This lavishly decorated plate displays the heavy gilding fashionable in the early-19th century and the Emperor’s head painted in imitation of a hardstone cameo is a tribute to the popularity of classical carved gems at this period. The cameo portrait on this dish depicts Caligula (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus;12 AD – 41AD), Roman Emperor from 37 AD to 41 AD. The image closely matches a coin depicting Caligula, illustrated in Ennio Quirino Visconti’s 'Iconographie Grecque'. Paris, 1808. Plate 25a. Visconti (1751-1818) was an Italian antiquarian and art historian, papal Prefect of Antiquities, and an expert on ancient Roman sculpture..Published by order of Napoleon I copies of this three volume work were given out as gifts.
Louis Joseph and Jean François Darté’s factory in the Rue de la Roquette was in production from 1808 to 1825 at a time when there were more than thirty porcelain factories and four thousand outworkers in Paris. The outlet for the firm was in the elegant Palais Royal. Many other porcelain factories were making use of this cameo technique, between 1811 and 1818 the Sèvres factory produced three ‘Services iconographique grec’ also decorated with Neo-classical borders and using portrait imagery from Visconti.