His great patron, however, was Napoleon, for whom he executed a colossal bust, and who sent him, on the recommendations of his sister Elisa Baciocchi, to the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo in 1807, to teach sculpture, in spite of local opposition.

His naturalistic and somewhat sentimental marble L'Ammostatore ("The Bird's-nest Stealer", 1820) took its inspiration from under-appreciated Quattrocento Florentine sculptors like Andrea del Verrocchio.

In his decade of impoverishment, supportive commissions came from foreigners; the funeral monument to Princess Zofia Czartoryska in the Santa Croce, Florence's Westminster Abbey, is an anti-classical statement for naturalism.

His portrait statue of Machiavelli took its place as his only commission among the long series of historical Florentine males provided for the empty exterior niches of the Uffizi.

He sculpted the Monument to Maria Luisa di Borbone depicting the former Duchess and located in the piazza in front of the Ducal Palaceof Lucca.