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
Monaco, Bosio was given a scholarship by prince Honoré I to study in Paris with the eminent sculptor
Augustin Pajou. After brief service in the Revolutionary army he lived in Florence, Rome and Naples, providing sculpture for churches under the French hegemony in Italy in the 1790s. He was recruited by
Dominique Vivant Denon in 1808 to make
bas-reliefs for the monumental column in the
Place Vendôme in Paris and also to serve as portrait sculptor to Emperor
Napoleon I and his family. It was in this capacity that he produced some of his finest work, notably marble portrait
busts of the
Empress Josephine, which was also modelled in
biscuitSèvres porcelain, and of
Queen Hortense (about 1810), which was also cast in bronze by
Ravrio.[2]
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.
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
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.
^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 Journal13 (1978), pp. 113–130
^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.