Bust of Maria Duglioli Barberini
Giuliano Finelli (1601-1653) · Before 1627
Look first at the collar. The broad lace ruff around the young woman's neck has been cut so thin that light passes through its openwork, and every thread of the pattern is undercut from the marble. Above it, the hair is a mass of tight curls drilled into deep shadows, with a small crown-like ornament, and pearls hang from the ears. The face itself is calm and slightly melancholy. Maria Duglioli married into the Barberini family and died in 1621, aged only twenty-two, so this is a memorial portrait rather than a likeness from life.
The bust was commissioned by Pope Urban the Eighth, Maffeo Barberini, the uncle of the deceased by marriage, and was carved by Giuliano Finelli in Bernini's workshop and under his direction, before 1627, when it was inventoried in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. Finelli was the specialist for this kind of virtuoso detail. It passed by inheritance to the Palazzo Sciarra, was probably sold illegally in the 1890s, and was looted in France during the Second World War. Recovered after the war, it was transferred to the Louvre in 1974 as a work held in trust for its rightful owners.
Did You Know? Rose Valland, the curator who tracked Nazi art looting, had her office in the building where the bust sat until it was transferred to the Louvre in 1974.
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