Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Triton.

The exquisite lines rise involuntarily to the lips as one comes suddenly upon Bernini's old fountain in the Piazza Tritone, which, standing in the center of one of the busiest and most prosaic thoroughfares of modern Rome, still keeps its own quality of beauty and seems to weave about itself the enchantment of the world of fable.

Roman art has created many Tritons, notably the joyous group surrounding Galatea in the Farnesia Palace, but there is about this water-worn old figure such distinction and such emphasis of life that he becomes the prototype for all his race.

He is Il Tritone.

Triton blows his conch shell with all his might as he kneels across the hinge of a wide-open scallop shell, which is supported on the upturned tails of three dolphins massed together in the middle of a large, low-lying basin.

The dolphins' tails are twisted and folded about large papal keys, a Bernini conceit which, suggesting St. Peter both as fisherman and pontiff, must have delighted the Pope.

The composition of dolphins, keys, and shell is extraordinarily rich and harmonious.

Triton, kneeling upon this noble support, is, from the waist upward, a severely simple figure, almost uncouth, and somewhat out of keeping with the rest of the design.

But for him to sort of have a model, it was always going to be the great classical tradition.

And he's still very influenced by the Michelangelo, all of the history, Bernini, all of the history of the figure, which is so, if you're going to be a figurative sculptor, is so hard to leave behind, so much easier to reference it and to to acknowledge your debt and to show how you're fitting into a tradition.

I just saw a wonderful show, actually, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which was the history of the standing male figure.

And it went from Hellenistic, you know, basically the classical period figure in action, through to Anthony Gormley, you know, the sectioned cubist figure.

Mm.

-by Bernini, the Italian artist.

Yet, just visible above her right shoulder, there's a, a single popped sofa button that's dangling by a thread, which suggests that something isn't right because this pretty nurse isn't in raptures.

She's dead.

-it's almost like a fashion photograph.

Yeah.

I know you mentioned Bernini, but it's almost like a beautiful young woman reclines on a sofa.

It's only when you look closely, it's only when you know the context, that you realize this is a, a Nazi who has taken her own life before the Americans take over.

The nearby Piazza Navona is a carnival 365 nights a year.

While this oblong square got its shape from a long-gone ancient stadium, today, the games are limited to browsing and flirting around its famous Bernini Fountain.

Just down the street is the floodlit Pantheon.

It looms high above our 21st century, as if aching to tell its story, 2,000 years of Roman history.

Lifted up on a billowing cloud, her body has lost all sense of time and space.

Bernini's sculpting is, if you've been to Rome, you know, Bernini's sculpting is, of course, always breathtakingly beautiful.

But on this occasion, the master really outdid himself.

Because Bernini did not just make a figural group, but he built a whole chapel, including a concealed window.

And so this is it from the outside, right? He had to puncture the wall to build this, to let in the natural light.

The light is filtered through a stained glass window before being reflected out and onto the radiating golden rods in imitation of the diffusion of heavenly glory dispersed within our world.

And so Bernini did the unthinkable.

He used gold and stone and glass to house light.