A FRENCH/ITALIAN OVER-LIFE-SIZE MARBLE BUST OF LOUIS XIV

The sole relic of his visit to France in 1665, and conserved in the Salon de Diane at Versailles, Bernini's celebrated bust of Louis XIV, in which the Sun King gazes out with godlike authority, set the standard for royal portraits that was to last for the following century. Completed in forty days, a heroic note was set by the work, no longer a truncated half-bust with funerary allusions, but vigorously alive and imperious. The cloak is swept up, as if by a gust of wind, and the king turns with resolute composure in the direction from where it blows, as if calmly facing a challenge.