Lorenzo Bartolini Vernio, 1777 - , 1850

Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi Levoy, Princesse Française, Princess of Piombino and Lucca, Grand Duchess of , Countess of Compignano, Sister of (1777 –1820) and Felix Pasquale Baciocchi Levoy, Prince of Piombino and Lucca (1762 –1841) Circa 1809

White marble, Elisa presented on a later turned marble socle; Felix inscribed along the chest ‘FELIX’, an old repair to the tip of Felix’s nose

Elisa: 57 cm. high, 75 cm. high, overall Felix: 51.5 cm. high

Provenance: By family tradition, Elisa Bonaparte, at her country house, the Villa Ciardi a Villa Vicentina, where also photographed between 1913 and 1919.1 On her death, (1768–1844), brother of Elisa, who, as the first-born son of their parents, had inherited much of the personal property in Villa Ciardi belonging to his sister Elisa, the fifth- born child, when she died in 1820. On his death, his daughter Zenaide Letizia Bonaparte (1801–54), who married her cousin Charles (1803–57), the son of Lucien Bonaparte (1775–1840), Napoleon's third-born brother. On her death, Julia (1830–1900), daughter of and Zenaide Letizia Bonaparte, who married Alessandro del Gallo, Marchese di Roccagiovine, Cantalupo e Bardella (1826–92) in 1847. On her death Marchese Alberto del Gallo di Roccagiovine (1854–1947) where documented in the State Archives as being in Villa Ciardi in 1913-1919 and erroneously attributed to . On his death Marchesa Matilde del Gallo di Roccagiovine (1888-1977), who married Francesco Bucci Casari, Conte degli Atti di Sassoferrato. On her death, her son Oliviero Bucci Casari, Conte degli Atti di Sassoferrato. On his death, his daughter, Nobildonna Lorenza Bucci Casari, Contessa degli Atti di Sassoferrat; from whom acquired in 2017.

Exhibited: Possibly two of the busts exhibited by Bartolini at the Esposizione di Belle Arti, Lucca, on 15 August 1809, for which Bartolini won Silver medals.

Comparative literature: J. Kennedy, Description of the Antiquities and Curiosities in Wilton House, Salisbury, 1769. G. Campori, Memorie biografiche degli scultori…. Native di Carrara…., Modena, 1873, p. 281-282. C. T. Montholon, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena, Vol. 3, , 1847. F. B. Goodrich, The Court of Napoleon Philadelphia, 1875. R. Metternich, ed., Memoirs of Prince Metternich, 1773-1815, Vol. 1, New York, 1881. Lady M. Lloyd, New Letters of Napoleon I, edited by Léon Lecestre, New York, 1898. P. Marmatton, Les arts en Toscane sous Napoléon: la princesse Élisa, , 1901.

1 Instituto Centrale per il Catalogo e il Documentazione, , inv. E005269.

F. Masson, Napoléon et Sa Famille, Vol. 9, Paris, 1907. T. Matthews, The biography of John Gibson, R.A., sculptor, Rome, London 1911. Louis Étienne Saint-Denis, Napoleon from the Tuileries to St. Helena, translated by Frank Hunter Potter, New York and London, 1922. L. A. Marchand, ed., Byron’s Letters and Journals, London, 1973-94, Vol 9, 213. J. Kenworthy-Browne, ‘Sculptor and Revolutionary; British Portraits by Bartolini’, Country Life, vol. 163, 1978. M. Pointon, Hanging the Head, New Haven and London, 1993. J. Gage, ‘Busts and Identity’, in P. Curtis et al., Return to Life: A New Look at the Portrait Bust, London, 2000. D. Wilson, ‘Nollekens and Fox in the Temple: The ‘Armitstead’ bust’, The British Art Journal, Vol. IV, No.3, Autumn 2003. P. Malgouyres, L’a princesse et le sculpteur: Elisa Bonaparte et Lorenzo Bartolini’, in Cahiers du Chateau et des Musées de Blois, no. 35, 2004. Robert Rosenblum and others, Citizens and Kings: Portraits in The Age of Revolution, Paris and London, 2006- 2007. Ingrid Roscoe, Emma Hardy and M. G. Sullivan (eds.), A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660- 1851, New Haven and London, 2009. D. Wilson, Hiram Powers’ ‘Demidoff’ Fisher Boy, London, 2013. D. Wilson, ‘Joseph Gott’s blemished portrait bust of Benjamin Gott: reinterpretation of the archive’, Journal, Vol. 25.1, 2016.

The magnificent bust of Elisa Bonaparte owes its origins to the particular relationship that its sculptor, Lorenzo Bartolini, enjoyed with the Napoleonic regime which governed and its numerous conquered or annexed territories during the first and second decades of the nineteenth century. It constitutes an important historical record of both that relationship itself and of two impressive figures of that era, one political (Elisa) and one artistic (Bartolini).

Maria Anna (Elisa) Bonaparte Baciocchi Levoy, Princesse Française, Princess of Lucca and Piombino, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Countess of Compignano (1777 –1820; Fig. 1), was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, the fourth surviving child and eldest surviving daughter of Carlo Bonaparte and Letizia Ramolino, their eldest daughter and younger sister of Napoleon Bonaparte. She did not adopt the name ‘Elisa’ until she was aged about 18. As Princess of Lucca and Piombino, then Grand Duchess of Tuscany, she was the only sister of Napoleon to possess political power, although relations between them were not always cordial.

Around 1795, the Bonaparte family relocated from its home in Corsica to Marseille in France. While there, Elisa became acquainted with Felix Pasquale Baciocchi (Fig. 2), who later adopted the surname Levoy. A Corsican nobleman and formerly an army captain, he had been dismissed from his rank on the outbreak of the French Revolution. Elisa married Felix in a civil ceremony in Marseille in August 1797, followed by a religious ceremony in Mombello, where Napoleon had a villa, to which he had moved his family in June that year. Napoleon did not approve of the match, and Baciocchi, unlike his new wife, was not clever. Austrian Foreign Minister Clemens von Metternich, described Baciocchi as having an ‘entire want of intellectual faculties.’2 In 1799, the extended Bonaparte family moved to Paris, where Elisa set up home at 125 rue de Miromesnil, in the Quartier du Roule, with her husband and her favourite brother, Lucien, who shared her taste for literature and the arts, and where they put on plays and hosted

2 R. Metternich, ed., Memoirs of Prince Metternich, 1773-1815, Vol. 1 (New York, 1881), p. 309.

receptions frequented by (amongst others) the painters Jacques-Louis David and Antoine-Jean Gros, and the poet Louis de Fontanes.

Despite her obvious intelligence, Elisa gained a reputation of being unattractive, arrogant and somewhat harsh in her manner of speaking. ‘A harsh and domineering expression injured the effect of features which might otherwise have been pleasing, and her manner, which was abrupt and almost contemptuous toward inferiors, rendered her address distant and suspicious. Her bones were large and prominent, and her limbs ill-shaped: her gait was not graceful, and often subjected her to the playful mockeries of her sister Pauline.’ 3

At the start of November 1800, Lucien Bonaparte was despatched to Madrid as French ambassador to the court of the King of Spain. He took Elisa's husband, Felix Baciocchi, as his secretary. Elisa remained in Paris. On 18 May 1804, the French Senate voted in favour of setting up the First French Empire, with Napoleon at its head, and in 1805 Elisa and Napoleon's other sisters were established as members of the Imperial family, taking the style ‘Imperial Highness’ (‘Altesse impériale’). Felix was promoted to général de brigade, and later he was appointed a senator.

On 19 March 1805, Napoleon awarded Elisa the Principality of Piombino, which had been French property for some years and, being on the west coast of , was of major strategic interest to Napoleon due to its proximity to Elba and Corsica. Elisa and Felix (who now rejoined her after a short separation) took the titles Princess and Prince of Piombino. In June 1805, the oligarchic Republic of Lucca, north of Piombino, which had been occupied by France since late 1799, was made a Principality of France and added to Elisa and Felix’s domain. They set up a court with court etiquette inspired by that at the Tuileries. Most of the power over Lucca and Piombino was exercised by Elisa, who was very active in their administration. Felix took only a minor role, mainly contenting himself with making military decisions for their small army. The inhabitants of Lucca, under French occupation, begrudging the loss of their independence, had little time for Napoleon, Elisa, or their attempts to inculcate French culture and norms in the former republic.

Elisa reformed the clergy at Lucca and Piombino, nationalising their goods and lands, and implemented legislative reform in Lucca, producing laws inspired by the Code Napoleon and producing a new penal code. She actively promoted public charity, built a new hospital in Piombino and instituted other significant public health initiatives and education reforms. In an attempt to aggrandise her status, she ordered the enlargement of several palaces, but in the process engendered hostility and scorn from the populace, especially when these projects led to the razing of significant parts of the built heritage, including venerated major ecclesiastical buildings.

A longstanding devotee of the arts, with a keen interest in economic progress, in May 1807, Elisa established the Committee for the Encouragement of Agriculture, Arts and Commerce to promote and finance the invention of new machines and new techniques to increase the territories' agricultural production and experimental plantations such as those of mulberries at Massa (which had been added to her possessions by Napoleon in 1806), where a Silk School was established in August 1808.

3 Frank B. Goodrich, The Court of Napoleon (Philadephia, 1875), p. 260.

On 29 October 1807, Napoleon signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau with the Spanish court, which transferred Tuscany to France, and, in March 1809 a decree established the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, made Florence its capital and Elisa its grand duchess. However, the terms of the decree required Elisa to enforce the decisions of Napoleon and his ministers and denied her the power to modify any of these decisions, a significant difference from the relative autonomy Elisa enjoyed in Lucca and Piombino. The decree also promoted Félix to the rank of général de division. Elisa was not well-received by the nobility of Florence, where she now set up court, and Napoleon’s own policies regarding taxation there as well as her own reforms of the clergy and the convents did not enhance her popularity. Elisa and Felix lived apart and took lovers.

A number of events strained her relations with her brother, the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. These included the Emperor’s forced removal of Pope Pius VII in 1809; Napoleon’s unhappiness at Elisa’s frequent refusal strictly to enforce the orders of his minister’s within Tuscany;4 Napoleon’s demands for significant payments from her for his grants of the additional territories of Massa and Carrara, which in 1806 he had withdrawn from the Kingdom of Italy to add to Elisa's possessions; and his demand in 1811 that Lucca raise men by conscription, which eroded any support Elisa enjoyed there.

With Napoleon facing the allied coalition after his disastrous defeat at the battle of Leipzig in October 1813, Joachim Murat, King of Naples, the husband of Caroline, sister to Napoleon and Elisa, abandoned his brother-in-law and joined the Austrian cause. With the impending abdication of Napoleon in April 1814, Elisa too was forced to desert his cause and protect her own interests for the sake of her family.5

The Neapolitans captured Massa and Carrara in March 1814. An Anglo-Austrian force under Lord William Bentinck captured Lucca soon after, forcing the pregnant Elisa to flee on the night of 13 March 1814, travelling across Italy in search of asylum. Later, the Austrians detained and imprisoned Elisa in the fortress of Brünn after Napoleon’s escape from Elba and return to France in 1815. Only when he was decisively defeated at Waterloo later that year and exiled to St. Helena, was Elisa freed and permitted to settle in Trieste, with the title of Countess of Compignano. Elisa acquired a country house, Villa Ciardi in Villa Vicentina near Cervignano (about 35 kilometres - 22 miles - northwest of Trieste) and financed several archaeological digs in the region. She contracted a fatal illness in June 1820, and died on 7 August at the age of 43, and thus was the only adult sibling of Napoleon Bonaparte not to survive the Emperor. Felix moved to , where he had Elisa’s remains interred in the Basilica of San Petronio. He died in 1841.

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Carrara, which along with Massa had been added to Elisa’s possessions by Napoleon in 1806, was one of the biggest white marble suppliers in Europe and Elisa bolstered her prestige by establishing an Académie des Beaux-Arts, designed to host the greatest sculptors and thus make Carrara a significant revenue- generating exporter of marble statues, as well as unworked marble itself. In 1807 she appointed Lorenzo Bartolini as director of its sculpture school and also gave him responsibility for preparing models for production in the sculpture workshops. Elisa also set up the Banque Élisienne to give financial aid to sculptors. Some 1200 or more marble replicas (of varying quality and measurements) of the ‘official’

4 See, for example, Lady Mary Lloyd, New Letters of Napoleon I, edited by Léon Lecestre (New York, 1898), p. 150. 5 Frédéric Masson, Napoléon et Sa Famille, Vol. 9 (Paris, 1907), p. 260.

portrait bust of Napoleon by the French sculptor Antoine-Denis Chaudet (1763-1810) were made at the Carrara factory controlled by Elisa between 1807 and 1809.

While most of these replicas were destroyed with the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814, many nevertheless survive.6 The Florentine painter Pietro Benvenuti depicted Elisa and her daughter in the Pitti Palace, Florence standing next to one of the many replicas of Chaudet’s marble bust of Napoleon. Against this background, in 1809 Elisa commissioned the sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini to create portrait busts of her immediate family, including the present busts of Elisa and her husband Felix.

Born near , in Tuscany, in 1777, the son of a blacksmith, Bartolini trained under two separate sculptors, first in Volterra from 1795, and then, from 1799 in Paris. He won the Prix de Rome in 1802 with a relief of Cleobis and Briton, and undertook several commissions for the Napoleonic government, including a bronze relief of the Battle of Austerlitz for the Vendome Column (destroyed 1871). In 1807 Elisa Bonaparte appointed him professor of sculpture at the Accademia di Carrara and in 1810 he received an important commission for a colossal, semi-nude marble statue of Napoleon for Livorno. Completed in 1814, it was eventually, in 1854, erected at Bastia, Corsica. In 1814 Bartolini followed Napoleon into exile on the island of Elba, before settling in Florence sometime after 1815, where his studio attracted large numbers of visitors, many of them on the Grand Tour and many of them from Britain. His early works are neoclassical in style, while his later works often blend neoclassical and neo- renaissance elements with a strong taste for naturalism.

Given his connections to the Bonapartes, Bartolini was excluded from Florentine public and grand-ducal commissions for some years. Instead he undertook private commissions for portrait busts and statues, including commissions from a number of British travellers. One of his visitors in 1817, Henry Matthews, wrote, ‘Bartolini is an excellent workman and takes admirable likenesses … It is now the fashion among the English to sit to him; - and you find all your acquaintances drawn up in fearful array, in hard marble; - some at full length!’7 Lord Byron agreed to sit for Bartolini on condition that the sculptor also modelled a bust of Byron’s mistress, but the poet was unimpressed by his own portrait.8 Bartolini was also involved in the lucrative trade in copies of ancient and modern sculpture. In 1817 Matthews observed, ‘Casts have been imported from London of busts of the King, Fox, Pitt, Nelson, Perceval, and many others. Bartolini reproduces in marble, and sends back to London, all expenses of carriage included, for twenty-two pounds each’.9 ‘In this area of his business Bartolini collaborated with other workshops, displaying their

6 Often compared with the well-known portrait bust of Napoleon by Canova, Chaudet’s bust is thought to be the more accurate likeness, while that by Canova is considered to have captured Napoleon’s ‘genius’ in an idealised fashion. As regards the Emperor’s pose and facial features, the English sculptor Joseph Gott’s bust of Napoleon carved in Rome in 1829, a rare and impressive British sculptural representation of the Emperor, undoubtedly drew its inspiration from Chaudet’s bust, but also embodies some of the idealistic quality of Canova’s portrait. Gott probably saw one of the Chaudet replica busts of Napoleon in Rome, or possibly even at Carrara, which it is known he regularly visited to purchase supplies of marble: see D. Wilson, ‘Joseph Gott’s blemished portrait bust of Benjamin Gott: reinterpretation of the archive’, Sculpture Journal, Vol. 25.1 [2016], pp. 45-64. 7 See John Kenworthy-Browne, ‘Sculptor and Revolutionary; British Portraits by Bartolini’, Country Life, vol. 163 (1978) p. 1655, repeated in Ingrid Roscoe, Emma Hardy and M. G. Sullivan (eds.), A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain 1660-1851, New Haven and London, 2009 (hereafter A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors), p. 79. 8 Leslie A. Marchand, ed., Byron’s Letters and Journals (London, 1973-94), vol 9, 213, repeated in A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors, p. 79. 9 Henry Matthews, 1820, in the Gunnis Papers, Conway Library, Courtauld Institute, London, repeated in A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors, p. 79. For a number of these portraits, Bartolini would have obtained casts of busts by the leading British sculptor, Joseph Nollekens RA, whose most important and famous bust is the earlier (modelled 1789-91) of his two bust of the celebrated Whig politician, : see David Wilson,

products for sale at his premises and taking a share of the profits in return. The 6th Duke of Devonshire purchased reproductions for Chatsworth’.10

Bartolini secured several commissions for ideal works which greatly enhanced his international reputation, including a Reclining Venus after Titian’s famous painting in the , executed around 1822 for the 3rd Marquis of Londonderry. The Duke of Devonshire also commissioned him in 1822 to make a Reclining Bacchante.

From the mid 1820s Bartolini seems to have concentrated most of his effort on prestigious commissions from such figures as the Grand-Duke of Tuscany and Prince Anatole Demidoff, the latter of whom who had settled in Florence, and in 1840 had married Princess Mathilde Bonaparte, the second child of Jérôme Napoléon Bonaparte (who was the youngest brother of Napoleon and was King of Westphalia between 1807 and 1813).11 Bartolini also executed a number of funerary monuments for the church of Santa Croce in Florence. Bartolini was recognised as a leading European sculptor by the time of his death in 1850. The gallery of the Accademia de Belle Arti in Florence houses a collection of Bartolini’s studio plaster models, including a large number of portrait busts and most of his important funerary and ideal (Fig. 3).

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The commission to Bartolini from Elisa Bonaparte to model portraits of her family members, which resulted in the present portrait busts amongst others, was given at the height of the French Empire, when Napoleon was the most famous man in Europe and when his political and military power might have seemed unassailable. It was also the year in which Elisa’s own status in international circles had been enhanced through her elevation by the Emperor to the tile of Grand Duchess of Tuscany (1809), and the establishment of her court in Florence. Florence embodied the Renaissance, whose intellectual basis was its own version of humanism (derived from the discovery of classical Greek philosophy). In cultural and educational terms, the Renaissance led, amongst other phenomena, to an innovative flowering of Latin and other vernaculars, with a resurgence of learning based on classical sources; the development of linear perspective and the development of a more natural style in painted depiction; an increased reliance on empirical observation, particularly in science; and political developments such as the art of diplomacy. Arguably, the Renaissance is best known for its artistic developments and the works of such figures as Michelangelo, who is (and since the fifteenth century always will be) counted among the most famous men inextricably associated with Florence (as well as with Rome). It was thus fitting for Elisa to commission portraits of the first family of Tuscany and Florence, and to do so in a genre that is inherently linked to classical civilisation: the bust form, truncated across the chest and below the shoulders, and resting on a shaped base (socle), is a conventional format that represents the development by the Romans of the Greek sculptural portrait. What could be more natural than to invite one of the leading sculptors of the day – and the director of her own Accademia no less, born in Tuscany and in the same year as the Grand Duchess, and undoubtedly empathetic to her and the newly founded dynasty of which she was a part - to model those portraits?

‘Nollekens and Fox in the Temple: The ‘Armitstead’ bust’, The British Art Journal, Vol. IV, No.3 [Autumn 2003], pp. 65-79. Nollekens also modelled and carved busts of King George III, King George IV, and Spencer Percival. 10 A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors, p. 79. 11 David Wilson, Hiram Powers’ ‘Demidoff’ Fisher Boy (London, 2013), p. 9.

Malgouyres noted in his 2004 article (op. cit., p. 24) that Elisa commissioned from Bartolini busts of herself, her husband, Felix, and her daughter, Napoléone, paying thirty sequins for each one. These busts were subsequently exhibited at the Esposizione di belle arti, Lucca, on 15 August 1809 and at this event Bartolini won silver medals on account of the sharpness of his carving and for the resemblance of the portraits to his sitters (Campori, loc. cit.). Presumably as a result of the positive reception of these busts Elisa commissioned from Bartolini a further twelve busts of her own likeness all of which were made by the sculptor or his workshop under his direct supervision.12 Of the known, subsequent versions,13 all are presented with a richly emblazoned headband, densely ringletted hair and a light chemise falling off both shoulders terminating in an elegant integral plinth. All these details are present in the present bust of Elisa with the exception of the headband which has been replaced by a richly decorated diadem as well as minor variations in the modelling of the drapery.

According to Malgouyres (ibid.), the original busts of Elisa, Felix and Napoléone are, to date, unlocated so it is therefore tempting to consider whether Elisa, who personally commissioned the twelve life-size busts of her own image based on the version exhibited in 1809, might have kept the three originals for herself in Villa Ciardi - her home from 1818 onwards – and the same home in which the present busts of Elisa and Felix were discovered in 2017. This theory could also explain why the present bust of Elisa exceptionally sports the diadem unlike the other versions.

Of the total known versions of the Elisa a further curious variation exists through the addition or absence of a signature; for example, one version in Versailles is signed Bartolini Fecit, while others are signed Bartolini F. and a further few Bartolini Direxit, with this latter group presumably being those carved by the Banca Elisiana. However, a further group of unsigned busts is also known that includes the version in Malmaison inventoried in the Trianon in 1810; a further version in the Museo Napoleonico, Rome (Fig. 4), that was donated by Empress Eugenia to Count Giuseppe Primoli, son of Count Pietro Primoli and Princess Carlotta Bonaparte; and another in Palais Fesch - Musée des Beaux-Arts, Ajaccio, that came from the collection of Prince Napoleon in Paris and was gifted Paul Marmottan to the museum in 1924. As Malgouyres observed (ibid.) signatures were not necessarily proof of direct intervention and might simply have been a stamp of quality control on Bartolini’s behalf, though that did not necessarily mean that the lack of one meant Bartolini did not take a chisel to the block. Variations in quality among the known busts would surely have been proof of significant workshop, thereby implying that the finest quality busts, and especially those bearing Bartolini’s actual signature, must have been executed by the master himself. Thus where do the present busts of Elisa and Felix fit in?

That their quality is as high – if not higher – that the abovementioned busts is in little doubt and therefore evidence in itself of Bartolini’s direct intervention. Furthermore, that variations exists in the present Elisa indicates that she is more likely to predate the other versions since it is unlikely that the artist would have changed the model during the production process of the copies. This latter point also implies that Bartolini would have had to have taken direct instruction from his patron to modify the composition again, suggesting Bartolini’s hand at work. But what better proof of authorship could there be than the history of these very busts? Though only securely documented in Villa Ciardi from 1913, the busts have a family tradition of having remained, since time immemorial, in the same house, the same house that Elisa

12 Paul Marmatton, Les arts en Toscane sous Napoléon: la princesse Élisa (Paris, 1901), p. 282. 13 Which include: Collezione Banca Popolare di Vicenza - Galleria di Palazzo degli Alberti, Prato; Museo dell'Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence; Private collection Rome; Museo Napoleonico, Rome; Palais Fesch - Musée des Beaux-Arts, Ajaccio; Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Bologna, Bologna; Neue Pinakothek, Munich.

bought in 1818 and bequeathed to her brother two years later, thereby beginning a line of bequests within the family that included the house and its contents.

The fact that there are several known replicas of the bust by Bartolini suggests that they were intended either as gifts, where the bust could promote friendship and emotional attachment between the sitter and the recipient of the bust, or to fulfil another role, namely effectively to stand in for – to be a substitute for – the actual, physical, Grand-Duchess. As remarked in a related context, ‘That which provided the root form of so many depictions of the human head, the Roman portrait bust, offered in concentrated form a notion of the whole man.... the bust synthesized a subject in his or her entirety and stood in for him or her.’14 In that case, the bust was replicated for public veneration, as for example, in earlier times, were the busts of the Roman emperors.

The portrait of Elisa with its direct frontal stare, the face modelled with elegant but gentle and refined contours, and the bust’s classical-style drapery, emphasise her nobility and repeat the characteristics of sitters in busts from antiquity, just as the format of the bust itself repeats classical precedent. As with many portrait busts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the eyes have been left blank, the pupils un-incised, a sculptural practice that was often (albeit not universally) considered in that period to enhance the inherent classicism of the ‘Roman’ style bust.15 The beautifully modelled and carved hair, with its texture so clearly intended to distinguish it from the smooth surface of the skin, and the drapery, injects a degree of contemporary realism and alludes to the fashion that was prevalent in France and other parts of Europe around the first and second decades of the nineteenth century, as illustrated by numerous female painted portraits of the period, including portraits of Elisa herself.16 Like all the finest sculptors working in eighteenth-century Europe, Bartolini in the nineteenth was very skilled in modelling the distinctive textures of the variety of surfaces he depicted.

As previously mentioned, the present bust departs from the other busts in the series in that here Elisa is depicted wearing a diadem (not dissimilar to the one she wears in the model of Bartolini’s statue of her in the Galleria dell’ Accademia, Florence, Fig. 3), whereas other versions depict her wearing a richly decorated headband which covers a significant part of the forehead and obscures a significant portion of the sitter’s hair. In this case, the tiara or diadem which adorns her head perhaps reinforces that the bust depicts a sitter of some political and social significance, in the same way as motifs or decorations applied to other portrait busts in classical style are attributes that help the viewer identify the subject, often a classical deity.17 The diadem is carved with such delicacy and virtuosity that the marble near the edge to its larger (outer) rim – where it is only a few millimetres thick - is practically translucent, creating an effect commonly associated with hard-paste porcelain. In addition, the bust bears drapery that is at once both

14 Marcia Pointon, Hanging the Head, New Haven and London, 1993, p. 7. 15 As regards eighteenth-century busts (but a discussion applicable also to early nineteenth-century busts), See J. Gage, ‘Busts and Identity’, in P. Curtis et al., Return to Life: A New Look at the Portrait Bust (London, 2000), p. 37 16 Such as those by François Gérard, 1811 (with her daughter in the Boboli Gardens, Florence); by Joseph Franque, 1812; by Pietro Benvenuti; and by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon. For another example of Bartolini’s impressive modelling of the hair, which contrasts with the simplicity of the drapery, see his bust of Elizabeth, Albana Upton, Marchioness of Bristol, Ickworth, Suffolk (discussed in Robert Rosenblum and others, Citizens and Kings: Portraits in The Age of Revolution (Paris and London, 2006-2007), p. 293). 17 An example is John Gibson RA’s bust from the nineteenth century of the deity Aurora, ‘Goddess of the morning, Mother of the stars and of the winds, just risen from the ocean with the bright star Lucifer gathering over her brow’ (Gibson’s own description reproduced in The biography of John Gibson, R.A., sculptor, Rome, by T. Matthews, published in London 1911, pp. 95-8). In addition to Gibson’s statue of Aurora (National Museum of Wales, Cardiff) , two versions of the bust of Aurora by Gibson are known, one at the Yale Center for British Art, Connecticut, United States (1978.5 ), and one from a private collection, with Lullo Pampoulides in 2017.

simpler in its ornamentation than the other recorded versions of the bust and more intimate, in that, below the delicate folds of the drapery, Elisa is clothed in a chemise whose extraordinarily fine concertinaed vertical folds create the illusion of actual material. Moreover, other examples of the bust, while substituting a headband for the diadem, also bear an inscription of the sitter’s name, ‘ELISA’, which is absent in the present bust. It might therefore be surmised that this bust was intended for a recipient whose intimacy with - and knowledge of - the sitter obviated any need for a description. Indeed, there is compelling evidence that the bust was a personal possession of Elisa or her husband or a close family member, since its association with the Villa Vicentina near Cervignano, the country house acquired by Elisa, is beyond question. The archive of the Instituto Centrale per il Catalogo e il Documentazione in Rome contains a photograph of the present bust (inv. E005269), taken between 1913 and 1919, at the Villa Ciardi in Villa Vicentina, the record wrongly ascribing authorship of the bust to Antonio Canova (Fig. 5).

The luxurious modelling and carving of the sitter’s head, detailing also the material and shape of the sitter’s headdress, alone demonstrates that this was a portrait intended to be viewed in the round, not merely to be observed from a distance. While often in the eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century portrait bust the sitter’s features were depicted in white marble, not the flesh and hair tones that paint might simulate, and while marble itself was associated with memorials and a form of public commemoration, nevertheless a factor that probably contributed to the growing popularity of the portrait bust from the third and fourth decades of the eighteenth century was that it provided, in three dimensions, a record of the sitter’s appearance. Busts offered a form of reality, ‘real presences’18 as it were, that differed from the flat, two-dimensional portrait, albeit in colour. Moreover, marble, with its particular properties of light refraction - which help to produce a waxy look that gives ‘life’ to the material - evokes a high degree of realism when used for heads and figures. The bust generated a sense of the sitter’s physical presence, facilitating the close observation of his or her features in a way that would have been unacceptable in ‘polite’ company as regards the living person. Indeed, it was said of the eighth Earl of Pembroke at Wilton House, Wiltshire that ‘Bustos he was particularly fond of, as they expressed with more strength and exactness, the lineaments of the face’.19

On learning of Elisa’s death, only nine months before his own, Napoleon commented, ‘There is the first member of my family who has set out on the great journey; in a few months I shall go to join her.’20 He confided to a companion on St. Helena that ‘[Elisa] was a woman of a masterly mind. Had I not been in existence, what is said of the Duchess of Angoulême, that she wears the breeches of the family, might with reason be said of her. She had noble qualities and a remarkable mind; but no intimacy ever existed between us; our characters were opposed to this.’21 Not only did Elisa predecease her brother, Napoleon, but she is not represented by any living descendants. The present bust, a lasting and poignant lapidary record of her appearance in three dimensions, captures Elisa’s physicality and persona at the height of her political and dynastic power.

The bust of Felix too was modelled as part of the series of family portraits commissioned by Elisa from Bartolini. In its form it differs from Elisa’s bust in that here the sculptor has employed the herm - which has a long and deep association with classical portraiture - where the denuded upper torso of the sitter

18 G. Scherf, in Robert Rosenblum and others, Citizens and Kings: Portraits in the Age of Revolution, 1760-1830 (Paris and London, 2006-2007, hereafter Citizens and Kings), p. 25. 19 J. Kennedy, Description of the Antiquities and Curiosities in Wilton House, Salisbury, 1769, iv. 20 Louis Étienne Saint-Denis, Napoleon from the Tuileries to St. Helena, translated by Frank Hunter Potter (New York and London, 1922), p. 2 21 Charles Tristan Montholon, History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St. Helena, Vol. 3 (London, 1847), p. 142.

emerges, as it were, directly from the stone, and the head is directly frontally positioned. It is tempting to suggest that this form of nudity echoes that of heroic figures such as Germanicus and Laocoon whose nude depictions in classical sculpture emphasise the pathos associated with their respective struggles.22 Such a conclusion, however, is hardly likely to have been the origin of the nude herm form for the bust of Felix, whose military career (apart from its very early beginnings) was largely devoid of action, but instead mainly administrative, and whose advancement through the ranks owed more to his marriage to the sister of the Emperor than his own military skill or ingenuity.

The more likely explanation for the choice of the herm format for the bust of Felix lies in its employment by the French sculptor, Chaudet, for the ‘official’ sculptural portrait of the Emperor himself – in that case an entirely logical and convincing employment of the form given Napoleon’s military prowess and realistic comparison to Germanicus. Chaudet’s portrait of Napoleon would have been well-known to Bartolini, not only from his position at Carrara, where it was replicated more than a thousand times, but also doubtless from his having seen it when being received at court by Elisa.

For the bust of Felix and her other adult male relatives either Elisa chose the herm form or Bartolini deliberately employed it as means of flattering Elisa’s male relatives by producing portraits of them that, in their lapidary form, would forever associate them with their brother or brother-in-law, to whom they were all indebted for their advancement in life. However, as with the bust of Elisa, the sculptor has made a significant concession to realism by depicting Felix with hair that largely reflects the style in which he wore it, as seen in numerous painted portraits of him. We see the same approach adopted by the sculptor for his busts of Napoleon’s brother Jerome.

As with the bust of Elisa, the portrait of Felix captures his appearance at arguably the most significant moment of his life, shortly after the elevation of his wife to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and provides a lasting memorial in three dimensions of the man who was consort to one of the most impressive women in Europe in the first two decades of the nineteenth century.

22 Cf. lot description for the bust of by Joseph Nollekens RA, Sotheby’s, London, 6 December 2007, lot 95.

Fig. 1. Joseph Franque (1774-1833), Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi Levoy, 1812 Oil on canvas, Museo Stibbert, Florence Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images

Fig. 2 Joseph Franque (1774-1833), Félix Baciocchi Oil on canvas, Museo Stibbert, Florence Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images

Fig. 3 The gallery of the Accademia de Belle Arti in Florence, displaying Bartolini’s models for portrait busts with his proposed Monument to Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi, The Magnanimity of Elisa, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, in the foreground CC image courtesy of Paolo Villa via Creative Commons

Fig. 4 Lorenzo Bartolini, Elisa Baciocchi, after 1809 Marble, 58.5 cm high (the bust), Museo Napoleonico, Rome. Ó Image courtesy of the Museo Napoleonico, Rome.

Fig. 5 Lorenzo Bartolini, Elisa Baciocchi, circa 1809 Archival photograph of the present bust dating taken between 1913-1919 in the Instituto Centrale per il Catalogo e il Documentazione, Rome. Su autorizzazione dell’Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione – MiBAC