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Pierre Paul Puget (16 October 1620 (or 31 October 1622) – 2 December 1694) was a French Baroque painter, sculptor, architect and engineer. His sculpture expressed emotion, pathos and drama, setting it apart from the more classical and academic sculpture of the Style Louis XIV.Geese Uwa, article on baroque sculpture in Tolman, Art Baroque: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting (2015), p. 303
The death of the Grand Admiral in 1646 ended his first work in naval decoration. He began painting, mostly religious works, in the style of Annibale Carracci and Rubens. He also received a commission in 1649 to make several public fountains for new squares in Toulon. In 1652 he was commissioned to make baptismal fonts for the Marseille cathedral. From 1662 to 1665, he made a series of paintings for the Cathedral of Marseille.
He was recognized as a painter but still poorly paid; In 1653, he was commissioned by the Brotherhood of Corpus Domini to make two large paintings, The Baptism of Clovis and the Baptism of Constantine (now in the Marseille Museum of Art), for a total of one hundred forty livres, a very small amount for the time and amount of the work. He completed another religious painting, Salvator Mundi, in December 1655. Altogether he is recorded as having painted fifty-six paintings, of which nineteen were documented in 1868 as still existing. A serious illness in 1665 and advice of doctors caused him to abandon painting entirely.
In 1650, he was living in Toulon, and was married there. He turned his attention entirely to sculpture. In 1655, he received his first important commission for the sculptural decoration of the entrance of the Hôtel de Ville in Toulon; he produced a porch supported by muscular atlantes, still in existence on a new municipal building facing the port. He used as his models two of the muscular workers who unloaded ships along the quay in front of the building. Their faces and postures in the sculpture vividly expressed their struggle with the weight on their shoulders. The work was finished in 1657. He was paid fifteen hundred livres, to which the city authorities, pleased with the work, added a supplement of two hundred livres. His work was widely praised, and terra-cotta copies were made and circulated. Puget was converted from a modestly-talented painter to a celebrated sculptor.
In 1660 Fouquet travelled to the quarries of Carrara marble, where he selected the marble he wanted, chose a Genoese sailor as the model, and in Genoa made the statue that became known as the Hercules of Gaul. However, on 5 September 1661, Fouquet was arrested and imprisoned, on the accusations of Colbert, for taking government funds for his own use. The statue commissioned for Fouquet's garden was later sent instead to the Château de Sceaux, Colbert's more modest residence. It is now in the Louvre.
Puget decided to stay for a time in Italy, making long visits to Rome and Genoa. His principal patron in Italy was an Italian nobleman, Francesco Maria Sauli. His major works during this period were two monumental statues for the pillars of the church of Santa Maria di Carignano, representing Saint Sebastian and Bishop Alexander Paoli. They were completed in 1663, and showed the influence of Bernini. He also made a notable statue, The Immaculate Conception, for the French patron Emmanuel Brignole, for the chapel of an Albergo in Genoa. The Genoese senate proposed that he paint their council chamber, but he declined, to devote all his attention to sculpture.
Puget continued to work on other sculptural and artistic projects in Toulon, He sculpted a large marble group of the Virgin and Child for the church of Lorgues and created a monumental wooden retable still in place, for Toulon Cathedral. In addition, he designed town houses in Aix-en-Provence and several municipal buildings in Marseille, including the fish market (still in place) and the La Vieille Charité, originally a home for beggars and the indigent, now a cultural center.
Puget's view of naval architecture soon clashed with the views of the new Commissioner of Fortifications, the Chevalier de Clairville. Clairville changed all of the Puget's plans, removed decoration he considered unnecessary, and rejected his elegant new headquarters building. Puget appealed to Colbert, but Colbert sided with Clairville. At the end of 1669, Puget took a leave of absence and departed the dockyards for his traditional sanctuary, Genoa, where he made a series of works, including The Virgin (1670), now in the oratory of the Church of Saint Philippe de Néri.
When he returned to the dockyards in June 1670, he found they were commanded by a new officer, and that the decoration of ships he had begun had been given to others. He also learned that, upon the instructions of Colbert, any work he did had to be approved at higher levels by Le Brun and the senior sculptors in Paris. He was to design only what he was told to design. Furthermore, Colbert presented a new argument; British ships had little or no sculptural decoration, and they usually won battles. Therefore French ships should also be without sculpture.G. Walton, "Les Dessins d'architecture de Puget pour la reconstruction de l'arsenal de Toulon", Information d'histoire de l'Art, 10 (1965), pp.162 ff
Puget's Milon of Croton (1682) is a monumental work, nearly three meters high, is one of his most dramatic and expressive works. Illustrating a story by Ovid, it depicts the moment when Milon de Croton, a celebrated warrior but now elderly and weak, is attacked by a lion. His expression at the moment the lion claws Milon's is distorted by pain, and is full of pathos. This work was satisfactory to Colbert, was purchased by the royal government, and given a prominent place in the Gardens of Versailles. Puget, in the meantime, had begun on another monumental statue for Versailles, of Andromeda.
Colbert died the following year and was replaced by as superintendent of royal buildings by François-Michel le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois. A month after Colbert's death, Louvois wrote to Puget for a report on other works that Puget was making, and asking how old he was. Puget responded that he was sixty years old and that he was working with great enthusiasm on his monumental statue of Perseus Andromeda (completed 1684, now in the Louvre) and the bas-relief Alexander and Diogenes (completed 1685, the Louvre). "I was raised making great works..." Puget wrote to Louvois, "The marble trembles before me, no matter how large it is." The two works were completed, loaded on ships in Toulon, and were placed in the gardens of Versailles.
Puget made one of his rare trips to Versailles to promote the project in person to the King, on 29 November 1687. The King expressed his admiration of the project, as did his consort, Madame de Maintenon; but the soon-to-be chief royal architect, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, pointed out that it would be more attractive and efficient to build a square, rather than an oval, and a more modest project. Mansart himself had designed both Place Vendome and Place des Victoires, and his views were accepted by the King, much to the distress and anger of Puget. Work went ahead on the project, following the new plan. The marble was delivered for the statue, and Puget's friends in Genoa sent a magnificent horse to serve as a model. Puget remained adamant and declared he would not make the statue until the city square, in an oval shape, was constructed for it. The Echevins, or city council, decided they preferred the simpler and less expensive square design, but Puget was adamant. Puget made another trip to Versailles to try to persuade the King to accept his project, but the King declined to see him. The Echevins of Marseille abandoned Puget and selected a different and little-known sculptor, Clérion, and Puget was excluded from the project. In the end, neither the square nor the statue was made; the outbreak of a war with Holland in 1688 ended for a time any new architectural projects.
The last two works of Puget were the bas-reliefs Alexander and Diogenes and The Plague of Marseille. The last work, depicting a tragic but heroic moment in the city's history, was left unfinished. After his death, it was placed in the Council Chamber of the city of Marseille, where he died in 1694.
In 1882, Adolphe-André Porée discovered a lost statue by Puget on a castle grounds at Biéville-Beuville. He sculpted a large marble group of the Virgin and Child for the church of Lorgues and created a monumental wooden retable still in place, for Toulon Cathedral. Hydra of Lerna was originally in the castle of Vaudreuil, and is now at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen.
Mont Puget, near Marseille, is named after him.
Image:Toulon Cathedral Puget Retable.jpg|Retable
Toulon Cathedral
File:Pierre Puget - La peste de Milan.jpg|The plague of Milan, (bas-relief) his last and uncompleted work
File:Pierre Puget - Louis XIV.jpg|Louis XIV, medallion in marble
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