A sculpted portrait of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte I (1769-1821) in profile

Girodet made a number of portraits of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte I of which perhaps the most famous composition is Napoleon I in Coronation Robes, a painting in the Bowes Museum, Teesdale (inv. BM.364; S. Bellenger, Girodet. 1767-1824, exhib. cat., Paris, Musée du Louvre and elsewhere, 2005-6, no. 72, ill.). Further to these monumental painted portraits, several drawn portraits of the Emperor by Girodet are known. An example of such a drawing, also dated 1812, is recorded in a private collection and a lithograph after a drawing by Girodet, similarly signed to the present drawing and also dated 1812, is in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (ibid., pp. 368-9, no. 73, and fig. 246).