This chocolate cup in the shape of a chalice and its saucer, with a violet background, is decorated with a portrait of Bonaparte dressed as the Cisalpine President. Bonaparte was in fact elected as the President of the new Italian Republic on 25 January 1802, before being crowned King of Italy in 1805. The cock embellishing the saucer is a Republican symbol.
The portrait is probably one of the very first portrayals of the effigy of the future Emperor on an object produced by the Manufacture de Sèvres. The portrait of Bonaparte was painted in autumn 1803 by the chief painter of the Manufacture, Claude-Charles Gérard, after a miniature by the artist Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767-1855). This cup and a second similar one (kept at the National Ceramic Museum of Sèvres) are probably the ones delivered to Napoleon the First on 1st January 1805 for the service of the Palais des Tuileries in Paris.
