The Blessed Ludovica Albertoni

The statue of the young saint was completed in mid-October 1674. It stands above an altar lit by its own light, channelled through a small window: this is the only “effect”, the only concession to the “codified Berninian tradition”. For the rest the artist repudiates noisy ostentation and scenic skill, and eliminates every accessory figure and every contrived artifice; he models rather than carves, as if working on soft wax and not on marble; he skilfully alternates pauses of dark, deep shadow with luminous openings, in a tormented softening that veils the pensive meditation on death in the livid transparencies of the material.