François-Joseph Bosio was born in Monaco in 1768. He was the most prominent sculptor of the French Empire and Restoration period. Prince Honoré III sent him to Paris to study alongside Augustin Pajou. He travelled to Italy and finally settled in France in 1807. He was presented to the Empress Joseph...
François-Joseph Bosio was born in Monaco in 1768. He was the most prominent sculptor of the French Empire and Restoration period. Prince Honoré III sent him to Paris to study alongside Augustin Pajou. He travelled to Italy and finally settled in France in 1807. He was presented to the Empress Josephine and was entrusted with many commissions. A sought-after portrait artist, he sculpted the bust of Napoleon I, the Empress, her daughter Hortense and the King of Rome. During the Restoration, he was appointed Chief Sculptor to the King and made a baron. A member of the Institute in 1816, he was appointed as a teacher at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1817. His monumental works include the equestrian sculpture of Louis XIV on Place des Victoires in Paris and the Quadriga of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in the Jardin des Tuileries. Held as part of the Louvre’s collections, the statue of Henry IV as a Child (1824) and the marble Nymph Salmacis (1836) are among his most remarkable pieces. François-Joseph Bosio died in Paris in 1845.
The sculptor Lucien Barbarin was born around 1864 in Vienne, Isère. A lawyer at the Court of Appeal in Monaco, he produced a biographical study of François-Joseph Bosio, which was published in 1910. After collecting a variety of documents, he sculpted the figure of Bosio and created a bronze bust which was exhibited at the 1913 Salon in Paris. He died prematurely in 1915 in Monaco. His widow decided to donate the sculpture to the Principality. The bust was officially unveiled in 1929 on Placette Bosio in Monaco-Ville, at the initiative of Monaco City Hall and the National Committee for Monegasque Traditions.
