This bust of Cardinal Ercole Consalvi by the Scottish sculptor Thomas Campbell is a copy of the posthumous bust of Consalvi commissioned in 1824 by the Duchess of Devonshire to Bertel Thorvaldsen for the Pantheon in Rome. Subsequently the Duchess commissioned Thorvaldsen to make a copy of the original for her residence at Chatsworth, which was completed on 4th November 1824 and received at Chatsworth in 1825. This later copy of the original bust by Thorvaldsen was commissioned by King George IV in 1826. It was received at Windsor Castle on 24th August 1829, a few months before Campbell’s return to London from Rome, where he had lived for a period of 10 years. Cardinal Consalvi is depicted looking straight ahead and wearing a scull cap and a cassock buttoned to the neck. Thorvaldsen had based his bust on the Cardinal’s death mask and on the portrait of the Cardinal by Thomas Lawrence at Windsor Castle, of which Thorvaldsen owned a copy. Cardinal Consalvi was Secretary of State to Pope Pius VII from 1800. An excellent diplomat and an advocate of the divine right of Kings, he was an adversary of Napoleon. His involvement in the negotiations at the Congress of Vienna, after the fall of Napoleon, was instrumental for the return of the Papal States to the Vatican in 1815. George IV also commissioned Campbell to make copy of a bust of Pope Pius VII (RCIN35407) after an original by Thorvaldsen.