What the Caesars left undone in Rome, one baroque genius, Gian Loren zo Bernini, tried in the 17th century to finish singlehanded. He was as famous in his day as Michelangelo had been in his, and justly so. For in a lifetime he not only completed St. Peter's by adding its embracing colonnade; he also churned out sculptural piazzas by the dozen, did work for eight popes and sculpted six.
He was a man for all the arts. A contemporary English diarist, John Evelyn, noted that Bernini once "gave a public opera wherein...
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