The dramatic lighting and dark background contribute to the portrait's powerful impact. The painting was made in about 1675 when Bernini was in his late seventies, and records the distinguished appearance of the brilliant and complex sculptor and architect. Baciccio, who according to his biographer, encouraged his sitters to move and talk while he painted them, has deflty captured the older artist's alertness and the animated gesture of his hand emerging from the folds of his cloak. This painting became the model for the engraved frontispiece to Baldinucci's biography of Bernini and for the official portrait of Bernini in the Roman Academy of St Luke.