Bust of Louis XIV, Marble bust in Diana Lounge, Palace of Versailles, France

The Bust of Louis XIV is a white marble portrait carved by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1665, showing the 27-year-old king with a long curled wig, a lace jabot and a segmented shoulder piece of armor. Thick drapery sweeps across the lower half, and the bust is set against a mottled brown stone slab in the Salon de Diane at the Palace of Versailles.

Bernini arrived in Paris on 2 June 1665 and met Louis XIV two days later at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The king requested the bust on 20 June; Bernini carved it in just over three months, with thirteen sittings of about an hour, and delivered it on 5 October 1665. His pupil Giulio Cartari roughed out the block and did much of the drapery. It was moved to Versailles in the 1680s.

The lace jabot was carved without a model: Bernini invented it, and Louis XIV admired it above all. The armour follows a piece from the royal collection, an Italian work after designs by Giulio Romano. Bernini also reworked the king's hair to bare his brow, a change Baldinucci says the court copied as the "Bernini modification".

The bust stands in the Salon de Diane, the central niche of the King's Grand Apartment at Versailles, set against a false door on a Sarrancolin marble pedestal. Look for the gilded bronze trophies by Noël Jouvenet flanking the pedestal and the two cherubs holding a fleur-de-lys crown above the head. Two antique busts face the niche from the side walls.

Bernini planned a large globe as the bust's pedestal, so the whole world would appear as a platform for Louis's majesty; it was never made. The bust was moved from the Louvre to Versailles in the 1680s. In the Salon de Diane it stands before a false door niche, on a pedestal of Sarrancolin Ilhet marble, against a Tortosa brocatelle panel framed in arabescato, with gilded bronze trophies and two putti holding a fleur-de-lys crown by Noël Jouvenet.