Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini was born in Naples and trained in Rome under his father, the sculptor Pietro Bernini. In his twenties he carved Apollo and Daphne and David for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, turning marble into flesh, leaves and hair in mid-motion. He served a succession of popes, designing the baldacchino and colonnade of St Peter's and the Fountain of the Four Rivers. In the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa he fused sculpture, architecture and hidden light into a single theatre.