mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Mistress of the Vatican
houses the offices of Italy’s president and is used for presidential ceremonies.
The two geniuses that Olimpia commissioned for her architectural
projects continued their competition after her death, meeting with very
different ends. In 1657 Camillo fired Francesco Borromini as architect
of the Church of Saint Agnes. He was fired from other important projects,
or never considered for the commissions, or when he was awarded
the jobs he would soon after storm off in a rage. As Borromini’s star
continued to fall, the star of his deadly rival, Gian Lorenzo Bernini,
continued to rise.
In 1656, Pope Alexander gave Bernini the commission for the embracing
columned portico surrounding Saint Peter’s Square. It was an
immense, challenging, and prestigious job, completed to great acclaim
in 1666. Bernini undertook it with characteristic zeal, but his success
pushed his ancient competitor over the edge. Deeply depressed, in 1667
Borromini ran himself through with his sword. The forty-year clash of
Rome’s artistic titans was over.
Bernini died in 1680 at the age of eighty-one. He sculpted right up
until the end, standing on a platform with a young man on either side
holding him so he would not fall. One day he had a stroke, which paralyzed
his right hand. “It is right,” the dying man said to his son, “that
before death this hand, which has done so much work in life, should get
a little rest.” 9
Queen Christina continued to shock Rome. She discovered that a life of
art and philosophy was not all she had imagined it to be. She missed
power. Up to her elbows in political intrigue, she decided to become
queen of a Catholic nation and chose, as Olimpia had a few years earlier,
Naples. But when her private secretary betrayed her plans to Spain, she
had him murdered in cold blood, begging for his life on his knees. The
pope was disgusted, but he could hardly imprison for murder the personification
of Catholicism’s triumph over the heretics.
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