Pierre Granier

Pierre Granier (1655 — 1715) was a proficient but minor French sculptor, trained in the excellent atelier of François Girardon who produced a generation of highly competent sculptors for the Bâtiments du Roi.

[1] Granier served as a modest member of the extensive team that provided sculpture for the Château de Versailles[2] and its gardens.

Strict control over the subjects, scale, materials and to a great extent the design of sculpture for Versailles was exercised by the premier peintre du Roi, Charles Le Brun.

According to Antoine-Nicolas Dézallier d'Argenville, Le Brun provided a wax model for Granier's marble group Ino and Melicertes, and a Shepherdess was sculpted after a sketch given by Le Brun.

[5] When the marble sculpture of a god discovered at Smyrna was offered to Louis XIV, Granier was commissioned in 1686 to provide a missing right arm, raised and brandishing a thunderbolt: the result was the so-called Jupiter de Smyrne, now conserved at the Louvre Museum.