Vatican Museums

This group of draft works in terracotta belonged, along with the five exposed opposite, to the collections of Cardinal Flavio Chigi I (Siena 1631 - Rome 1693), nephew of Alexander VII, who displayed them in his House of the Four Fountains in Rome. In 1745, this core collection as it was constituted joined the family collections in the Palace on the north side of Piazza Colonna, and remained there until 1917-18, following the sale to the Italian government of the building and the collections it contained. In 1923, following a resolution of the previous year, the terracotta works were donated to Pope Pius XI, as a conciliatory act between Italy and the Holy See. The two versions of Charity, with four and two putti respectively, showed two different preparatory stages of the eponymous figure inserted by Bernini in the monument to Urban VIII in St. Peter's Basilica (1628-47), while the Baptism of Christ group, a scale model of the homonymous sculpture produced in silver for Innocent X Pamphili (1644-1655), was made by Algardi around 1646, two years after the accession to the throne of Pope Pamphili.