Even if Gian Lorenzo Bernini is not originally from Rome, he can be considered Roman, as there are almost no monuments, works of art, buildings of the seventeenth-century Rome that he did not make or participated in building. Born in Naples in 1598 and son of Pietro Bernini, a sculptor from Tuscany, he expressed his genius at its maximum level when he worked for the popes. Amongst his youth works, there are the rape of Proserpine (1621), the David (1623), Apollo and Daphne (1625), for the gallery of cardinal Borghese. Awesome marble works, followed by the popular and sumptuous canopy in the middle of Saint Peter's Basilica, finished in 1633. A monumental bronze structure, commissioned by pope Urban VIII Barberini, standing on four twisted columns supporting a frame from which hangings of a drape come down. The works on the imposing Colonnade for the Basilica (actually the square in front of it), symbol of the church embracing the believers. It was commissioned by pope Alexander VII and completed in 1657: a tongs-shaped fence made up of a Doric porch with plain trabeation. The porch, with for the first part shapes a trapezium with the façade of the Basilica, then widens forming two enormous semicircles, with four aisles each. This architectural solution created a great effect for those who were coming from the lateral medieval alley into the enormous square.
In Saint Peter's Basilica visitors can admire the funeral monument of Urban VIII made by the great artist, who chose for this work striking baroque solutions, using bronze and multicoloured marbles. Bernini made also the funeral monument of Alexander II: in other churches in Rome the genius of the sculptor left its mark, like in Saint Andrew at the Quirinal, considered as Bernini's baroque masterpiece; while in Santa Maria della Vittoria, for the Corsaro Chapel, he sculpted the Saint Theresa's Ecstasy around 1652. Bernini's masterpieces can be admired also in the main squares in Rome, and the author showed his genius building magnificent fountains. The most beautiful one is the Barcaccia, designed together with his father for Piazza di Spagna and which he sculpted in 1629, introducing the innovating idea of the depressed tank, technique he will use also in the shell-shaped Fountain of the Triton, in the middle of Piazza Barberini, made in 1643. He made the Fountain of the Four Rivers with travertine for Piazza Navona, made up of a fake cliff on top of which an obelisk stands; on its foot there are the statues of the four giants representing the biggest rivers in the known world: The Danube, the Ganges, the Nile and the Rio de la Plata, dedicated to Innocent X Pamphili, who had its noble residence in the same square. When Carlo Maderno died, he was put in charge of completing the works that were not finished, and he worked in Palazzo Barberini in 1632, at the Loggia of the Benedictions of Palazzo del Quirinale. Palazzo Montecitorio was designed by him as well and the statue of the cartouche-holding Angel on Ponte Sant'Angelo. Amongst his works, there are also two popular busts, one, kept in the Borghese Gallery, portrays cardinal Scipio Borghese, the other portrays Costanza Buonarelli, and it is exposed in the Museum of the Bargello in Florence. Gian Lorenzo Bernini passes away in Rome in 1680.