The worst defect in the sculpture of Bernini is his treatment of the human body. At times he exaggerates the muscular power beyond all resemblance to nature, and again he seems to leave out all anatomy and soften the body to a point that far exceeds possibility. This softness is seen in his Apollo and Daphne, which shows the moment when she is suddenly changed into a laurel-tree in order to escape the pursuit of the young god. This group is in the Villa Borghese, at Rome; it was executed when Bernini was but eighteen years old, and near the close of his life he declared that he had made little progress after its production. But he reached the height of this objectionable manner in his representation of the Rape of Proserpine, which is in the Villa Ludovisi. The Pluto is a rough, repulsive man, with whom no association of a god can be made, and the Proserpine is made a soulless, sensual figure, so far from attractive in a pure sense that we are almost willing that Pluto should carry her to some region from which she is not likely to come back. At the same time we are sorry not to provide her with an ointment for the blue marks which the big hands of Pluto are making on her soft flesh. The plain truth is, that this work makes a low and common thing of a subject which could be so treated as to be a "thing of beauty" in a charming sense. (Fig. 111.) [Illustration: FIG. 111.--RAPE OF PROSERPINE. _By Bernini._] Bernini executed a statue of St. Bibiana for the church of that saint at Rome, and one of St. Longinus in one of the niches to the dome of St. Peter's; he also made the designs for the one hundred and sixty-two statues in the colonnades of St. Peter's, and for the decorations of the bridge of St. Angelo; in such works, almost without exception, he chose some moment in the lives of the persons represented that called for a striking attitude and gave an opportunity for an effect that is often theatrical. As a mere decoration such statues have a certain value of an inferior sort; but as works of art, as intellectual efforts, they are worthless. However, this decorative effect, as it is seen on the facade of the Lateran, where the figures stand out against the sky, or on the bridge of St. Angelo, is not by any means to be despised; only we cannot call a sculptor a great artist when he can do nothing finer than this.