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tion and was the guest of the ambassador. Gisela
Gramaccini dates Moitte’s sketch for the Republican
Minerva to between 1796 and 1798, probably at
some point during the artist’s Italian sojourn, either
in Milan, Florence or Rome.34 It would be reasonable
to believe that Gauffier knew Moitte’s bozzetto and
that he used it as the model for this sculpture in his
portrait of Miot. Realistically, it is unlikely that such
a sculpture actually existed in the Palazzo Ximenes,
though the outside possibility that there might have
been a fresco or wall painting depicting the sculpture
a la trompe l’œil should not entirely be excluded.
Miot’s letters are silent on this point and shed no light
as to whether the extraordinarily modern furniture
in the portrait even existed outside Gauffier’s artistic
imagination. Given Gauffier’s very marked taste for
the decorative arts the furniture is probably his own
invention.We know that one of his principal patrons,
Thomas Hope, based his design for a suite of arm-
chairs (Fig. 6) on Gauffier’s study for the imperial
throne in his canvas The meeting of Augustus and
Cleopatra after the Battle of Actium (Fig. 7).35 While the
gueridon table Miot leans upon is of an elaborate, if
relatively au courant design, the stool upon which
Jacques Miot crouches is more original. 36 But above
all it is the magnificient fauteuil upon which Gauffier
enthrones Adélaïde Miot, rather in the manner of a
Roman matron that testifies to his remarkably imagi-

Fig. 5

31.This figure was listed in the catalogue of the Musée des Monuments Français until 1810.
32.The Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, cat.no.219.
33. Established on 28 floréal an IV (17 May 1796) this commission was comprised of Moitte, the Bonapartist Auguste Thouïn, the chemist Lucien
Berthollet, the painter Jean-Simon Berthélémy, the mathematician Gaspar Monge and the naturalist Jacques-Julien de la Billardière. Departing from Paris
on 23 May, the six commissaires arrived in Florence on 22 July.
34. G. Gramaccini, Jean-Guillaume Moitte Leben undWerk, Berlin, 1993, vol. 1, pp. 129-130 ; and Vol. 2, no. 219, p.292, (fig. 309).
35.These chairs appear in Hope’s Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, 1807, pl. XIX, ill. 6 and 7. Reproduced in D.Watkin and Ph. Hewat-Jaboor,
Thomas Hope, Regency designer, BGC,Yale, 2008, p. 70, figs. 14-16. Other similar examples can be seen in Hope’s rooms at Duchess Street in which hang
Gauffier’s paintings. See D.Watkin, Thomas Hope 1769-1831 and the Neo-classical Idea, London, 1968, p. 200.
36. Also included in Gauffier’s 1793 Portrait of Count Gustav M.Armfelt.

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