The obelisk itself is not unduly remarkable, except for the fact that it stands on the back of a smiling marble elephant with an unfeasibly long and wobbly trunk. What’s more, this humorous creature is the conception of the greatest artist of the 17th century, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, a man capable of endowing his work with the most profound emotional depth. In his lively and informative book, Loyd Grossman, a big cheese in the heritage world as well as the world of pasta sauces, looks not just at the elephant and its obelisk, but also at the relationship between Bernini and his patron Pope Alexander VII, and how the pair transformed Rome.
