5 Works to Know by Bernini: Ornate Canopies, Billowing Fabrics, and More

Long before he became the most famous artist associated with the Baroque movement of the 17th century, a 13-year-old Gian Lorenzo Bernini stunned Italy when he created a bust of the surgeon Antonio Coppola. It was among Bernini’s earliest psychologically piercing busts—and, if you believe everything the artist’s own words, it was hardly the first he’d done. He claimed to have initially tried his hand at creating “speaking likenesses” when he was eight, but the