The sculptor Bernini, born in Naples, was the second major artist who painted portrait caricatures but in his case of well-known personalities. Such as these caricature of a Cardinal.
He was also the designer of the colonnade of the St.Peter. His images and sculptures belong to the so-called Baroque. With a focus on portraying a feeling or state of love, ecstasy, intransigence, grief and anger.
About his playful caricatures wrote the 17th-century critic Baldinucci: “Among painters and sculptors one designates with the word “hate portrait “a way of portraiture, in which maximal similarity of the person is sought, but in which out of jest, sometimes also from ridicule, facial or corporal defects are exaggerated.”
The artistic truth which the caricature reveals is that recognition not depend only on similarity (imitating nature) but also on equivalence (by deformation).
Not only the skill of the artist determines this but also the competence of the viewers who apparently are able to deduce likeness from minimal data, just as one can recognize a familiar person in a vague spot in a crowd.