Portrait of the Sculptor Antonio Canova

In the autumn of 1802 Antonio Canova, the most famous sculptor of his day, came to Paris at the summons of the First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, to model his portrait bust. While he was in the city he also sat for François Gérard. Gérard turned that sitting into a portrait he showed at the Salon of 1808 and then repeated at least twice. In 1809 he gave one version to his former teacher, Jacques-Louis David, and another to Talleyrand, who had been Napoleon's foreign minister until 1807. This is the one Gérard kept for himself, and the Louvre dates it to 1808 and 1809. Nothing in it points to the sitter's trade, no chisel and no marble. There is only the long face turned to the left, the grey hair curled over the ears, a white cravat and a red cloak thrown over a dark coat. After Gérard's death it went to Léon Dubois, a draughtsman and lithographer who was then assistant curator of the Louvre's Egyptian antiquities, and at his sale in 1843 it was bought for the royal museums of King Louis-Philippe.