Camillo Borghese (1775–1832) was born to one of the most important families of the Roman aristocracy. A patron of the arts, Prince Borghese is most famously remembered for commissioning from Antonio Canova a full-length sculpture of his wife in the nude, as Victorious Venus. The family was known for its Napoleonic sympathies, and Camillo moved to Paris in 1796. In 1803 he married Napoleon's favorite sister, Paolina Bonaparte (1780–1825). It was a tempestuous marriage. At first, the couple lived in gilded splendor between Paris and Rome, where they refurbished the apartments of Camillo's parents in the Palazzo Borghese; however, they soon became estranged and each took lovers. Paolina was still officially at her husband's side when, in February 1808, Napoleon effectively put him in charge of Piedmont, Liguria, Parma, and Piacenza. Camillo and Paolina moved from Paris to Turin in April of that year and lived between the Piedmontese capital, Paris, and Rome. Following the fall of Napoleon in 1812, Camillo moved to Florence to distance himself from his wife and his alliance with the former Emperor, managing to avoid any of his lands being sequestered by the popes, a standard punishment for those with pro-Bonapartist tendencies. He found favour with the Grand Duke of Tuscany and enjoyed a long affair with the widow of one of his former comrades in exile, Duchess Lante della Rovere, although he was eventually convinced by the pope into taking Paolina back, only three months before she died of cancer. He continued in secret and futile Bonapartist plots until his own death in 1832. Executed in 1817, in the present work Jacob portrays the price in his prime, at the age of forty-two, freed from the manufactured magnificence of court ceremony. He is elegantly posed, standing self-possessed and dignified beside a magnificent stallion which has kicked dust over one of his boots, the Borghese arms on the wall above the artist’s inscription.


Nicolas-Henri Jacob was a pupil of David, Dupasquier, and Morgan. His career began at the Paris Salon in 1802, and in 1805, he was appointed official artist to Prince Eugène de Beauharnais and accompanied him to Italy. The present portrait of Camillo Borghese is a splendid example of Jacob’s work as a draughtsman. To create works like this one, Jacob customarily made a detailed head study from life and the work was then completed by the artist in the studio. Typically, the sitter would have decided in advance upon the costume and setting in which he or she would like to be portrayed, and the artist would have sketched this out in advance for the sitter’s approval, before finally adding in the head based on the life study.