Jean-Baptiste Pigalle

Jean -Baptiste Pigalle ( born January 26, 1714 Paris, † August 20, 1785 in Paris) was a French sculptor.

He was born in Paris as the seventh child of a carpenter and was one of the most popular sculptors of his time. He studied under Robert Le Lorrain and in connection with Jean -Baptiste Lemoyne. He did not win the first prize of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, which would have made him a free study in Rome, and went in 1735 at his own expense to Italy Rome, where he copied antique statues.

Pigalle returned back to Paris in 1741 and was approved on November 4 this year with his Mercure statue at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. The marble version of the Mercure served him on 30 July 1744 morceau de réception. When King Louis XV. of France in 1746 at Pigalle a marble version of this figure ordered, Pigalle thus received its first prestigious contract. The French king gave this version of Pigalle Mercury along with a Venus statue as a counterpart Frederick II of Prussia. They were set up in the park of Sanssouci. Today, there are copies, the original marble pieces are stored in the Bode Museum in Berlin.

1766 formed Pigalle in a sculpture Voltaire naked on a tree stump sitting on. From this sculpture, Frederick II had to make a copy, which was erected in the vestibule of Sanssouci.

After the Paris Pigalle Pigalle Vergügungsviertel is named.

• Sculptures of Pigalle

Mercury in Sanssouci

Voltaire in the Louvre

Moritz of Saxony in Strasbourg