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Portrait medallion
Josiah Wedgwood and Sons - Enlarge image
Portrait medallion
- Place of origin:
Etruria (made)
- Date:
ca. 1790 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Josiah Wedgwood and Sons (maker)
- Materials and Techniques:
White Jasper with applied 'wafer' of blue and applied moulded reliefs in white
- Museum number:
223-1853
- Gallery location:
Europe 1600-1815, Room 1, case CA11
This is one of a handful of portrait medallions of key players during the French Revolution made by Josiah Wedgwood's factory around 1790.
The dipolmat, writer and politician, Gabriel de Riqueti Honoré, Comte de Mirabeau (1749–1791), favoured a constitutional monarchy similar to that of Great Britain. He unsuccessfully conducted secret negotiations with the French monarchy in an effort to reconcile it with the Revolution.
Wedgwood produced similar medallions intended for mounting on snuffboxes and aimed at both royalists and supporters of the Revolution. These included portraits of Louis XVI and Jacques Necker, the French director-general of finance (both with fleur-de-lys borders), of the revolutionaries Sylvain Bailly, the marquis de Lafayette, and Talleyrand (all with anthemion borders), and of the Duc D'Orléans (sometimes, but not always, with a laurel border). He also made several allegorical medallions commemorating the Revolution issued in 1789-93, and others depicting the Storming and Fall of the Bastille in 1789.
