath the patronage of the Pope and poet Urban VIII, where both the arts and the sciences would flourish and wisdom and dignity would prevail.