A biscuit porcelain profile bust - Portrait of Charles Montault Desiles

A biscuit porcelain profile bust
Portrait of Mgr Montault, bishop of Angers (1755–1839)
White biscuit porcelain, Sevres or Parisian manufactory, mounted on a medallion of Angers slate.
Signed “Brachard aîné” beneath the shoulder, for Jean Charles Nicolas Brachard aîné, sculptor and modeller at the Sèvres manufactory, and dated December 1834.
In its blackened wood frame imitating ebony, with domed glass and a gilt-bronze bezel.

Charles Montault Desilles (1755–1839), created Baron of the Empire in 1808.
Born in the généralité of Poitiers, he was appointed constitutional bishop of Vienne (1791–1795), then bishop of Angers in 1802, probably thanks to the support of his brother Pierre Montault Desilles, Prefect of the department of Maine-et-Loire from 1800. His episcopate in the capital of Anjou was long, extending across thirty-seven years until his death in 1839. Politically moderate, at the fall of the Bourbon monarchy in 1830 he supported the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe.

Unlike the many Sèvres biscuit profile medallions set against a blue ground, this example is mounted on slate from Angers-Trélazé, the leading local industry and emblematic material of the city.
Comparable biscuit medallions by Jean Charles Nicolas et Alexandre Brachard, mainly depicting royal figures, are preserved at the Musée national de la Céramique, Sèvres, and in the Département des Objets d’art of the musée du Louvre. Portraits of contemporary French notables outside the royal sphere—such as this effigy of Bishop Montault—are considerably rarer, reflecting the selective extension of the medium beyond dynastic imagery.