Jean Cornu

[2] He regularly worked as a 'sculptor in ordinary' at the court of Louis XIV.

In 1678 he won second prize in sculpture at the French School in Rome.

Colbert, first minister to the king of France, set aside a fund to allow a group of French artists to stay in Rome studying antique sculpture and producing copies of them for the Palace of Versailles.

He also produced sculptures for the gardens, such as a marble copy of the Farnese Hercules (after a plaster copy brought from Rome) and an allegorical figure of Africa, as well as large ornamental vases with bas-reliefs showing classical mythological scenes (famously photographed early in the 20th century by Eugène Atget).

The drawings for the facade sculptures at Versailles were by Charles Le Brun and Cornu and the others worked from these.