Portrait of Benjamin Franklin (1777): Art, History and Details

Portrait of Benjamin Franklin (1777) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Giovanni Battista Nini (Italian, 1717–1786).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Scholars debate whether Nini met Benjamin Franklin personally or based the nine versions of his portrait on drawings by artist Thomas Walpole (British, 1755-1840). In this particular cast, Nini presents Franklin with a fur hat, which may be an allusion to French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, suggesting a comparison between the inventor and the philosopher and their roles in revolutionary politics on both sides of the Atlantic. Nini copied Franklin's fur hat from a portrait of Rousseau by Allan Ramsay (Scottish, 1713-1784). The small crest below Franklin's left shoulder shows a bolt of lightning striking an iron bar held by a hand, a reference to Franklin's discovery of the lightning rod and electricity.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of Benjamin Franklin
• Date: 1777
• Creator attribution: Giovanni Battista Nini (Italian, 1717–1786)
• Culture: France
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: terracotta
• Dimensions: Diameter: 11.4 cm (4 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Sculpture
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1940.578

Collection credit

Bequest of James Parmelee

Further reading listed by the museum

• Honour, Hugh. The European Vision of America: A Special Exhibition to Honor the Bicentennial of the United States, Organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art with the Collaboration of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Réunion Des Musées Nationaux, Paris. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.