The ostensible reason for the visit was to create new designs for the Louvre Palace, but the young king Louis XIV had declared he also desired a portrait bust.

However, the portrait bust, which depended upon a more personal relationship between the king and the artist, was completed and largely considered a great success.

[1] The creation of the bust is incredibly well documented, thanks to efforts of the French diarist Paul Fréart de Chantelou, a steward at the court of Louis XIV, who befriended Bernini during his time in Paris.

[4] Once potential blocks of marble had been selected, Bernini began by taking drawings (none of which survive[5]) and small clay models of the king.

[9] Bernini's son and biographer, Domenico Bernini, noted the artistic arguments of his father as to why the King agreed to sit for such a length of time, explaining that the artist preferred to work from Truth (i.e. real life) rather than rely on the unnecessary imaginative extras that would creep into working from sketches.

Despite not being an actual military commander, Bernini conceived of Louis in armour, drawing on notions of heroic kings such as Alexander the Great.

It was a feature of Bernini’s sculpture that he could combine abstract notions such as grandeur and nobility with precise individual characteristics of the sitter.

[16] Despite the carping of French critics at the court of Louis XIV, the bust was immediately considered a success, as the number of reproductions testifies.