Pope Innocent X - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

A measure of the rivalry between two arriviste papal families, the Barberini and the Pamphilj, can be judged from Guido Reni's painting of the Archangel Michael, trampling Satan in which the features of the Pamphilj are immediately recognized. The less-than-subtle political statement still hangs in a side chapel of the Capuchin friars' Church of the Conception (Santa Maria della Concezione) in Rome. During the papacy of Pope Urban VIII, Giovanni Battista Pamphilj was the pope's most significant rival among the College of Cardinals. Antonio Barberini, the Pope's brother, was a Cardinal who had begun his career with the Capuchin brothers. About 1635, at the height of the Thirty Years' War in Germany, in which the Papacy was intricately involved, Cardinal Antonio commissioned the painting of the combative archangel Michael, trampling Satan (the source of heresy and error) for the church of his old Order. The legend that the high-living patrician painter Guido Reni, whose personal dash was at least as great as his brilliant drawing and brushwork, had been insulted by rumours circulated, he thought, by Cardinal Pamphilj, serves to place on the painter's shoulders the vengeful act that could not have been overlooked – or discouraged – by his Barberini patron. When, a few years later, Pamphilj was raised to the Papacy, other Barberini relatives fled to France on the embezzlement accusations that have been mentioned but the Capuchins held fast to their chapel altarpiece.

Innocent was responsible for raising the then Colegio de Santo Tomas de la Nuestra Senora del Santissimo Rosario into the rank of a University and now the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, the oldest existing in Asia.

In 1650, Innocent X celebrated a Jubilee. He embellished Rome with inlaid floors and Bas-relief in Saint Peter's, erected Bernini's Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi in Piazza Navona, the Pamphilj stronghold in Rome, and ordered the construction of Palazzo Nuovo at the Campidoglio.

Innocent X is also the subject of Portrait of Innocent X, a famous painting by Diego Velázquez housed in the family gallery of Palazzo Doria (Galleria Doria Pamphilj). This portrait inspired the "Screaming Pope" paintings by 20th century painter Francis Bacon, the most famous of which is Bacon's Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X.

Innocent X died 7 January 1655, and at the conclave of 1655 was succeeded by Pope Alexander VII.