Portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte

After Antoine-Denis Chaudet
19th century, White marble

This splendid herm bust is a replica by an unknown artist after the model by Antoine-Denis Chaudet, who created a large statue of the Emperor at his coronation, depicting him as Napoleon the Lawmaker. It appears to be very close to a version Chaudet executed in porcelain in 1805, which is now in the Pitti Palace in Florence. This version is among the most faithful copies of the original – the sculptor himself in fact reserved the right to supervise reproductions of his portrait. A pupil of Antonio Canova in Rome, Chaudet was strongly influenced by the style and poetics of his teacher. Even after he returned to France, his academic forms reflected a taste for neoclassicism which was much appreciated by the circle of Napoleon: the numerous portraits of the emperor taken from his austere model were in fact commissioned by Élisa Napoleone Baciocchi, who entrusted the workshops of Carrara, in the principality that her brother had bequeathed to her, with the task of making copies to be disseminated according to an ambitious policy of spreading the emperor's image as widely as possible.