This remarkable self-portrait conveys the high status and technical prowess of Coysevox, the royal sculptor to Louis XIV, employed in the decoration and sculpture at Versailles and as director of the French Royal Academy from 1702 to 1705. While face and hair are rendered with unstinting realism, registering every wrinkle and curl, the lower half of the bust is not as fastidiously realized: the drapery is loosely sketched, his cravat casually cascading. Indeed, the medium of terracotta allowed the artist a degree of immediacy and experimentation lost in the subsequent marble version today in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.