Antoine Coysevox

Nicolas Coustou, Guillaume Hulot and François Coudray are recorded as having studied under Antoine Coysevox. The recorded working language is French. Works named in the authority record are Fame Riding Pegasus, Mercury Riding Pegasus and Shepherd with Flute. Work by Antoine Coysevox is recorded in the collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Nationalmuseum, The Frick Collection, National Museum of Fine Arts, Argentina and Ackland Art Museum.

• Name — Antoine Coysevox • Born — 29 September 1640 • Birthplace — Lyon, France • Died — 10 October 1720 (aged 80) • Place of death — Paris, France • Field — Sculpture • Movement — Baroque and Louis XIV Style

Coysevox was born 29 September 1640 in Lyon. He was the son of a sculptor, from a family which had emigrated from Franche-Comté, a Spanish possession at the time. He made his first work of sculpture of the Madonna when he was only seventeen. Coysevox came to Paris in 1657 and joined the workshop of the sculptor Louis Lerambert. He trained himself further by making copies in marble of Roman sculptures, including a Venus de Medici and the Castor and Pollux. In 1666, he married Marguerite Quillerier, Lerambert's niece, who died a year after the marriage. In 1679, he married Claude Bourdict. In 1667 he was commissioned by the bishop of Strasbourg, Cardinal Fürstenberg, to statuary for his château at Saverne (Zabern). In 1671, after four years spent working at Saverne, he returned to Paris. In 1676, his bust of the king's painter Charles Le Brun gained him admission to the Académie Royale. He became part of the extraordinary team of sculptors, painters, and decorators, under the control of Le Brun, who between 1677 and 1685 produced the decoration of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles. Later, between 1701 and 1709, when Louis XIV built a new Château de Marly, where he could escape from the crowds and ceremony at Versailles, with Coysevox providing several works for that site. Coysevox rose steadily in the artistic hierarchy. He became a professor at the Royal Academy in 1678, and then its director in 1702, with an annual pension of four thousand livres. In this position, he guided the training of a generation of French sculptors, including his nephews Nicolas Coustou (1659–1733) and Guillaume Coustou (1677–1746), who became important figures in French sculpture of the early 18th century. Coysevox died in Paris on 10 October 1720.

Coysevox sculpted portrait busts of many of the celebrated men and women of his age. The faces of his busts were considered remarkably accurate; he did not flatter his subjects, but by the poses, detail and precision of the costumes he gave them a particular dignity. His subjects included Louis XIV and Louis XV, at Versailles; Jean-Baptiste Colbert (the kneeling figure of his tomb at Saint-Eustache); Cardinal Mazarin, (in the church of the Collège des Quatre-Nations); Louis, Grand Condé (in the Louvre); Maria Theresa of Spain; Turenne; Vauban; the Cardinal de Bouillon; and Melchior de Polignac; the duc de Chaulnes (National Gallery of Art, Washington); François Fénelon; Jean Racine; André Le Nôtre (church of St-Roch); Jacques Benigne Bossuet (in the Louvre); the comte d'Harcourt; Cardinal Wilhelm Egon von Fürstenberg; and Charles Le Brun (in the Louvre). • Illustration — Bust of Charles LeBrun, (1676) (Louvre) • Illustration — Louis XIV (1680), Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Narbonne • Illustration — Jean-Baptiste Colbert (Louvre) • Illustration — Marie Serre, mother of Hyacinthe Rigaud (Louvre) (1706) • Illustration — Louis, Grand Condé (Louvre) • Illustration — Self-portrait (Louvre)

The authorities additionally record the headings Anthoine Quoyzeveau, Antoine Coisevaux, Antoine Coyzevox, Antoine Quoizevaux and Antoine Quoyzeveau. His recorded language was French. He was the child of Pierre Coysevox and Ysabeau Morel. Other recorded relations include Nicolas Coustou and Guillaume Coustou the Elder.