Thesis advisor: Gregory McMahon / Thesis advisor: Barbara Adams Hebard / A terracotta portrait bust of the Marquis de Lafayette with the signature “houdon an. 1790”, now broken, was given to Boston College by Edward S. Ryan in 1966. The two objectives of this study were: (1) To determine the methods used to create this bust and (2) whether or not it could have been made in the studio of Jean-Antoine Houdon. A materials analysis using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS) was performed on five representative samples from different regions of the bust. Three samples were unpolished and two were polished using an argon beam milling technique, completely preserving the heterogeneous samples. It was found that the bust was created by pressing wet clay into piece mold, the waxy surface is not original to the sculpture, and the pink layer is the result of a higher iron particle concentration. It is almost impossible to absolutely determine whether or not Houdon made the bust, due to uncertainties in provenance and the large number of busts made by, and copied from, Houdon. However, it is clear that the materials original to the sculpture correlate with the time Houdon lived and the methods he used. / Thesis (BS) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: College Honors Program.