Santa Maria del Popolo


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Samuel Rafael Globic was a young Czech painter who died in Rome in 1665. His small monument is hidden in the corner of the counterfaçade near the wooden entrance booth. Its cryptic inscription remains an unsolved mystery. A small angel is carrying the family coat-of-arms and a rippling drapery. The wavy lines of the Latin inscription say: "This stone is the center, the periphery of which was a life, that the noble Samuel Raphael Globicz de Buczina of Prague in Bohemia once orbited in this turbulent circle of living, whose parent was a royal surveyor, who unhappily discovered the squaring of the circle, when his precious son was buried under this square tombstone in 1665 on 18 August at the age of 25 years."

The parent was Samuel Globic, royal surveyor of Bohemia, who probably designed the monument for his son. Nobody knows the exact meaning of the most striking part of the epitaph which refers to squaring the circle.

(Photo borrowed from internet)
© Zello