Great article Alex.

Keep drinking the modernist Kool-Aid maps. Bernini's work has been loved and treasured for 500 years, and will be for millennia to come. The only sculptor of the last 100 years or so who even comes within a planetary orbit of the craftsmanship, artistry and transcendent beauty of his work is Rodin. The modernists and abstractionists might have dominated the art world for the last century or so, but only because the art world has been stuck in a "hipper than thou" mode for all that time, with everyone falling over themselves to come up with something more outrageous than the next guy. E.g Gilbert and George's "turd" art, and Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ".

Why are places like the NY Met Museum filled to bursting all year long, whereas most regular commercial art galleries are populated only by otherwise useless art history grads? (Where else would get our unreadable art criticism?) As the brilliant David Hockney says - people like pretty pictures. I don't want modern art to go away - I just don't want it to be the only item on the menu.

Nicely put, Sid.
Nail-head, meet hammer.

Bernini's David is so much more dynamic and descriptive of the David and Goliath story than Michelangelo's rather one dimensional, albeit very beautiful homo-erotic portrait. Once you realize this I think it opens the door to appreciate the genius in so many other Bernini pieces. Bernini captures the precise moment of the drama of the fable, as he does with Apollo and Daphne, which you can't see clearly in that top picture, but can be seen more clearly here:
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/b/bernini/gianlore/sculptur/1620/apollo_d.html
where the nymph Daphne is metamorphizing into a tree.
A wonderful site for viewing Bernini sculpture is the Italian Thais site:
http://www.thais.it/scultura/bernini.htm