Living sculptures

Seventeenth-century Roman art at its fullblown, operatic peak often proves too rich for puritanical northern tastes. And no artist was ever more Baroque than Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the supreme maestro of the idiom. But I love his work, which is why, on a spare afternoon in Rome before Christmas, I strolled over to the Borghese Gallery where the largest array of Bernini sculpture ever assembled is currently on view.

Admittedly, the Borghese collection already contains the world’s finest collection of Bernini (1598–1680) and has done so ever since the artist’s lifetime. But on this occasion some 60 loans — including many full-scale marbles as well as paintings and terracotta models — have been added. Given that much of Bernini’s work is immovably attached to the fabric of Roman churches and fountains, this is probably the fullest retrospective that will ever be seen.

It is a feast of creative perversity. The nature of sculpture is to be solid and static, yet Bernini was constantly trying to carve the insubstantial, fast-moving and softly yielding.