The goat, AmaItea between the young Jupiter and a Faun is probably the earliest attempt by the young Bernini, dating back to before 1615,to create a work following the style of the sought-after Hellenistic beauty. The small Bust of Paul V completed now with its originai plinth, is considered to be the first official work given to the young sculptor, around 1617, in honour of the Pontiff of the House of the Borghese, who always kept marble in his study. The Aeneas and Anchise, the first of the four famous Borghese groups, probably conceived for a different setting - is still tied to the paternal style where the use of the drill to scoop out deep areas of shadow is typical.
In the Pluto and Proserpine already completed by the summer of 1622 and transferred the year after, as a gift, to the magnificent residence of Cardinal Ludovisi, the attempt to represent the force generated by the violent twisting of the bodies is expressed in a rapid sequence of im ages.To the rapacious gesture of the god of the infernal regions echo the atrocious barking of Cerberus and the lost glance of the young girl, in dicated by a tear and the waves of the long locks of hair. If the search for balance reaches its highest emotionai intensity in the heroic gesture of the David, contained by force in the plinth where the arms are carefully placed, a feverish sensuality permeates the last work of the series.
The Apollo and
Daphne, in which the
metamorphosis of 
the nymph narrated by Ovid becomes a useful pretext to show off, in the vegetable details, the virtuosity of the collaborator, Giuliano Finelli, and to drum the moralistic message engraved into the plate on the plinth into the watcher.

In the Bust of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, commissioned by Urban VIII in the summer of 1632, the canons of the portrait "in movement" already appear coded.The effigy is imposed as a living thing, palpitating, no longer isolated in a rigid conventional pose. The second version, completely identical to the first, was sculptured from behind screens in fifteen nights or, according to the son Domenico, in only three days, to remedy a defect in the marble still visible along the forehead. Compared to the paintings with the same plastic strength and the acute psychological vision evoked by the dense chromatic paste and in the close-up of the Self-portrait of the young man, in which the hypnotic glance of the artist betrays a subtle restlessness which can still be seen in the later Self-portrait which seems to be united to that of his lover, Costanza Bonarelii.
In the Portrait of a Young Girl, the colour takes on a particularly luminous chromatic tonality.The Truth was never part of the collection, but was bought in 1924 by his heirs, to 
whom it was left in a will. In Bernini's intentions, Winged Time who lifts the drape to reveal the nude allegory with the sun in her hand, should have appeared as an eloquent reply to the violent accusations aimed at the sculptor after the failure of the Vatican campaniles project (1646). Even if truth always triumphs - he himself had commented with bitter irony - it sometimes arrives late!
In the sketch fixed in 1669, the project for a Monument to Louis XIV which, illustrated the monarch during his French stay was carried out a few years iater.The equestrian image, inspired by the Vatican Constantine in the heroic dress of defender of Christianity, symbolises, in reality, the ascent ofVirtue, represented by the rocky plinth.