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How did Gian Lorenzo Bernini compare the colonnade of St. Peter’s Square to the church’s arms?
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Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Apollo and Daphne, marble sculpture by Lorenzo Bernini, 1622–25; in the Borghese Gallery, Rome.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini designed the massive, oval-shaped colonnade for the piazza of St. Peter’s Basilica to serve as a symbolic gesture of welcome and inclusion. He explicitly compared the form of the colonnade and the trapezoidal forecourt to the "encircling arms of the mother church," intended to gather the faithful together.12