Among Rome's many splendid churches, two of them only 300 yards apart--Sant'Andrea and San Carlos--have dazzled visitors with their beautiful but sharply contrasting types of architectural brilliance. Morrissey here tells the remarkable story of the two seventeenth-century geniuses behind these two churches--collaborators and rivals, united by a deep love for the Eternal City, divided by diverging personalities and imaginative visions. As Morrissey recounts the intertwined lives of Gianlorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini, readers see how two very different minds worked together to create a new artistic style (the baroque) but then turned against each other in the fierce competition for commissions and acclaim. By skillfully gauging and then exceeding others' expectations, Bernini adroitly curried favor with the patrons and clerics who employed him. By truculently resisting the slightest intrusions upon his artistic prerogatives, Borromini alienated even many admirers of his greatest achievements--and consequently ended his frustrated life as a suicide.