Pierre Legros II. Pierre Le Gros was a French sculptor, active almost exclusively in Baroque Rome.
Nowadays, his name is commonly written Legros, while he himself always signed as Le Gros; he is frequently referred to either as 'the Younger' or Pierre II to distinguish him from his father, Pierre Le Gros the Elder, who was also a sculptor. The ardent drama of his work and its Italian location make him more an Italian, than a French, sculptor.
Despite being virtually unknown to the general public today, he was the pre-eminent sculptor in Rome for nearly two decades, until he was finally superseded at the end of his life by the more classicizing Camillo Rusconi. Le Gros was born in Paris into a family with a strong artistic pedigree.
Jeanne, his mother, died when he was only three, but he stayed in close contact with her brothers, the sculptors Gaspard and Balthazard Marsy, whose workshop he frequented and eventually inherited at the age of fifteen. His artistic training, though, lay in the hands of his father, from whom he learned to sculpt, and his stepmother's father, Jean Le Pautre, who taught him to draw.
Le Gros was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome to study at the French Academy in Rome, where he renewed his close friendship with his cousin Pierre Lepautre, also a sculptor and fellow at the Academy. His lodging there from 1690-95 was a fruitful time but not untroubled, since the academy
Nowadays, his name is commonly written Legros, while he himself always signed as Le Gros; he is frequently referred to either as 'the Younger' or Pierre II to distinguish him from his father, Pierre Le Gros the Elder, who was also a sculptor. The ardent drama of his work and its Italian location make him more an Italian, than a French, sculptor.
Despite being virtually unknown to the general public today, he was the pre-eminent sculptor in Rome for nearly two decades, until he was finally superseded at the end of his life by the more classicizing Camillo Rusconi. Le Gros was born in Paris into a family with a strong artistic pedigree.
Jeanne, his mother, died when he was only three, but he stayed in close contact with her brothers, the sculptors Gaspard and Balthazard Marsy, whose workshop he frequented and eventually inherited at the age of fifteen. His artistic training, though, lay in the hands of his father, from whom he learned to sculpt, and his stepmother's father, Jean Le Pautre, who taught him to draw.
Le Gros was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome to study at the French Academy in Rome, where he renewed his close friendship with his cousin Pierre Lepautre, also a sculptor and fellow at the Academy. His lodging there from 1690-95 was a fruitful time but not untroubled, since the academy
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