Louvre

Julius Caesar

Nicolas COUSTOU

Ordered in 1696 for the park of Versailles to make during the Annibal of Slodtz. Paid in 1713. Transferred from the Salle des Antiques du Louvre to the Jardin des Tuileries in 1722, date which is worn on the statue. The terracotta sketch is exposed in the Girardon crypt.

Nicolas Coustou comes from a family of wood carvers. He is the son of Claudine Coysevox, sister of Antoine Coysevox, and François Coustou, a modest woodcarver from Lyon.

He returned to Paris in 1687 and presented his reception piece a few years later; it will be a bas-relief and not a statue in the round. It is the principal artistic actor of the policy of the kingdom of Louis XIV, Charles Le Brun, who asks him to realize his piece of reception from a subject and a drawing that he imposes on him. After being struck off the list of approved, it is finally August 29, 1693 that Nicolas Coustou is received at the Academy with a marble bas-relief entitled The God of Health Showing France the Bust of Louis XIV.