Although generally credited to Bartolomeo Avanzini, it has been suggested that advice and guidance in the design process had been sought from the contemporary luminaries, Cortona, Bernini, and Borromini.

The latter has a major historic value, because it was one of the quarries that Gian Lorenzo Bernini selected material from to build the famous ( colonnato di Piazza S. Pietro ) The Colonnade of St. Peter's Square in Rome in 1656-1667.

The Piazza Navona has two additional fountains: at the southern end is the Fontana del Moro with a basin and four Tritons sculpted by Giacomo della Porta ( 1575 ) to which, in 1673, Bernini added a statue of a Moor, or African, wrestling with a dolphin, and at the northern end is the Fountain of Neptune ( 1574 ) created by Giacomo della Porta.

Usigni is also very proud of an elegant well-head of the same period, attributed by some to Bernini, which it has adopted as its symbol.

Italian sculptors whose work is held by the museum include: Bartolomeo Bon, Bartolomeo Bellano, Luca della Robbia, Giovanni Pisano, Donatello, Agostino di Duccio, Andrea Riccio, Antonio Rossellino, Andrea del Verrocchio, Antonio Lombardo, Andrea Riccio, Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, Andrea della Robbia, Michelozzo di Bartolomeo, Michelangelo ( represented by a freehand wax model and casts of his most famous sculptures ), Jacopo Sansovino, Alessandro Algardi, Antonio Calcagni, Benvenuto Cellini ( Medusa's head dated c1547 ), Agostino Busti, Bartolomeo Ammannati, Giacomo della Porta, Giambologna ( Samson Slaying a Philistine ( Giambologna ) c1562, his finest work outside Italy ), Bernini ( Neptune and Triton c1622 – 3 ), Giovanni Battista Foggini, Vincenzo Foggini ( Samson and the Philistines ), Massimiliano Soldani Benzi, Antonio Corradini, Andrea Brustolon, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Innocenzo Spinazzi, Canova, Carlo Marochetti and Raffaelle Monti.

Scipione Borghese was an early patron of Bernini and an avid collector of works by Caravaggio, who is well represented in the collection by his Boy with a Basket of Fruit, St. Jerome, Sick Bacchus and others.

In two niches across from each other, interactive sculptures by Bernini, of Habakkuk and the Angel that took him by the hair and transported him to Babylon to succour Daniel, who is represented in the corresponding niche on the opposite wall.

The passage that Urban set Bernini to illustrate, was well known to all literate Roman contemporaries:

Cortona, like Bernini in sculpture, appears reactionary, patronizing ; yet if excellence in art is measured by the ability to match style to intent within the limitations of the medium, then Cortona was triumphant.

Francesco Borromini, byname of Francesco Castelli ( 25 September 1599 – 3 August 1667 ), was an architect from Ticino who, with his contemporaries Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Pietro da Cortona, was a leading figure in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture.

Unlike Bernini who easily adopted the mantle of the charming courtier in his pursuit of important commissions, Borromini was both melancholic and quick in temper which resulted in him withdrawing from certain jobs, and his death was by suicide.

Bernini and other artists fell from favour in later neoclassical criticism of the Baroque.

Bernini was born in Naples to a Mannerist sculptor, Pietro Bernini, originally from Florence, and Angelica Galante, a Neapolitan, the sixth of their thirteen children.

* In 1625, sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini finished his piece entitled Apollo and Daphne, taken from the episode in Book 1 in which Apollo, pierced by a love-inducing arrow from Cupid, pursues the fleeing nymph Daphne.

In the following century, it was not the admirers of Caravaggio who would have dismissed Carracci, but to a lesser extent than Bernini and Cortona, baroque art in general came under criticism from neoclassic critics such as Winckelmann and even later from the prudish John Ruskin.

It is also said that the bronze was used by Bernini in creating his famous baldachin above the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica, but, according to at least one expert, the Pope's accounts state that about 90 % of the bronze was used for the cannon, and that the bronze for the baldachin came from Venice.

The confraternity continued to draw members from the elite of Rome's artists and architects, and among later members we find Bernini, Cortona, Algardi, and many others.

In the competition for the new range of building for the Louvre he was successful over all rivals, even Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who had traveled from Italy expressly for the purpose.

In 1642, Father Valerio, with Bernini, redesigned the façade to the Piazza di Spagna, and the development was continued along the Via Due Macelli by Gaspare de ’ Vecchio from 1639-1645.

In 1648, Borromini took over and made various proposals that included demolishing Bernini ’ s chapel which must have been particularly galling for the latter as he could see the building from his house on Via Mercede.

Symmetrical double flights of stairs flanking the central axis lead to the next garden terrace, with the Grotto of Diana, richly decorated with frescoes and pebble mosaic to one side and the central Fontana del Bicchierone (" Fountain of the Great Cup ") loosely attributed to Bernini, where water issues from a seemingly natural rock into a scrolling shell-like cup.

At the Triton Fountain, Urban and Bernini brought the idea of a sculptural fountain, familiar from villa gardens, decisively to a public urban setting for the first time ; previous public fountains in the city of Rome had been passive basins for the reception of public water.

It features important sculptural and architectural creations: in the center stands the famous Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi or Fountain of the Four Rivers ( 1651 ) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, topped by the Obelisk of Domitian, brought here in pieces from the Circus of Maxentius the church of Sant ' Agnese in Agone by Francesco Borromini, Girolamo Rainaldi, Carlo Rainaldi and others ; and the aforementioned Pamphili palace, also by Girolamo Rainaldi, that accommodates the long gallery designed by Borromini and frescoed by Pietro da Cortona.

The garden Casino Borghese, built on a rise above the Villa by the architect Giovanni Vasanzio, was set up by Camillo Borghese to contain sculptures by Bernini from the Borghese collection, including his David and his Daphne, and by Antonio Canova ( Paolina Borghese ), with paintings by Titian, Raphael and Caravaggio.

The open space which lies before the basilica was redesigned by Gian Lorenzo Bernini from 1656 to 1667, under the direction of Pope Alexander VII, as an appropriate forecourt, designed " so that the greatest number of people could see the Pope give his blessing, either from the middle of the façade of the church or from a window in the Vatican Palace " ( Norwich 1975 p 175 ).

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, a sculptor from the Baroque period, made his bozzetti from wax or baked terracotta to show his patrons how the final piece was intended to look.

The most famous works are the two portraits of Francis I d ' Este, a sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and a canvas by Diego Velázquez.

Pope Urban VIII commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini to design and construct a structure that would be placed over the tomb of St. Peter during the building of the new St. Peter's Basilica ( located in Rome ).

Gian Lorenzo Bernini ’ s 29-metre-high Baroque baldacchino over the main altar in today ’ s Saint Peter ’ s Basilica is at present the best-known such structure.

When Maderno died in 1629, Borromini was passed over and the commission was awarded to Bernini, a young prodigy then better known as a sculptor.

In the early 17th century, Urban VIII Barberini tore away the bronze ceiling of the portico, and replaced the medieval campanile with the famous twin towers ( often wrongly attributed to Bernini ) called " the ass's ears ," which were not removed until the late 19th century.

Mr. Sansom can be eloquent in a spectacular way which recalls ( to those who recall easily ) the statues of Bernini and the gigantic paintings of Tintoretto.

Apollo and Daphne by Bernini in the Galleria Borghese.

One of the great periods of art history, Baroque Art was developed by Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci, and Gianlorenzo Bernini, among others.

Alessandro Algardi ( 31 July 1598 – 10 June 1654 ) was an Italian high-Baroque sculptor active almost exclusively in Rome, where for the latter decades of his life, he was the major rival of Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Propelled by the Borghese and Barberini patronage, Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his studio garnered most of the major Roman sculptural commissions.

The arrangement mirrors the one designed by Bernini for the Tomb of Urban VIII ( 1628 – 47 ), with a central hieratic sculpture of the pope seated in full regalia and offering a hand of blessing, while at his feet, two allegorical female figures flank his sarcophagus.

With the death of the Barberini Pope Urban VIII in 1644 and the accession of the Pamphilj Pope Innocent X, the Barberini family and their favorite artist, Bernini, fell into disrepute.

The style was used in bronze by Bernini for his spectacular St. Peter's baldachin, actually a ciborium ( which displaced Constantine's columns ), and thereafter became very popular with Baroque and Rococo church architects, above all in Latin America, where they were very often used, especially on a small scale, as they are easy to produce in wood by turning on a lathe ( hence also the style's popularity for spindles on furniture and stairs ).

He seems to have had a sound understanding of structures, which perhaps Bernini and Cortona, who were principally trained in other areas of the visual arts, lacked.

Probably because his work was idiosyncratic, his subsequent influence was not widespread but is apparent in the Piedmontese works of Camillo-Guarino Guarini and, as a fusion with the architectural modes of Bernini and Cortona, in the late Baroque architecture of Northern Europe.

When Maderno died in 1629, he and Pietro da Cortona continued to work on the palace under the direction of Bernini.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini ( also spelled Gianlorenzo or Giovanni Lorenzo ) ( Naples, 7 December 1598 – Rome, 28 November 1680 ) was an Italian artist who worked principally in Rome.

A student of Classical sculpture, Bernini possessed the unique ability to capture, in marble, the essence of a narrative moment with a dramatic naturalistic realism which was almost shocking.

" A deeply religious man, working in Counter Reformation Rome, Bernini used light as an important metaphorical device in the perception of his religious settings, often using hidden light sources that could intensify the focus of religious worship, or enhance the dramatic moment of a sculptural narrative.

Bernini was also a leading figure in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture along with his contemporaries, the architect, Francesco Borromini and the painter and architect, Pietro da Cortona.

Early in their careers they had all worked at the same time at the Palazzo Barberini, initially under Carlo Maderno and on his death, under Bernini.

Later on, however, they were in competition for commissions and fierce rivalries developed, particularly between Bernini and Borromini.

During his long career, Bernini received numerous important commissions, many of which were associated with the papacy.

Following his accession to the papacy, Urban VIII is reported to have said, " Your luck is great to see Cardinal Maffeo Barberini Pope, Cavaliere ; but ours is much greater to have Cavalier Bernini alive in our pontificate.

Bernini himself would not marry until May 1639, at age forty-one, when he wed a twenty-two year old Roman girl, Caterina Tezio, an arranged marriage that bore him eleven children.