The Coat of Arms on the Pedestals
  

The Baldacchino above the Papal Altar is supported by 4 large (2.68m) marble pedestals . Each of the outer sides of the pedestals are decorated with Urban VIII's family coat of arms, the Barberini bees, created by Bernini and his assistants (1627-28). These shields also represent the stages of a woman in childbirth, which begins on the SouthEast corner (1), moves clockwise, and ends with a baby's face on the NorthEast corner (8).

      
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Over the years, the details of the pedestals have been subject to extravagant explanations.  One of the most popular stories told by some guides to the basilica, is that the woman was the neice of Urban VIII who was undergoing a difficult pregnancy.  The pope then vows to dedicate an altar in St Peter's if the delivery is successful.  Thankfully this matter has been recently explained by the world's greatest scholar on the work of Bernini in St Peter's, Irving Lavin.



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Irving Lavin in his book Visible Spirit: The Art of Gianlorenzo Bernini, Volume 3, The Pedestals of the Baldacchino: Footsteps on the Way to Redemption, states the following.

References to the tribulations and joys of childbirth were understood as the labor and sufferings of the Mother Church in bringing about salvation through a healing of the souls by virtue of Christ's sacrifice at the crucifixion, reenacted in the Eucharistic sacrifice of the mass.

The pedestals of the baldacchino incorporate, as cornerstones the two stones, Peter and Mary, on which Christ built his church. Following the words about childbirth in the Book of Revelation and from Christ's own mouth as reported by St John, the tribulations and ultimate jubilation of childbirth depicted on the pedestals reenact the process of salvation that is achieved in the sacrifice at the altar and triumphs with the Resurrection of Christ in the original plan for the Baldacchino, and with the world dominion of the Cross as it was executed. The Original Sin over which the church triumphs and from which the repentant sinner is redeemed is illustrated in the satiric, indeed devilish masks that appear as if imprisoned at the groins of the cartouches.

The Chastity of Bees
Spiritual betrothal and the laborious creation of its progeny is exactly what is emblematized in the pedestals of the Baldacchino: the birthing that takes place in the embrace of the papal arms, with the expressive heads above, the bees marking the breast and belly in the swollen torso, and the groin covered or replaced by the ghoulish masks that echo the goatskins with which, in the Lupercalia, pagan women were lashed at their groins to insure fertility. This increase in the faithful through conversion and baptism is precisely the kind of progeny envisaged by Methodius and other churchmen as resulting from the travails of the apocalyptic Woman clothed in the Sun, and Christ's own procreative passing from his death to his Second Coming - a troubled birth with a happy issue. This construct of the ideology of the Church depends wholly on the virginity of Mary, which is expressed in the Barberini coat of arms by the bees.












The Papal Altar, Baldacchino and the Coat of Arms on the pedestals
          
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The masks below the coat of arms