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Algardi's portrait busts are much less flamboyant or self-consciously artistic in character than those of Bernini. Where Bernini sought movement and engagement in his portraits, Algardi's approach was more understated, and more concerned with evoking presence through minute attention to physiognomy. His busts seem more aloof because they functioned generally as part of funerary monuments where meditation and piety were the primary requirements.
The hallmarks of his approach to portraiture were established by the mid-1630s, when he created the bust of the papal advocate, Monsignor Antonio Cerri, and the posthumous portrait of Cardinal Giovanni Garzia Mellini.
The bust of Cerri is an example of the sculptor at his most skillful, moving from the precisely defined modelling of the head and crisply carved folds of collar and drapery to the passages of hair and skin which appear to have issued from a brush rather than a chisel. The downward turn of the head indicates that the bust was once intended to be seen from Cerri's wall monument, but in the event the original was kept back and an inferior copy from Algardi's shop was placed on the tomb.
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