ANTOINE COYSEVOX
(French, 1640-1720)

The greatest sculptor of his age who created much of the statuary at the Palais de Versailles
and initiated the movement in sculptural portraiture towards the depiction of individual character

Charles Antoine Coysevox (pronounced 'Ko-sevo') was born in Lyon in 1640 into a family of Spanish descent. When only 17 he produced a much-admired statue of the Madonna and, thus encouraged, he studied under Louis Lerambert, the youngest of four generations of court artists who had 'inherited' the role of Curator of The Antiquities and Marbles of the King in 1637.

In 1667 Coysevox was commissioned by the Bishop of Strasbourg, Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg, to adorn his Château de Saverne in Alsace, eastern France. He spent the next four years there before returning to Paris in 1671. (The château was destroyed by fire in 1780.)

Coysevox was fortunate to have been born an almost exact contemporary of King Louis XIV, the Sun King, during whose 72-year reign (the longest of any European monarch) and under whose patronage the arts in France flourished - he constructed the military complex at the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris; transformed the hunting lodge built by his father at Versailles into one of the most spectacular royal palaces in the world; and improved the Louvre as well as many other royal residences. He also became Protector of the Académie Française; was a generous patron of classical French literature, encouraging writers such as Molière and Racine; of the visual arts, encouraging artists such as Charles Le Brun, Coysevox, Pierre Mignard, and Hyacinthe Rigaud, whose works became famous throughout Europe; of music; and even promoted the art of gardening, with his patronage of André Le Nôtre.

In 1679 Coysevox offered his bust of the painter Charles Le Brun as his reception piece to the Académie Royale. Coysevox's choice of subject demonstrated his skill as a sculptor as well as his shrewdness in an age of royal patronage, as Charles Le Brun was highly influential: he was First Painter to Louis XIV, Chancellor of the Académie Royale, head of the Gobelins manufactory and, from 1677-1685, responsible for the co-ordination of all 'official arts'. Le Brun commissioned Coysevox to produce much of the Baroque decoration and garden statuary for the Palais de Versailles and of the interior decoration, most notably in the famous Galérie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors) and a striking relief of Louis XIV in the Salon de la Guerre (the War Room), between 1678-86.

Coysevox repeated his success at the Château de Marly from 1701-1709. Louis XIV had commenced building the Château de Marly in 1679 as an escape from the formality of Versailles (it was demolished following the French Revolution and is now the site of the village of Marly-le-Roi, some 11 miles west of Paris) but among surviving works are perhaps Coysevox's two most famous sculptures, Mercury on Pegasus and Fame on Pegasus. For Marly he also sculpted Pan (now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris), Justice and Force and the River Garonne (at Versailles) and Amphitrite and Neptune (in the Jardins des Tuileries, Paris).

He produced portrait busts of many of the celebrated people of his age including, amongst many others, Kings Louis XIV and Louis XV; Maria Theresa, wife of Louis XIV and Queen Consort of France; Marie-Adélaïde de Savoie, Duchess of Bourgogne, depicted as the Goddess Diana; Louis II (in the Louvre); the Marshall Generals of France Marquis de Vauban and Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne (in the Frick Collection, New York); the Duc de Chaulnes (in the National Gallery of Art, Washington); Cardinals Fürstenberg, de Bouillon, de Polignac and Mazarin (in the Louvre); the Controller General of Finance, Jean Baptiste Colbert (in the church of Saint-Eustache, Paris); Louis XIV's landscape architect, André Le Nôtre (in the church of St-Roch, Paris); and Charles Le Brun (in terracotta in the Wallace Collection, London, and in marble in the Louvre, Paris). He also produced works for the Petit Trianon in Versailles, Saint-Cloud and Les Invalides as well as about a dozen fine sepulchral monuments for the churches of Paris - but he is best known for his statues Mercury and Fame which have stood in the Jardins des Tuileries since 1719.

Coysevox's originality is most striking in his portrait sculptures, particularly those of his friends, and he is credited with initiating the movement in sculptural portraiture toward the depiction of individual character. Both his formal commissions as well as his more personal sculptures reflect a quality of naturalism and animation, and all were said to have been remarkable likenesses.

Coysevox died in Paris in 1720. 135 years later the sculptor Jean-Bernard du Seigneur summed up his legacy when he said that, "he was the van Dyck of sculpture" (La Revue Universelle des Arts, 1855).

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With best wishes

CHRIS NOEL-JOHNSON
ALBANY FINE ART

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