Etienne Le Hongre

Etienne Le Hongre (Paris 7 May 1628— Paris 28 April 1690) was a French sculptor, part of the team that worked for the "Bâtiments du Roi" at Versailles. Le Hongre was one of the first generation of sculptors formed by the precepts of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. At the Bain des Nymphes (1678-80) he was one of the sculptors providing lead bas-reliefs for the fountain setting that featured the work of François Girardon. Le Hongre provided other bronze figures for the "Parterre d'Eau" ("illustration, right").

His sculptures for the funerary monument to the heart of Louis de Cossé, duc de Brissac (died 1661), dismantled at the Revolution, are conserved at the Louvre Museum [http://www.insecula.com/us/oeuvre/O0010265.html] .

He trained in the atelier of Jacques Sarrazin along with Gaspard and Balthazar Marsy and Pierre Le Gros the Elder, all of whom later worked at Versailles.

Etienne Le Hongre also worked at the Château de Choisy.

His last major commission, an equestrian sculpture of Louis XIV intended for the Place Royale at Dijon was unfinished at his death. The founders, Roger Schabol and François Aubry, both sculptors in their own right, eventually had to sue Le Hongre's heirs for compensation. [http://www.patwengraf.com/schabol1.htm] Contemporaneous bronze reductions of the monument exist.

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