Etienne-Maurice Falconet

Works by this Artist

Peter the Great
Etienne-Maurice Falconet, 1766-82

Background

humble origins

Studies

with sculptor Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne (1734-44)

Career

1751 –model of Genius of Music (Louvre) shown at Paris Salon

1754 – member of Académie Royale

1748-64 – commissions from Bâtiments du Roi to decorate palaces and gardens belonging to Louis XVI

1757 –Marquise de Pompadour appoints Falconet director of sculpture studios at Sèvres porcelain factory; begins exhibiting regularly at Salon

1760 – contributes essay “Reflections on Sculpture” to Denis Diderot’s Encyclopedia

1761 – professor at Académie Royale

1766 –St Petersburg to work for Catherine the Great (Empress of Russia)

1781 – Oeuvres completes, Falconet’s essays and correspondence, is published

-regular correspondent with Diderot and Catherine the Great

Commissions from

Bâtiments du Roi; Marquise de Pompadour; Catherine the Great

Important Artworks

Milo of Crotona, 1744 (Louvre, Paris)

Standing Bather, 1757 (Louvre)

Readings

Bischoff, Ilse. “Etienne Maurice Falconet – Sculptor of the Statue of Peter the Great,” Russian Review, vol. 24, no. 4 (October 1965): 369-86

Grosskurth, Brian. “Shifting Monuments: Falconet’s Peter the Great between Diderot and Eisenstein,” Oxford Art Journal , vol. 23, no. 2 (2000): 31-48

Levitine, George. The Sculpture of Falconet. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1972

Schenker, Alexander M. The Bronze Horseman. Falconet’s Monument to Peter the Great. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2003

Images