Voltaire was a highly influential philosopher, champion of tolerance and social justice, dramatist, poet and historian, and a key figure in the French Enlightenment.

The Rosset family of sculptors, from St Claude in Eastern France, often worked together and produced a number of busts and also statuettes of Voltaire. The father, Jean-Claude-Francois Joseph Rosset (generally known as Joseph; 1706-1786), was followed by sons Jacques-Joseph Rosset (1741-1826), François-Marie Rosset (1743-1824), and Claude-Antoine Rosset (1749-1818). Joseph is generally thought to have produced all the basic models of Voltaire for the family. François and Antoine worked closely with him and may have continued to reproduce these models.

This bust, signed ROSSET F. A ST. CLAUDE 1768, is ascribed to Joseph, and is one of the earliest known by him. It dates from twenty years after the earliest known sculpted portraits of Voltaire (for instance by Lemoyne, exhibited at the Salon in Paris, 1748), but predates the better-known busts of Voltaire by the great French sculptor Houdon.

There is a marble statuette of Voltaire in the National Museum, Stockholm, signed ROSSET F. A ST. CLAUDE 1769. A number of versions of this exist, some signed 'Rosset père et fils' (father and son) and others father. Voltaire was an extremely popular subject who complained at the number of times he was asked to sit for his portrait. The Rosset family played a significant role in the production and dissemination of his image in sculpture.