Pierre Cartellier

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pierre Cartellier (December 2, 1757 – June 12, 1831) was a French sculptor.

Born in Paris, he studied at the École Gratuite de Dessin in Paris and then in the studio of Charles-Antoine Bridan before attending the Académie Royale. During the French Revolution Cartellier was part of a team of sculptors who worked on the church of Ste. Geneviève in Paris to convert it to the now famous burial tomb, the Panthéon.

At a time in European history when ancient works were the measure by which all statuary was judged, in 1801 Cartellier obtained wide recognition after exhibiting a plaster version of his statue of "Modesty" that was based on the free-standing statue of "Capitoline Venus" in Rome. He would later be given the commission to do the equestrian statue of King Louis XIV that can be seen on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles.

Cartellier sculpted the bronze statue of Dominique Vivant, baron Denon (1747-1825), that adorns his tomb at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. However, Cartellier's best known work came in 1825 when he was commissioned by Vivant's close friends Eugène and Hortense de Beauharnais who wanted him to sculpt a monument for the tomb of their mother, the Empress Joséphine. Cartellier's statue, modeled from Josephine's kneeling image in the painting of the coronation of Napoléon Bonaparte by Jacques-Louis David, can be seen at the Church of Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul in Rueil-Malmaison.

Cartellier was made a member of Institut de France and taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His daughter married the painter Jean-François Heim but she died at the age of nineteen.

Pierre Cartellier died in Paris in 1831 and was interred there in the Père Lachaise Cemetery with his wife and daughter.