Pierre Granier

Pierre Granier (1655 — 1715) was a proficient but minor French sculptor, trained in the excellent atelier of François Girardon who produced a generation of highly competent sculptors for the Bâtiments du Roi.[1] Granier served as a modest member of the extensive team that provided sculpture for the Château de Versailles[2] and its gardens. Strict control over the subjects, scale, materials and to a great extent the design of sculpture for Versailles was exercised by the premier peintre du Roi, Charles Le Brun. According to Antoine-Nicolas Dézallier d'Argenville, Le Brun provided a wax model for Granier's marble group Ino and Melicertes, and a Shepherdess was sculpted after a sketch given by Le Brun.[3]

Ino and Mélicerte, Versailles's garden

Born at Les Matelles near Montpellier, he was an official of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, where he was received in 1686[4] and to whom he had presented his bust of Louis XIV.[5]

When the marble sculpture of a god discovered at Smyrna was offered to Louis XIV, Granier was commissioned in 1686 to provide a missing right arm, raised and brandishing a thunderbolt: the result was the so-called Jupiter de Smyrne, now conserved at the Louvre Museum.[6]

Further reading
  • F. Souchal, French Sculptors of the 17th and 18th Centuries, The reign of Louis XIV, vol. II, Oxford, 1981.

Notes
  1. Dézallier d'Argenville mentions Robert Le Lorrain, Granier, René Frémin (1672-1744, working at La Granja until 1738) Nourisson, Charpentier and Jean Joly de Troyes
  2. Providing architectural sculpture: "à Granier sculpteur, pour une figure de pierre représentant la Poésie et trois testes de femme à la grande aisle… 490 L[ivres]" (Jules Guiffrey, Comptes des Bâtiments du Roi sous le règne de Louis XIV, [1901] vol. II, p. 209: 5 August 1682; the Poésie pastorale, part of the Grande Commande, and other sculptures by Granier (Dates and attributions are not reliable.).
  3. Antoine-Nicolas Dézallier d'Argenville. Vies Des Fameux Architectes Depuis la Renaissance Des Arts..., vol. II (1787) s.v. "Granier, Pierre".
  4. Ludovic Lalanne, Dictionnaire historique de la France, s.v. "Académie de peinture et sculpture" [sic], following Ph. le Bas, Dictionnaire encyclopédique de l'histoire de France.
  5. Dézallier d'Argenville, ibid..
  6. Louvre Museum on-line catalogue.
  • Pierre Granier in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website
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