Jean-Antoine Houdon was the most gifted portrait sculptor of the eighteenth century. Starting in the 1770s, Houdon produced a veritable gallery of great European and American philosophers and statesmen, uncannily capturing their intelligence, dignity, and inner life in marble, bronze, and terracotta.

Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roche-Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), was a French aristocrat who at the age of nineteen took up the cause of the American Revolution, becoming one of George Washington’s most trusted and capable generals and a lifelong advocate for freedom and the rights of man. After the war, Lafayette was hailed as a hero both in America and in France. In gratitude for Lafayette’s victory over Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781, the Virginia legislature decided to present a bust of Lafayette to the city of Paris. Thomas Jefferson, who knew Houdon’s portraits of Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, and John Paul Jones, was responsible for championing Houdon as the sculptor to take on this work.

Lafayette was twenty-eight when Houdon made this life mask directly from his face; it preserves Lafayette’s high forehead, fine features, and aristocratic refinement. Houdon used this life mask, with varying degrees of exactness, to produce four busts. The version that adheres most closely to the mask, executed in plaster, can be seen in the Boston Athenaeum.