The Rape of Proserpina

The most famous few inches of Bernini's Rape of Proserpina, in the Galleria Borghese: Pluto's hand gripping her thigh, the fingers sinking in as though the marble were soft flesh. Bernini was 23 when he took on the group for Cardinal Scipione Borghese in 1621, and he finished it in 1622. The cardinal soon gave it away to Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, and it only came back to the Borghese collection in 1908. Step back from this detail and the whole struggle is there, with three-headed Cerberus at Pluto's feet.