A model for a life-size statue for St Paul's Cathedral. Flaxman was commissioned to produce this full-size statue as one of four ‘benefactors of the English people’ to be placed beneath the crossing of St Paul’s Cathedral. The other three statues were by John Bacon the elder and were of the prisoner reformer John Howard, Dr Samuel Johnson and the orientalist Sir William Jones. Flaxman had known Reynolds and his image of him has great conviction; it was praised during Flaxman’s lifetime for its ‘noble bearing’. Beneath Reynolds’ left hand, carved on a column, is a relief of Michelangelo – the artist Reynolds most admired.