Falconet, Étienne-Maurice

Falconet, Étienne-Maurice (b Paris, 1 Dec. 1716; d Paris, 24 Jan. 1791).
French sculptor and writer on art, a pupil of J. B. Lemoyne. Falconet was perhaps the most quintessentially Rococo of all French sculptors, his forte being gently erotic figures such as the celebrated marble Bather (1757, Louvre, Paris). Like many other of his works, this was reproduced in porcelain by the Sèvres factory, where he was director of the sculpture studios from 1757 to 1766, a position that he gained through the influence of his patron Mme de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV. Falconet had other sides to his talent, however, and his masterpiece—the equestrian statue of Peter the Great in St Petersburg—is in a completely different vein. He moved to Russia in 1766, recommended to the Empress Catherine the Great by Diderot, and stayed for twelve years; the statue was unveiled in 1782, four years after his return to France. The huge horse is represented with its forelegs raised and unsupported—a daring technical feat—and the heroic vigour of the statue gives it a place among the greatest examples of the type.

Falconet suffered a stroke in 1783 and thereafter produced no more sculpture, devoting himself to the revision of his writings, a six-volume edition of which had appeared in 1781. His best-known literary work is ‘Réflexions sur la sculpture’ (1760), originally written for Diderot's Encyclopédie. In this Falconet was one of the first to argue that the modern artists were superior to those of the ancient world (he was a man of humble origins and fierce independence of thought, and it is significant that unlike most of his distinguished contemporaries he never saw the need to visit Italy).