Francois Girardon
François Girardon, (born March 10, 1628, Troyes,
France—died Sept. 1, 1715, Paris), the most representative
sculptor employed on the great sculptural project of
decorating Versailles during the period of Louis XIV.
Girardon attracted the attention of Chancellor Pierre
Séguier, who brought him to Paris to study under François
Anguier and afterward sent him to Rome. Girardon returned to
France about 1650, becoming a member of the Royal Academy of
Painting and Sculpture in 1657. He worked for Nicolas
Fouquet at Vaux-le-Vicomte and, after the minister’s fall,
was extensively employed in the decoration of the royal
palaces. In 1663 he was working under Charles Le Brun on the
Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre and in 1666 received the
commission for his most famous work, the Apollo Tended by
the Nymphs, for the Grotto of Thetis at Versailles. The
inspiration for this pictorial sculptural work (later moved
and its grouping altered) seems to derive partly from
Hellenistic sculpture (particularly the Apollo Belvedere)
and partly from Nicolas Poussin’s paintings. Of his other
works for Versailles, the most notable are the relief of the
Bath of the Nymphs (1668–70), perhaps inspired by Jean
Goujon’s Fontaine des Innocents, and The Rape of Persephone
(1677–79; pedestal completed 1699), in which he challenges
comparison with Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabines. The
effect of this group is marred by its present situation in
the centre of the colonnade at Versailles, where it can be
seen from all sides instead of from a fixed viewpoint as
originally intended.
Although superficially a Baroque artist, Girardon’s
deep-seated classical tendencies also emerge in the serene
solemnity of his two principal works outside Versailles: the
equestrian statue of Louis XIV in the Place Vendôme
(1683–92), which was destroyed in 1792 during the French
Revolution, and his gisant for the tomb of Richelieu in the
church of the Sorbonne (begun 1675). Although influenced by
the works of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and the Roman Baroque
school, Girardon’s works are less vigorous and more
restrained than most Baroque sculpture.
The classical bent of his mind and his abilities as a
decorator made him the ideal collaborator with Le Brun, just
as Antoine Coysevox was with Le Brun’s successor, Jules
Hardouin Mansart. As Coysevox’s star rose, that of Girardon
sank, and he received few royal commissions after 1700.
Encyclopædia Britannica
