Throughout his life, Fabio Chigi, known better to the world as Pope Alexander VII, lived with the specter of death. As a child he suffered from apoplexy so severe that at one point arrangements were made for his funeral.
As Pope Alexander, it fell to him to suppress a pestilence that claimed the lives of thousands in Rome and Naples before it could be quarantined and removed from the papal states.
Alexander was keenly aware of the fragility and shortness of human life. To remind himself that death would come all to soon he kept a coffin in his office, and on his desk a small skull carved from marble by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, perhaps the greatest artist of the counter-reformation.
It was a custom of the time to erect grand tombs to the memory of past Holy Fathers. Alexander was fortunate to have such a skilled sculptor in his employ and commissioned a design from Bernini. But this was to be no self-serving monument to a pontiff’s vanity. Alexander instead sought a sermon in stone, one that would continue to preach long after he had fallen asleep in the arms of the Lord.
The location chosen for this monument was barely more than a small niche that contained a door leading out of Saint Peter’s Basilica. Bernini brought all of his talent to bear on what would be the last expression of his talent.
The triumph of this final great work by a great artist still preaches to us today, though the preacher has long since passed away. At the top of the group is an effigy of Alexander himself, kneeling in prayer, bareheaded, symbolizing his spiritual strength. About him are figures representing the virtues that guided his life, Truth, Charity, Prudence and Justice. And beneath them all a bronze skeletal Death emerges from a jasper drapery, raising an hourglass containing the sands of time. Beneath him the door that was a simple exit from the basilica now stands as the door to eternity.
To gaze upon this culmination of two lives, pope and artist, is to bear witness to the truth that our lives are best lived in piety, truth, charity, justice, and prudence. Our time in this world is brief and we will one day be called to account for how we have spent it. For life is short and death comes for us all, even for kings, even for popes.