In the basilica, Bernini also began work on the tomb for Urban VIII, completed only after Urban's death in 1644, one in a long, distinguished series of tombs and funerary monuments for which Bernini is famous and a traditional genre upon which his influence left an enduring mark, often copied by subsequent artists. Indeed, Bernini's final and most original tomb monument, the Tomb of Pope Alexander VII, in St. Peter's Basilica, represents, according to Erwin Panofsky, the very pinnacle of European funerary art, whose creative inventiveness subsequent artists could not hope to surpass. Begun and largely completed during Alexander VII's reign, Bernini's design of the Piazza San Pietro in front of the Basilica is one of his most innovative and successful architectural designs, which transformed a formerly irregular, inchoate open space into an aesthetically unified, emotionally thrilling, and logistically efficient (for carriages and crowds), completely in harmony with the pre-existing buildings and adding to the majesty of the basilica.