ST. PETER'S BALDACHIN DETAILS (PT 2)

As amusing it is to look at from afar, if you look closer, you can see symbols and interesting detail that are very important to what St. Peter's Baldachin was made for, and there are elements of the piece that are considered to be important elements throughout all Baroque art. First I will talk about details on the top of the baldachin.

 The Barberini family's coat of arms is placed all around the baldachin.

The coat of arms itself represents the Barberini family. This addition was placed because of the election of Cardinal Maffeo Barberini to the papal throne as Pope Urban VIII. Adding this coat of arms represents Pope Urban VIII's contribution to the designing and placing of the Baldachin. There are also many other details on the baldachin that are extremely interesting. Including a woman's face, if you look close enough you can tell that it becomes more and more deformed until the face is replaced by the head of a winged child (also referred as a putto). Historians have come to the conclusion that this series of imagery represents labor and pregnancy. It tells the story of the complicated birth of a niece of Urban VIII's, as he vowed to dedicate an altar in St. Peter's to a successful delivery. 

 i will post a photo of the deformation of the womans face and the placement of the Barberini coat of arms in a separate entry(s), i guess the images are a little too much for spacehey's limits!