Bust of Pope Paul V

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

1621

Marble

J. Paul Getty Museum

A marble bust depicts a balding man with a beard, wearing a heavily ornamented robe and collar. The robe features relief carvings of figures and decorative patterns. Gian Lorenzo Bernini was just twenty-three years old when he received one of his first commissions to make a full-sized bust of Pope Paul V, the recently deceased uncle of his most important patron, Cardinal Scipione Borghese. In this two-and-a-half foot marble portrait, Bernini depicts the pope almost bareheaded, his hair styled in the "tonsure of St. Peter," a practice that signified the renunciation of worldly fashion, and dressed in traditional pontifical vestments. The thick cope covering his shoulders is richly decorated with embroidery of the patron saints of Rome, the Apostles Peter (holding his keys and a book) and Paul (ho