Who sculpted the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa?

Bernini, in the 1650s, and it is less a statue than a piece of theatre. The figures sit in a chapel niche lit by a concealed window above, with gilded rods representing light rays behind them, and members of the patron's family are carved into boxes on the side walls as though watching a performance.

The subject is Teresa of Ávila's own account of a vision in which an angel repeatedly pierced her heart with a golden spear, leaving her with a pain so great she moaned, and a sweetness so excessive she did not wish it to stop. Bernini carved exactly what she wrote, and the result has embarrassed viewers for four centuries - a French diplomat's line, that if this is divine love he knows it well, is the standard quotation.

Bernini essentially designed Baroque Rome. He did the colonnade embracing St Peter's Square, the baldachin over the altar, fountains across the city, and enough portrait busts to define how power looked. He also lost years to a scandal - having his mistress's face slashed by a servant after discovering her with his brother - and to a bell tower for St Peter's that cracked the facade and had to be demolished, which nearly ended his career.