Born in Lugano, Bernardo Falcone is first recorded in Venice in 1659, carving the statues of the Madonna and Saints Dominic and Thomas Aquinas for the high altar of the basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paolo. In the next year he executed four bronze angels for the high altar of San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma (Adorni, loc. cit.), perhaps as a result of his contacts with the Benedictines of Santa Giustina at Padua. The rest of his career alternated between Venice, where his great rival was Giusto Le Court, and Piedmont, and included important commissions of the Church of the Frari in Venice, and for the casting of a colossal bronze figure of San Carlo Borrommo in Arona to the design of Giovanni Battista Crespi, il Cerano. Some of his later works are signed 'EQVES' in commemoration of his having been knighted.
The vast majority of Falcone's surviving production is religious in subject matter, which makes this polished and elegant bust of Mercury something of a rarity in his oeuvre.