A Sèvres biscuit porcelain bust portrait of Empress Marie-Louise, circa 1811

G. Gengembre, Napoléon, L'empereur immortel, Italy, 2002, p. 90.

This biscuit porcelain bust is a faithful copy of the official portrait of Empress Marie Louise commissioned by her husband Napoléon from the sculptor François-Joseph Bosio (1768-1845) and presented at the Paris Salon of 1810. That same year, the factory director at Sèvres, Alexandre Brongniart, commissioned from Bosio 'a plaster bust of Her Imperial Majesty, Empress [...] of dimensions larger than life and arranged in such a way as to form a pendant with the bust of the emperor made by Chaudet'.

The bust of the Empress was made as a counterpart to the Sèvres bust of Napoléon, modelled after the full-length statue of Napoléon Premier en législateur, executed in white marble by the sculptor Antoine-Denis Chaudet (1763-1810), in 1804. Examples of both marble sculptures are now the château de Compiègne (Napoléon, inventory no. C.31.D.9 and Marie-Louise, inventory no. C38.1061). The marble bust of Marie-Louise was delivered in March 1810 and was greatly admired, becoming the portrait of choice of the new Empress. The Sèvres version, which was produced in two sizes, with slight variation in the modelling of the tiara and in sizes due to firing, like its counterpart of her husband, was to be included as an integral part of diplomatic gift giving and to play a role in disseminating the image of the imperial family. One of the factory’s most accomplished modellers, the sculptor Alexandre Brachard (active from 1784 to1827), was entrusted with transforming the bust from marble to porcelain. The incised ‘A.B.’ on our example indicates he worked on the piece to perfect it in the sculpture workshop. Brachard's model was apparently considered so successful that he was paid a 'bonus for success' (Sèvres, Cité de la céramique, Archives, Va'19 fol. 167-170).

According to the Sèvres archives two people purchased busts of the Empress in 1811: Count Sanson bought one, together with a bust of the Emperor, on 14 September 1811, (Sèvres, Cité de la céramique, Archives, Vz2 fol. 14) and Queen Hortense acquired another on 4 November 1811 (Sèvres, Cité de la céramique, Archives, Vz2 fol. 17v). 

At the fall of the Empire, in 1815, six busts in perfect condition of the second size remained in the Sèvres store as well as an additional three of lesser quality. All of these busts were confiscated by the Prussians on the orders of the Prussian Field Marshall Blücher, who kept one model in his own collection, possibly destroying the others. A bust of the first size is in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence (inventory no. 1911 no. 212): this bust was gifted on 21 June 1811 to Ferdinand III (formerly Grand Duke of Tuscany and at the time Grand Duke of Würzburg) to mark the baptism of his godson, son of Napoléon Bonaparte, the so called 'King of Rome'. Another 1811 example of the first size is in the collection of the château de Fontainebleau (deposit of the Cité de la Céramique, Sèvres, inventory no. MNC 3565). An 1813 bust of Empress Marie-Louise without a marble base, formerly in the collection of Pauline Borghese, then seized from Saint-Cloud by Marshal Blücher in 1815, was sold at Sotheby's Monaco, former Blücher Collection, December 4, 1976, lot 8, and was most recently sold at Osenat, Fontainebleau, 9 July 2023, lot 181. For further discussion of this model see also L'Aiglon, exhibition catalogue, National Museum of the Legion of Honor, Paris, 20 March-13 June 1993, cat. no. 2, p. 18; and C. Beyeler, Napoléon, L’art en majesté, Paris, 2017, p. 156.