His marble is soft. This is physically impossible — yet that is exactly how his sculptures look.
The Rape of Proserpina, 1621. Pluto has seized Proserpina; his fingers sink into her thigh, the marble yielding under their pressure. It cannot be — this is stone. But you see it.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini was born in Naples in 1598. His father was a sculptor, a Florentine working in Rome. Pope Paul V saw the work of the eight-year-old boy and told his father: "Take care of this child — he will be the greatest sculptor of his age."
He was right. At twenty-five Bernini was famous across Rome; at twenty-six he was chief architect of St. Peter's Basilica.
He invented the Rome we know. The colonnade of St. Peter's Square is his. The Fountain of the Four Rivers on the Piazza Navona is his. The baldachin over the papal altar in St. Peter's is his.
The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, 1652. The saint has fallen back in exhaustion; an angel holds an arrow. Teresa's face hangs between pain and bliss. She had described the state in her diaries — mystical union with God. Bernini rendered it literally.
The critics said it was too theatrical, too sensual for a church. He did not listen.
He died in 1680, at eighty-two, having worked almost to the end.