Bronze Bust Of Emperor Vitellius By Righetti Late 18th Or Early 19th Century

Bronze bust representing the emperor Vitellius, on its Carrara marble and Breche d'Alep base trimmed with gilded bronze.
Italy, late 19th or very early 19th century, workshop of Francesco Righetti.

Bust height: 13.7 cm
Total height: 34.6 cm
Base width: 12.5 cm

Francesco Righetti (1749 - 1819), a pupil of Luigi Valadier, was acclaimed by early "tourists" for the extreme quality of his bronzes in the antique style. Two complete series of busts of the twelve Caesars appear in a catalog of the Righetti workshop dated 1794 (and reproduced in the reference book Pour l'Amour de l'Antique). This catalog, in French, offers the busts by the dozen or individually in a version mounted on trophies of arms also in bronze, or in a simpler version without a trophy of arms, the one that concerns us.

A rare complete set of the twelve Caesars, in the version without arms trophies, was sold by Sotheby's in London on July 4, 2023:
See here: https://www.sothebys.com/busts-of-the-twelve-caesars
See an HD photo here: https://sothebys-md.brightspotcdn.com/dims4.jpg
Vitellius is fourth from left.

Bibliography: Haskell and Penny, Pour l'Amour de l'Antique, la statuaire gréco-romaine et le goût européen, 1988 (for the French version), pages 109 and 370.