The manuscript was discovered in the Barberini archives of the Vatican Library in 1929 by Dr Charles Upson Clark, who edited it for the series Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections in English (1942) and Spanish, (1944).
It is home to a Baronal Castle, which was owned by the Savelli, Strozzi, Soderini and, from 1641, by the Barberini families.
For a year he accompanied the general Ottavio Piccolomini in his German campaigns as field chaplain, and in 1641, shortly after his return, he published a number of clever but exceedingly scurrilous satires on the Roman Curia and on the powerful house of the Barberini, held together by the frame story expressed in its title, Il Corriero svaligiato ("The Post-boy Robbed of his Bag").
In 1643 Pope Urban VIII Barberini appointed him Governor of Rome, an honorary position that his absence as bishop of Urbino disabled him from taking up.
Among his correspondents were Galileo Galilei, Cardinal Francesco Barberini, nephew of Urban VIII, Famiano Strada, the historian of the Spanish wars in Flanders, Thomas Farnaby, the critic and grammarian, and Gregorio Panzani, who was sent by Urban VIII on a mission to the English Catholics.
He then also became the principal sculptor for the Barberini family for whom he undertook some restoration of ancient sculptures, most importantly of the Barberini Faun in 1679, carried out together with Lorenzo Ottoni.
He benefitted greatly from the generosity of his patrons, the Barberini family of Pope Urban VIII, who were enthusiastic supporters of early opera.
The theatre opened in 1632 with the opera, Sant' Alessio (Saint Alexis; first performed in 1631), composed by Stefano Landi to a libretto by Giulio Rospigliosi, a protégé of the Barberini Pope Urban VIII, later himself elected Pope Clement IX.