Napoleon in a toga

Napoleon in a toga The marble statue shows Napoleon standing as a Roman: dressed in a tunic and a voluminous toga. On his shoulders he is wearing a scale breastplate with a radiant sun in the centre. In his left hand, extended forward, he holds a scroll of parchment; his right hand is abated together with an oar resting on a ball. By the left leg, behind the hem of a folded robe, stands a vessel for scrolls, decorated with drapery attached at the sides. The statue was made by Francesco Massimiliano Laboureur (1767–1831), active in Rome and counted among the sculptors of Antonio Canova’s circle. He repeatedly portrayed Napoleon in busts and statues depicting him as a Roman emperor. The statue is a lower-scale reproduction of the marble statue of Napoleon made by Francesco Massimiliano Laboureur in 1806, set in the Piazza Porta in Ajaccio, Corsica (Napoleon’s birthplace). The statue comes from the collection of the Tarnowski family kept the castle in Dzików, from where it was taken over by the museum in Łańcut in 1950. It belonged to the collection of Waleria and Jan Feliks Tarnowski, owners of the castle in Dzików, who in 1803-1804 stayed in Italy, including Rome, where they ordered several marble sculptures from Francesco Massimiliano Laboureur. Barbara Trojnar