Abstract. We find an analytic formulation of the notion of Hopf image, in terms of the associated idempotent state. More precisely, if π : A → M n (C) is a finite dimensional representation of a Hopf C * -algebra, we prove that the idempotent state associated to its Hopf image A ′ must be the convolution Cesàro limit of the linear functional ϕ = tr • π. We discuss then some consequences of this result, notably to inner linearity questions.