Pierre Puget

Pierre Puget was one of the most powerful and original sculptors of seventeenth-century France, born in Marseille in 1620. Often described as the French Baroque sculptor par excellence, his work stood apart from the restrained classicism favored at the court of Louis XIV. Puget trained as a woodcarver and painter before traveling to Italy, where he studied the work of Pietro da Cortona and absorbed the dynamic energy of Bernini and the broader Italian Baroque tradition. This influence would define his entire career, lending his sculptures an emotional intensity and physical drama rarely seen in French art of the period.