Salomon-Guillaume Counis

Salomon-Guillaume Counis learned his craft in Geneva around 1800, painting portraits in enamel, a demanding technique in which colours are fused onto a metal plate in a kiln and come out glassy and permanent. He was very good at it. In 1810 he showed several enamels at the Paris Salon, and they caught the eye of Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi, Napoleon's eldest sister, who had been made Grand Duchess of Tuscany.

She offered him a post as her court painter, and Counis moved to Florence to paint portraits of her family. He stayed in the city for the rest of his life, working in enamel and miniature long after the Bonapartes had fallen from power, and died there in 1859. Several of his pieces are now in the Uffizi.