Pierre Puget (Born in 1620) was born in Marseille. He was a French engineer, architect, painter, and sculptor. He carved the ornaments of the galleys built in the shipyards of Marseille, his native city when he was at the age of 14, and at the age of 16, the construction and decoration of a ship were entrusted to him. After the completion of the project, he went to Italy on foot, and was well received by Pietro da Cortona at Rome. Pietro took him into his studio and employed him on the ceilings of Palazzo Pitti at Florence and on those of the Palazzo Barberini. Puget spent four years in Italy, after which he returned to Marseille, where he carved the huge figureheads of men-of-war and also painted portraits.
After his second journey to Italy, he painted a great number of pictures for Toulon, Cuers, La Ciotat, and Aix-en-Provence, and sculpted a large marble group of the Virgin and Child for the church of Lorgues. Between 1655 and 1657 he executed his caryatids for the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville of Toulon. He also created the Toulon Cathedral’s monumental wooden retable. He was employed by Nicolas Fouquet to sculpt a Hercules for Vaux-le-Vicomte, his château. In 1660, after the fall of Fouquet, Puget moved to Genoa where he crafted a Hercule Gaulois for François Sublet de Noyers, the statues of Bishop Alessandro Paoli and St Sebastian, and many other works. Puget’s desire to paint gradually subsided before his passion for sculpture, and then in 1665, a serious illness brought him a prohibition from the doctors which caused him wholly to put aside the brush.
