Napoleon’s bust after Antoine-Denis Chaudet

Bust in Herm of Napoleon Bonaparte in gilt bronze. Model after by the French sculptor Antoine-Denis Chaudet (1763-1810). Chaudet worked in a Neoclassical style and the ‘herm’ form of this bust, with the shoulders cut off and straight sides, imitates that of Roman imperial portraits.

Size: H 30 cm – base W 14 cm x D 12 cm

French school of the 19th century.

Lit: Chaudet made the original plaster model for the portrait in 1799. The final marble version of 1804 was the preferred image of Napoleon himself, who had recently been created Emperor of the French, and it became the official portrait, widely reproduced. In fact biscuit (hard) porcelain versions of this bust in three sizes were made from 1805 at the Sèvres porcelain factory. Italy was under Napoleonic rule at this time and Napoleon had presented his sister, Elisa Baciocchi, with the principality of Lucca and Massa-Carrara, an area which included the Apuan Alps from which Carrara marble was extracted. She ordered the Carrara workshops to carve multiple copies of Chaudet’s bust and no less than 1,200 marble versions of this portrait were carved by the workshops between 1807 and 1809. The majority of these official portraits, originally made for public buildings in France, were destroyed when the Bourbon monarchy was restored in 1814.

(source: Victoria and Albert Museum collection, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O123417/napoleon-i-bust-chaudet-antoine-denis/)

A Similar (larger) bust in bronze with black sheen in the Louvre collection, a marble version in the fine arts museum in Gent (BE) and in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (UK).