Biography

French sculptor, who was a pupil of Jean-Baptist Lemoyne and studied in Rome 1752-56. He is best known for his decorative sculpture in the Opera House at Versailles (1768-70) and for his numerous portraits - Lemoyne (1758) and Buffon in the Louvre, Descartes and Bossuet in the Institut. He worked much for Mme du Barry. In 1777 he was appointed Keeper of the King's Antiquities and in 1792 he served on a Revolutionary Committee on the Conservation of Works of Art. His Psyche Abandoned (1791, Louvre) is a piece of Neoclassical sentiment.