What changes characterize Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s late sculptural style?

Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s late sculptural style is characterized by a shift toward greater emotional intensity and formal refinement. Key developments in this period include:

• Formal Changes: His later works often feature an elongation of the body and a move toward simplified yet highly emphatic emotional expression.1
• Spatial Approach: While his mature works, such as the Cornaro Chapel, were famous for integrating architecture, painting, and sculpture into a unified, overwhelming sensory experience, his final masterpiece—the Altieri Chapel—shows a more traditional approach. In this work, he consciously separated these arts to serve distinct roles, placing the figure of Ludovica Albertoni within a large volume of space rather than filling the architectural opening.1
• Thematic Focus: His later years were marked by a preoccupation with religious themes and vast, ambitious scales, such as the Cathedra Petri. He increasingly viewed the inexorable laws of architecture as a consoling contrast to the transitory nature of human existence, a sentiment reflected in the pliant, human adoration of the angels flanking the bronze tabernacle in the Santissimo Sacramento Chapel.1