The Palazzo Bernini (151 Corso), on the left, has, inside its entrance, a curious statue of "Calumny" by Bernini, with an inscription relative to his own sufferings from slander.
On the right, the small piazza of S. Lorenzo opens out of the Corso. Here is the Church of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, founded in the fifth century, but rebuilt in its present form by Paul V. in 1606. The campanile is of an older date, and so are the lions in the portico.
"When the lion, or other wild beast, appears in the act of preying on a smaller animal or on a man, is implied the severity of the Church towards the impenitent or heretical; but when in the act of sporting with another creature, her benignity towards the neophyte and the docile. At the portal of St Lorenzo in Lucina, this idea is carried out in the figure of a mannikin affectionately stroking the head of the terrible creature who protects, instead of devouring him."—Hemans' Christian Art.
No one should omit seeing the grand picture of Guido Reni, over the high altar of this church,—the Crucifixion, seen against a wild, stormy sky. Niccolas Poussin, ob. 1660, is buried here, and one of his best known Arcadian landscapes is reproduced in a bas-relief upon his tomb, which was erected by Chateaubriand, with the epitaph,—
"Parce piis lacrymis, vivit Pussinus in urnâ,
Vivus qui dederat, nescius ipse mori.
Hîc tamen ipse silet; si vis audire loquentem,
Mirum est, in tabulis vivit, et eloquitur."
In "The Ring and the Book" of Browning, this church is the scene of Pompilia's baptism and marriage. She is made to say:—
—"This St. Lorenzo seems
My own particular place, I always say.
I used to wonder, when I stood scarce high
As the bed here, what the marble lion meant,
Eating the figure of a prostrate man."
Here the bodies of her parents are represented as being exposed after the murder:
—"beneath the piece
Of Master Guido Reni, Christ on Cross,
Second to nought observable in Rome."
On the left, where the Via della Vite turns out of the Corso, an inscription in the wall records the destruction, in 1665, of the triumphal arch of Marcus Aurelius, which existed here till that time. The magnificence of this arch is attested by the bas-reliefs representing the history of the emperor, which were removed from it, and are preserved on the staircase of the palace of the Conservators.