Standing in a niche in the Chigi Chapel in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, it shows the Prophet Daniel in the lions' den.

At the time the two niches at the sides of the main altar were still empty while the other two on the left and right of the entrance were filled with the statues of Lorenzetto created after Raphael's design: Jonah and the Whale and Elijah.

A surviving drawing from the workshop of Bernini proves that the architect at first planned to move the two Raphaelesque statues to the empty niches by the altar but soon he changed his mind.

He created two new statues depicting the prophets Daniel and Habakkuk, and these sculptures formed a larger composition facing each other diagonally across the space of the chapel.

[1] The surviving preparatory drawings (four studies in the Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig) prove that the inspiration for the statue was provided by the famous Laocoön group.