More Vanitas in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome
This church owes much to Pope Chigi, who was really obsessed with vanitas and had them portrayed everywhere. In his
funerary monument
by Bernini
in St. Peters the gilded skeleton as Death brandishes an hourglass, and it seems that of death “he everywhere carved in the avelli and in the cup where he drank, and for everything he had images”. Chigi died at age 66 from kidney failure. He kept his coffin in his bedroom, and a skull carved by Bernini on his writing table, because he was always aware that he would someday die.
This could explain the numerous vanitas that are found scattered in
Santa Maria del Popolo. Surely it explains the floor of the chapel, a marble inlay depicting a winged skeleton supporting the Chigi crests. Designed by Bernini, it was probably the Pope who suggested the theme.
detail views of Death in Bernini’s monument to Pope Alexander VII (Chigi) - gilded bronze with the shroud of Sicilian Jasper - St. Peters, Rome
