François Joseph Bosio
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Baron François Joseph Bosio (19 March 1769 - Paris 29 July 1845) was a French sculptor who achieved distinction in the first quarter of the nineteenth century with his work for Napoleon and for the restored French monarchy.
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[edit] Biography
Born in Monaco, Bosio was given a scholarship by prince Honoré I to study in Paris with the eminent sculptor Augustin Pajou. After brief service in the Revolutionary army he lived in Florence, Rome and Naples, providing sculpture for churches under the French hegemony in Italy in the 1790s. He was recruited by Dominique Vivant in 1808 to make bas-reliefs for the monumental column in the Place Vendôme in Paris and also to serve as portrait sculptor to Emperor Napoleon I and his family. It was in this capacity that he produced some of his finest work, notably marble portrait busts of the Empress Josephine, which was also modelled in bisque Sèvres porcelain, and of Queen Hortense (about 1810), which was also cast in bronze by Ravrio.[1]
Louis XVIII made Bosio a Knight of the Order of Saint Michael in 1821 and appointed him premier sculpteur du Roi. In 1828, Bosio produced the grandiose equestrian sculpture of Louis XIV in the Place des Victoires in Paris and was made an officer of the Légion d'honneur, France's highest civilian honour. He was made a baron by Charles X in 1825.
Apart from the imperial busts and the statue of Louis XVI, other important works included the quadriga of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and the statue of Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra (illustration) in the Tuileries Garden. Many of his most important sculptures and statues can today be found in the Louvre museum in Paris.
[edit] Summary of key works
[edit] In Paris
- Equestrian sculpture of Louis XIV (1828) (on Place des Victoires)
- Quadriga of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel (on Place du Carrousel)
- Hercules Wrestling Achelous, Tuileries Gardens.
- In the Louvre:
- Aristaeus, god of gardens (1813-1817), An official commission for the Imperial palaces through Vivant-Denon, 7 December 1812; marble delivered to Bosio January 1813.
- Hyacinth (1817)
- Henry IV as a child (1824-25) This was commissioned for his study at the Tuileries by Louis XVIII; it was cast in silver by the silversmith Charles-Nicolas Odiot
- Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra (1824)
- Bust of Charles X (1825-29)
- Bust of the Duchess of Angoulême (1825)
- The nymph Salmacis (1826). A reduced replica is used as the top award at the Festival de Télévision de Monte-Carlo
- Queen Marie-Amélie' (1841-43), standing figure. Bosio's original plaster, pointed for a marble version, is at the Louvre Museum.
[edit] Elsewhere
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- Cupid with a bow (1808) (Hermitage Museum, Russia)
- Bust of Queen Marie-Amélie of France (1841) (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
- Bust of the marquis d'Aligre (bronze]], Art Museums of San Francisco
