Falconet Étienne Maurice

Étienne Maurice Falconet, born December 1, 1716 in Paris, where he died January 24, 1791, was a French baroque, rococo and neoclassical sculptor.
Born to a poor family in Paris, Étienne Maurice Falconet was at first apprenticed to a carpenter, but some of his clay figures, with the making of which he occupied his leisure hours, attracted the notice of the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, who made him his pupil. Falconet was staying almost ten years in his workshop, an unusually long time for an pupil; he then meets Pigalle and Pajou. His meeting with François Boucher enabled him to approach the Marquise de Pompadour, a great patron of the arts and mistress of king Louis XV, who commissioned several works from him, including La Jardinière to adorn the dairy of his castle in Crécy.

Considered one of the masters of the Baroque school, Falconet was also neoclassical sculptor. His most famous works are The Menacing Love (Paris, Louvre Museum) and the Monument of Peter the Great, known as The Bronze Horseman in Saint Petersburg, Russia.