Portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte

In a wooden frame carved with plant motifs and gilded in leaf. It should be a preparatory drawing for the well-known portrait of Gérard preserved, at least until 1969, in a private collection in Zurich, most likely to be identified with the work of identical author and subject now transferred to the Napoleonic Museum of Salenstein in Switzerland. The painting, initially kept at Malmaison, belonged to Maria Luigia, as certified by the stamp on the back used for the ducal collections. The artwork was in Parma until 1848, and then it passed to the Count of Montenuovo, and from him, perhaps by inheritance, to the Bachmann-Naegeli collection mentioned in 1969.