Allegorical Development
The first use of the crown of stars as an allegorical Crown of Immortality may be the ceiling fresco, Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power (1633–39), in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome by Pietro da Cortona. Here a figure identified as Immortality is flying, with her crown of stars held out in front of her, near the centre of the large ceiling. According to the earliest descriptions she is about to crown the Barberini emblems, representing Pope Urban VIII, who was also a poet. Immortality seems to have been a preoccupation of Urban; his funeral monument by Bernini in St Peter's Basilica in Rome has Death as a life-size skeleton writing his name on a scroll.
Two further examples of the Crown of Immortality can be found in Sweden, firstly in the great hall ceiling fresco of the Swedish House of Knights by David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl (between 1670–1675) which pictures among many allegoric figures Eterna (eternity) who holds in her hands the Crown of Immortality. The second is in Drottningholm Palace, the home of the Swedish Royal Family, in a ceiling fresco named The Great Deeds of The Swedish Kings, painted in 1695 by David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl. This has the same motif as the fresco in the House of Knights mentioned above. The Drottningholm fresco, was shown in the 1000th stamp by Czesław Słania, the Polish postage stamp and banknote engraver.
The crown was also painted by the French Neoclassical painter Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée, 1725–1805, in his Allegory on the Death of the Dauphin, where the crown was held by a young son who had pre-deceased the father (alternative titles specifically mention the crown of Immortality).
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