Jeune Berger, ou Adonis, by Barthélemy Blaise, 1785

Of white marble, the statue is 32 inches in height.

The story of Adonis has its source in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In the first-century AD telling of the myth, he was conceived after Aphrodite cursed his mother Myrrha to lust after her own father, King Cinyras of Cyprus. Myrrha had sex with her father in complete darkness for nine nights, but he then discovered her identity and chased her with a sword. The gods transformed her into a myrrh tree and, in the form of a tree, she gave birth to Adonis. Aphrodite found the infant and gave him to be raised by Persephone, the queen of the Underworld. Adonis grew into an astonishingly handsome young man, causing Aphrodite and Persephone to feud over him, with Zeus eventually decreeing that Adonis would spend one third of the year in the Underworld with Persephone, one third of the year with Aphrodite, and the final third of the year with whomever he chose. Adonis chose to spend his final third of the year with Aphrodite. One day, Adonis was gored by a wild boar during a hunting trip and died in Aphrodite's arms as she wept tears of sorrow. His blood mingled with her tears and became the anemone flower.

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Barthélemy Blaise (25 January 1738, Lyons - 2 April 1819, Paris), French sculptor. A student at the school of drawing in Lyon , he also studied in Rome. Back in Lyon by 1768, he worked regularly with the architect Martin Decrenice. He moved to Paris in 1785 and was soon accredited to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. Adopting the neoclassical style, he exhibited his Jeune Berger, ou Adonis along with a Leda at the Salon of 1787. That same year he was given commissions by Louis XVI, including for the decoration of the not yet complete Panthéon, and for the mausoleum of the late Minister of State, the comte de Vergennes. During the Revolution, the artist was compelled to hide his work for the mausoleum - which was not installed in the church of Notre-Dame de Versailles until 1818, after the Restoration - then, during the Terror, he left Paris with his family. He later completed much work under the Bonaparte régime. He was awarded many commissions, both public and private, his subject matter ranging from religious and mythological imagery to portraiture.

The plaster model.

The comte and comtesse de Vergennes, portraits in Turkish dress by Antoine de Favray, 1766

Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes (20 December 1717, Dijon – 13 February 1787, Versailles), French statesman and diplomat.

Vergennes rose through the ranks of the diplomatic service, including positions in Portugal and Germany, before receiving the important post of French Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1755. During his time there - which included the period of the Seven Year's War - he oversaw complex negotiations between the two countries, but was recalled in 1768. The reason for his dismissal was most likely because of the tensions between himself and the duc de Choiseul, Foreign Minister to Louis XV, and also because he had contracted a marriage without the King's permission. But later, after assisting a pro-French faction in Sweden to take power, he returned home to France and was promoted to Foreign Minister by the new king.

He served in that capacity from the accession of Louis XVI in 1774, most notably during the American War of Independence. Vergennes hoped that by giving French aid to the American rebels, he would be able to weaken Great Britain's dominance on the international stage. (In spite of helping to secure American independence, France achieved little material gain from the war, while the huge costs incurred nearly bankrupted the French treasury. And both philosophically and financially, the American Revolution was a direct cause of what occurred in France in 1789 and beyond.) When told of the death of Vergennes, two years before the Revolution, Louis XVI broke down in tears, describing Vergennes as "the only friend I could count on, the one minister who never deceived me."

Anne "Annette" Viviers, comtesse de Vergennes (28 January 1730, Constantinople – 1798), widow of a doctor, François Testa, who had died in 1754.  When she quietly married Vergennes in 1767, they had been living together for some time and already had two sons born out of wedlock, the elder six years old.  The comte had not asked the King's permission - something his position required - which no doubt the King would have refused, all things considered, not least the fact that the bride was a commoner and of unequal rank to her husband.

The irregular circumstances of their union would cause much future difficulty in his diplomatic career.  The unapproved marriage was used as an excuse for his recall from Turkey, she was not allowed to accompany her husband on his subsequent post to Stockholm, and she was snubbed and rejected at Versailles.  Still, it was a love match, and he was ever after devoted to his wife and their children.

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Chevalier Antoine de Favray (8 September 1706, Bagnolet – 9 February 1798, Malta), French painter. In the 1730s, he was a private student of Jean-François de Troy II, then director of the Académie de France in Rome, but by 1744, de Favray had left Rome for Malta, where he remained for much of the rest of his career. He is best known for his genre scenes and portraits of personalities prominent in Malta and in the Ottoman Empire.