François Joseph Bosio

Baron François Joseph Bosio (19 March 1768 – 29 July 1845) was a Monegasque sculptor who achieved distinction in the first quarter of the nineteenth century with his work for Napoleon and for the restored French monarchy.^[1]

Biography

Born in

Apart from the imperial busts and the statue of Louis XVI, other important works included the quadriga of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and the statue of Hercules fighting Acheloos transformed into a snake (illustration) in the Louvre. Many of his most important sculptures and statues can today be found in the Louvre museum in Paris.

A study of Bosio was published by L. Barbarin, Etude sur Bosio, sa vie et son oeuvre (Monaco) 1910.

Summary of key works

In Paris

• Quadriga of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel (on the Place du Carrousel)
• Hercules Wrestling Achelous, Louvre.
• Equestrian sculpture of Louis XIV (1816–1828) (in Place des Victoires)
• Monument to Louis XVI (begun 1816, installed 1835) in the Chapelle Expiatoire.
• In the Louvre:
  • Aristaeus, god of gardens (1813–1817), An official commission for the Imperial palaces through Vivant-Denon, 7 December 1812; marble delivered to Bosio January 1813.
  • Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia. This bust was replicated at least fifty-four times
  • Hyacinth (1817)
  • Charles-Nicolas Odiot
  • Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra (1824)
  • Bust of Charles X (1825–29)
  • Bust of the Duchess of Angoulême (1825)
  • The
    Festival de Télévision de Monte-Carlo
  • Bust of Queen Marie-Amélie (1841) Shown at the
    salon of 1837; the first marble version is at the Louvre; a repetition is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art^[3]
  • Queen Marie-Amélie (1841–43), standing figure. Bosio's original plaster, pointed for a marble version, is at the Louvre Museum at Saint-Omer. The marble, finished after Bosio's death by his nephew, is at Versailles.

Elsewhere

• Cupid with a bow (1808) (Hermitage Museum, Russia)
• Bust of Queen Marie-Amélie of France (1841) (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
• California Palace of the Legion of Honor
  )
• Portrait Bust of the Empress Marie-Louise, c. 1810–1815 Dallas Museum of Art
• Portrait Bust of Catherine, Princess of Wurtemburg, c. 1810–1815 Dallas Museum of Art
• Bronze bust of King Louis XVIII ^[4]

Notes

1. ^ His brother Jean-François Bosio (1764–1827) was a pupil of David, and his son Astyanax-Scévola (died 1876) trained as a sculptor in the studio of his uncle François-Joseph. See James David Draper, "Thirty Famous People: Drawings by Sergent-Marceau and Bosio, Milan, 1815–1818" Metropolitan Museum Journal 13 (1978), pp. 113–130
2. ^ An example is conserved at Malmaison.
3. ^ Acc. no. 1990.60; illustrated The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin New Series, 48.2, Recent Acquisitions: A Selection 1989–1990 (Autumn 1990), p. 31.
4. ^ A BRONZE BUST OF LOUIS XVIII | POSSIBLY BY BARON FRANÇOIS-JOSEPH BOSIO (MONACO 1768-1845, PARIS), FRANCE, FIRST QUARTER 19TH CENTURY | Christie's

External links

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to François-Joseph Bosio.

• François Joseph Bosio, Artcyclopedia
• François Joseph Bosio, Insecula
• Ministère de la Culture: François Joseph Bosio
• Life-size Bronze Bust of King Louis XVIII, Attributed to François Joseph Bosio (Monaco, 1768-1845)
• François Joseph Bosio in American public collections, on the French Sculpture Census website