A Rome show dedicated to Gianlorenzo Bernini is drawing the crowds with some previously unseen works by the 17th-century master sculptor and painter.
The exhibition is running until June 3 at the recently-restored Palazzo Incontro.
Entitled The Passion of Christ According to Bernini, the show includes the Cristo Patiens, a large painting which Bernini left in his will to Pope Innocent XI, and another canvas, Cristo Battezzato, which recently resurfaced in France and now belongs in a private art collection in Milan.
Neither of the two paintings has been exhibited in public before now.
Other Bernini works making their public debut include two bronze sculptures belonging to the Vatican.
Rome provincial government chief Enrico Gasbarra, who inaugurated the show a week ago, said it was "a spring gift to the Romans and tourists visiting the city".
Bernini (1598-1680) is considered the greatest exponent of the Italian Baroque.
He created a lot of Rome's best-known statuary, including the Four Rivers fountain in Piazza Navona and the Triton fountain in Piazza Barberini.
Bernini's sculpture is credited with focusing on the psychological dimensions of human experience and showing a new awareness of the relationship between head and body.
Born in 1598, Bernini spent his formative years learning his craft from his father Pietro, a Florentine sculptor and minor artist who moved to Rome.
Gianlorenzo was considered something of a prodigy and by the age of 20 had come to the attention of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, a member of the reigning papal family, under whose patronage he carved his first important life-sized sculptural groups.
By the age of 26, Bernini had been chosen by Pope Urban VIII to work on St. Peter's tomb inside the basilica in Rome. Although some critics categorize the towering Baldacchino (as the tomb is known) as sculpture, the majority view it as Bernini's first major work of architecture.
In his 1998 book, Bernini And The Art Of Architecture, art history professor Tod Marder wrote: "He considered himself an architect and a sculptor. He is the first artist in the history of Western European art to bring these different media - architecture, sculpture and painting - together, to the extent that their very definitions become blurred".
This ability to synthesize architecture, sculpture and painting is known as a 'bel composto' or beautiful whole, a term first coined by the artist's son, Domenico, in his biography of Gianlorenzo.
Another acclaimed Bernini masterpiece is the Ecstasy of St. Teresa, a sensual rendering of the saint sculpted for the Cornaro Chapel of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.
