Pierre-Étienne Monnot

[1] Leaving Besançon in December 1686, he arrived in Rome in February 1687,[2] where he was introduced to an established, tightly knit community of Burgundian artists.

With the main sculptures of the Saint Ignatius altar in the Church of the Gesù assigned to Pierre Le Gros the Younger and Jean-Baptiste Théodon in 1695, French sculptors in Rome became highly prized for decades to come.

Monnot's first major commission was for two marble reliefs, a Nativity and a Flight into Egypt flanking Domenico Guidi's Dream of St. Joseph for the right transept altar in Santa Maria della Vittoria.

Here, as in some other pieces, Monnot was to some measure influenced by Guidi, a pupil of Alessandro Algardi, who had become a prominent sculptor in late 17th-century Rome.

Through his patron, Prince Livio Odescalchi, Monnot was entrusted to execute the Tomb of Pope Innocent XI for St. Peter's Basilica (1697–1704) to a design by Carlo Maratta.

Monnot restored a torso of a copy after Myron's Discobolus as a Wounded Gladiator who supports himself on his arm as he sinks to the ground; it was donated before 1734 by Pope Clement XII to the Capitoline Museums, where it remains.