According to Homer's Iliad, Helen, the daughter of Leda and Zeus and the wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, was famous the world over for her beauty. Her abduction by Paris to his home city of Troy was the impetus for the Trojan War.
The wax model for this plaque is still preserved in the Sèvres archives and illustrated by T. Préaud and G. Scherf, La manufacture des Lumières, La Sculpture à Sèvres de Louis XV à la Révolution, exhibition catalogue,Dijon, 2015, p. 319.
Louis-Simon Boizot (1743-1809) was chief of the sculpture atelier at Sèvres manufactory from 1773 until 1805.