This stately full-length portrait of Napoleon's mother, known as Madame Mère, shows her sumptuously dressed and seated in a grand apartment with a view overlooking the Tuileries in Paris. She came from a Tuscan family and was born in Corsica. A sculpted bust of her son as consul, close in type to one carved by Louis-Simon Boizot in 1800, confirms her status. Napoleon was the second eldest of her thirteen children, eight of whom survived. The portrait was taken to Italy by her granddaughter, Mathilde, Napoleon's niece, when she married into the wealthy Florentine Demidoff family.