Albany Fine Art : Biography of Antoine COYSEVOX

Antoine COYSEVOX

French, 1640–1720

COYSEVOX
Self Portrait, Early 18thC
© Musée du Louvre, Paris

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

Charles Antoine Coysevox was born in Lyon in 1640 into a family which had emigrated from Spain. When only 17 he produced a much-admired statue of the Madonna. Thus encouraged, he studied under Louis Lerambert (French, 1620-1670), the youngest of four generations of court artists who, in 1637, ‘inherited’ the role of Curator of The Antiquities and Marbles of the King. Coysevox taught himself by making marble copies of classical sculptures.

In 1666 he married Marguerite Quillerier, Lerambert's niece, who died a year after their marriage and, the following year, he was commissioned by Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg, Bishop (later Cardinal) of Strasbourg, to adorn his Château de Saverne (Zabern) in Alsace, eastern France (the château was destroyed by fire in 1780). Coysevox spent the next four years at Saverne, returning to Paris in 1671.

In 1679 he offered his bust of the painter Charles Le Brun (French, 1619-1690) as his reception piece to the Académie Royale (the terracotta Le Brun in the Wallace Collection, London, c.1676, served as the model for the marble version in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1679). He married for a second time, to Claude Bourdict, in the following year, 1677.

Le Brun was highly influential. He was First Painter to Louis XIV, Chancellor of the Académie Royale and head of the Gobelins manufactory and, from 1677-1685, responsible for the co-ordination of the ‘official arts’. Le Brun commissioned Coysevox to produce, between 1678-86, much of the Baroque decoration and garden statuary for the Château de Versailles and much 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).

Coysevox’s great rival as France’s pre-eminent sculptor was François Girardon (French, 1628-1715). However, Girardon’s style was less Baroque than Coysevox’s and, as the king's taste turned away from the Classical by the end of the 17th century, his popularity was eclipsed by that of Coysevox.

From 1701-1709 Coysevox repeated his success at the Château de Versailles with the work he created at the Château de Marly, which Louis XIV commenced building in 1679 as an escape from the formality of Versailles (it is now the site of the village of Marly-le-Roi, some 11 miles west of Paris). Sadly, Marly was demolished following the French Revolution, after 1806, but, among surviving works, are perhaps Coysevox’s two most famous sculptures, Mercury on Pegasus (1699-1702) and Fame on Pegasus (1699-1702). He also sculpted Pan (now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris), Justice and Force and the River Garonne (at Versailles) and Amphitrite (1705) and Neptune (1707), which were moved in 1719 to the gardens of the Tuileries in Paris.

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 depiction of an individual's 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.

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 of Spain (referred to as Marie-Thérèse d'Autriche in France), wife of Louis XIV and Queen Consort of France; Marie-Adélaïde de Savoie, Duchess of Bourgogne as Diana (1710); Louis II, Prince of Condé, known as Le Grand Condé (in the Louvre); Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne, Marshall General of France, often referred to simply as Turenne (in the Frick Collection, New York); Marquis de Vauban (commonly referred to as Vauban), Marshal of France and the foremost military engineer of his age; the Duc de Chaulnes (in the National Gallery of Art, Washington); Cardinals Fürstenberg, de Bouillon, de Polignac and Mazarin (in the Louvre); the bishop and theologian, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet; the Controller General of Finance, Jean Baptiste Colbert (in the church of Saint-Eustache, Paris); the theologian, poet and writer François Fénelon; Louis XIV’s landscape architect, André Le Nôtre (in the church of St-Roch, Paris) and the painter Charles Le Brun (one in the Wallace Collection, London and another in the Louvre, Paris).

He also produced works for the Petit Trianon in Versailles (1686-89), Saint-Cloud and Les Invalides (1691-1701) as well as about a dozen fine sepulchral monuments for the churches of Paris, including those to Colbert (in the church of Saint-Eustache), Cardinal Mazarin (intended for the Collège des Quatre-Nations but placed in the Louvre, 1692), and Charles Le Brun (in the church of Saint Nicolas du Chardonnet) but he is best known for his statues Mercury and Fame which have stood in the Jardins des Tuileries in Paris since 1719.

Coysevox died in Paris in 1720. Two of his pupils were his nephews, the brothers Nicolas Coustou (French, 1658-1733) and Guillaume Coustou (French, 1677–1746), both fine sculptors, who perpetuated their uncle’s influence into the 18th century. 135 years later the sculptor Jean-Bernard du Seigneur (French, 1808 - 1866) described Coysevox’s legacy thus, “On peut dire qu'il a été le van Dyck de la sculpture” - “One could say that he was the van Dyck of sculpture” (La Revue Universelle des Arts, 1855).