Between 1791 and 1792, Ceracchi created a terracotta model of Alexander Hamilton, an American Founding Father and the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury during George Washington's presidency.

He did not receive payment for it until March 3, 1796, when Hamilton's cash book includes the entry, "for this sum through delicacy paid upon cherachi’s draft for making my bust on his own importunity & as a favour to him $620"[4] The Hamilton family kept the bust until 1896 when it was bequeathed to the New York Public Library along with a portrait of George Washington, The Constable-Hamilton Portrait, painted by Gilbert Stuart.

[citation needed] Ceracchi portrayed Hamilton in the style of a Roman Senator, with wavy hair and bare-chested, wearing a ribbon of the Society of the Cincinnati over his right shoulder.

[10] Ceracchi was born July 4, 1751 in Rome and created busts for several founding fathers during multiple visits to Philadelphia following the American Revolutionary War.

After experiencing an unsuccessful plot designed to depose him, Napoleon had Ceracchi guillotined at the Place de Grève on January 30, 1801 at age 49.