Bernini and Collaborators in the Poli Chapel (aka dell’Angelo Custode or del Santissimo Sacramento) in San Crisogono in Trastevere

Historical and Artistic Clarifications

Abstract

The Poli Chapel in the Basilica of San Crisogono in Trastevere represents an example of the way Bernini availed himself of collaborators even in his last architectural project. Starting from a re-interpretation of the literary and archival sources, which previously led to a case of “switched identities” between it (a cornu Epistulae) and the Chapel of the Madonna del Carmine on the opposite side of the apse (a cornu Evangelii), the essay takes into consideration the iconographic meaning Bernini orchestrated for the Poli Chapel and investigates the ways in which the restorations that have occurred since the Second World War have changed its original aspect. Finally, with the documented removal of the current altarpiece in July 2018, the article testifies to the disappearance of Ludovico Gimignani’s original altarpiece depicting the Guardian Angel that was still believed to lie behind the current nineteenth-century painting.