New light on the colossal statues on the façade of St Peter's, Rome

Despite their immense size and prominent location, the statues that crown the façade of St Peter's received surprisingly little attention from contemporaries when they were made in 1612-14 and the sculptors of most of them were identified only in the twentieth century. Further elucidation is provided here by the unravelling of a confusion between the sculptor Chiarissimo Fancelli and the stonecutter Carlo Fancelli and the attribution of the figure of St Philip to Pietro Bernini.