In room 14 of the Galleria Borghese there are two busts of the same man, made by the same sculptor, in the same year. They look identical and they are not.
One of the two has a crack across the forehead. That is the reason the other one exists.
Who the sitter is
Cardinal Scipione Caffarelli Borghese was the nephew of Pope Paul V, and for sixteen years he was the man who decided in Rome what got bought, what got confiscated and who got pardoned. The collection you visit today is his: the Caravaggios that arrived through a seizure, the Raphael taken from a monastery in Perugia, and the young Bernini spotted at twenty and set to carving the groups that made him famous.
In 1632 Scipione was fifty-five, his uncle the pope had been dead for eleven years and power no longer ran through him. Bernini, who owed him his career, made his portrait.
The portrait that seems to be speaking
What strikes you in front of the bust is that he is not posing.
The head is turned three quarters, as if someone had called him from the right. The lips are parted, caught halfway through a sentence. The eyes are looking at someone who is not you. The mozzetta, the short cape cardinals wear, sits slightly out of place on his shoulders, with one button pulling and the folds riding over each other.
In the official portrait of the seventeenth century the sitter holds still, looks ahead and conveys his rank. Here instead Bernini catches a fat, living man in the middle of a conversation, and uses marble to fix the wrong moment, the one halfway through. It is the kind of choice that changed carved portraiture across Europe.
The crack
The bust was nearly finished when the problem appeared.
There was a flaw in the block of marble, what marble workers call a pelo, and during the final polishing it opened into a crack running across the cardinal’s forehead. Not a hidden corner: the forehead, the first place the eye goes.
A defect like that made the work unacceptable to the patron, and the patron was the man to whom Bernini owed everything.
The crack is still there. It was made clearly legible again by the restoration of 1997, after an earlier intervention in 1911, and if you stand at the right angle you can still see it today.
Fifteen nights or three days
Bernini carved a second bust, in secret, to present in place of the first.
How long he took is the point where the sources part company, and both are worth reporting rather than choosing between. Filippo Baldinucci, who wrote Bernini’s biography in 1682, says fifteen nights of unbroken work. Domenico Bernini, who was his son, says three days.
These are the two main early sources on Bernini’s life, and both are hagiographic: they existed to build the myth of the prodigious sculptor, and the shorter the time the better the myth works. That the second bust was made quickly is certain; how quickly, we do not know, and anyone who gives you a single number is picking the source they prefer.
How to tell them apart today
Both are in room 14, the Loggia di Lanfranco, so you can make the comparison in person. Here is what to look for.
The first bust carries the inventory number CCLXV, cut into the base, stands 77.2 centimetres high and has the crack on the forehead.
The second carries the inventory number CCLXVI, stands 78 centimetres high and can be recognised by three details: the shoulders are less rounded, the mozzetta has a horizontal pleat low down that the first one does not have, and the overall finish is more uniform.
That last point is the most interesting to look at. The second bust is technically more regular, because it is a replica of something that already existed and Bernini knew exactly where he was going. The first is the one where the decisions were being made as the carving went on, and it shows.
The flawed one got the better spot
There is a detail that turns your expectations around.
According to Iacomo Manilli’s guide of 1650, the first bust, the cracked one, stood in the room of the Emperors, on the ground floor, among the busts of the Caesars. The second, the flawless copy, was in the picture gallery upstairs.
So the rejected piece took the more prestigious position. That the cardinal chose to keep that one on show says something both about his taste and about what the original was worth in his eyes, crack included.
Both busts entered state ownership when the Borghese collection was bought in 1892.
What to see before and after
The same gallery holds the sculptures Bernini made for Scipione ten years earlier, when he was barely into his twenties: they are in the ground-floor rooms and they are the foundation of the whole relationship between the two men. The full route is in the guide on what to see at the Galleria Borghese.
If you are more interested in what happened to Bernini afterwards, when the protectors ran out, there is Truth Unveiled by Time, the statue nobody commissioned. And the whole career is in the portrait of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Practical information
The two busts are in room 14, the Loggia di Lanfranco, on the first floor, together with three more Bernini works almost nobody looks at: I have covered them in Bernini at the Borghese, the works nobody looks at.
You cannot enter the Galleria Borghese without booking, for any kind of ticket, not even a free one, and capacity is 180 people per slot.
The gallery is open Tuesday to Sunday, 9am to 7pm. Entry is by timed slot and the visit lasts two hours. The last slot is at 5.45pm, costs less than the others and is shorter. The only two annual closures are 25 December and 1 January.
The full ticket costs 16 euros, the 5.45pm slot costs 11 euros, the reduced ticket for ages 18 to 25 costs 2 euros and under-18s go free. Every ticket carries a further 2 euros of compulsory booking fee. Details checked on 29 August 2026 on the official Galleria Borghese ticket page.
Book at least a week ahead and turn up half an hour early. If you would rather secure your place without going through the museum site, the ticket is also available online with an audioguide and an optional guided tour.
A warning about timing: room 14 is on the first floor, and visitors who come in with two hours ahead of them tend to spend ninety minutes downstairs between Bernini and Caravaggio. If the busts matter to you, go up first.
Photo credits. The two busts: Sailko, CC BY 3.0, from Wikimedia Commons.
