This fountain has been called Bernini’s masterpiece, and it deserves that title as an example of the utmost length to which the Bernini idea of artistic invention can be carried. From an æsthetic standpoint it shows both in execution and design the faults and excesses into which he was led by his popularity, and the boundless fertility of his genius. The extravagances and absurdities of this fountain and its debased execution arouse curiosity both as to the artist and to the taste and character of the seventeenth-century Romans for whom it was erected and by whom it was so greatly admired. Bernini came in with the seventeenth century and lived through eighty years of it. The pompous epitaph under his bust, which is let into the wall in the Palazzo Mercede, speaks no more than the truth. Princes and popes did bend before him, from Paul V, who recognized his precocious genius, to Louis XIV, who enticed him to Paris. Charles I sent his Van Dyck portraits to Rome, that Bernini might use them as guides in making his portrait bust of the Stuart King, and Urban VIII thanked a gracious Providence that Bernini lived during his pontificate. His journey to Paris was a triumphal progress. The few clouds which marred his long and prosperous day were due not to any waning of popular appreciation but to the inevitable jealousy of less fortunate men. Yet his best work was done in his youth under the enlightened patronage of Paul V and Urban VIII. By the time Innocent X (a mediocre man) could command his services his faults had obscured his genius, and the great days of Rome were definitely over. With the death of Urban VIII, the Pope immediately preceding Innocent X, the last trace of vigorous artistic life had disappeared; for as the French influence in the papal court declined and the Hapsburg ideas regained and held the ascendancy spontaneous and free expression of thought and feeling were rigorously repressed. Men were made to live on the surface of things, and in proportion as they became formal and superficial in themselves they demanded excitement and extravagance in their art. This was the secret of Bernini’s immense success. He was exactly fitted to his time. Men wanted “Sound and fury, signifying nothing,” and he gave it to them in full measure.