Barbarossa was educated at the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, between 1923 and 1927, and at the Yale University Graduate School of Art and Architecture between 1928 and 1931. He has executed a great number of public sculpture, including reliefs for the Bronx-Parkchester Housing Project (1937-1938) and two monumental figures for the 1939 New York World's Fair. His specialty, however, has been the creation of religious images which adorn many major churches including the Cathedral of the Assumption, Baltimore and St. Mary's Seminary Chapel in Baltimore; St. Thomas Episcopal Church, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York; and the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D. C.
He has earned awards from the Architectural League of New York, the Allied Artists of America, and the National Sculpture Society. During World War II, Barbarossa served in the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers in the South Pacific, achieving the rank of Major.
