Book excerpt: This collection contains 106 of Bernini's finest drawings, from a third to a half of his surviving graphic output, drawings characterized by bold assurance and confidence, exquisite precision, brilliance, and subtlety. Included are not only preparatory sketches and designs for the above projects, but splendid figure studies, probing portraits and self-portraits, ingenious caricatures, designs for medals, and drawings for frontispieces. We see the whole range of this artist's draughtsmanship, form his first thoughts on numerous projects to finished works of art. The volume, arranged chronologically, begins with one of Bernini's earliest surviving drawings, the "Portrait of a Young Man" (c. 1615), a possible self-portrait, and ends with a caricature of Pope Innocent XI from the last years of the artist's life (1676-80). As Bernini grew more and more successful, he became in fact a designer rather than a maker of sculpture. The drawings take on a special importance as a key indication of Bernini's original intentions, the way he saw and created projects, which his assistants than executed with varying degrees of competence. -- From publisher's description.