The eight solar faces decorating the top corners of Bernini's baldachin appear in the personal emblematic imagery of Pope Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini) who was a humanist poet long before he was pope. Like Pope Julius II with Raphael's Apollo on Mt. Parnassus and Paul III with the solar imagery of the Campidoglio, Urban VIII used art to flatter himself in in solar term as a Apollonian prince ruling over a new Golden Age of Catholic peace, prosperity, unity, global harmony, and cultural flourishing and enlightenment. Thanks to the rise of Renaissance humanism, most rulers were praised in these terms after 1500, long before Louis the Sun King plastered similar solar faces over his architectural commissions. Here Bernini's solar faces offer a pagan counterpart to the glowing light which falls from Michelangelo's dome and from the underside of the baldachin itself where the Holy Ghost appears in a blaze of glory.
