Sébastien Slodtz was a French sculptor, the father of a trio of brothers who helped shape official French sculpture between the Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 and the Rococo

Rococo

Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...

. He was born at Antwerp and joined the Paris workshop of François Girardon

François Girardon

François Girardon was a French sculptor.He was born at Troyes. As a boy he had for master a joiner and wood-carver of his native town, named Baudesson, under whom he is said to have worked at the chateau of Liebault, where he attracted the notice of Chancellor Séguier...

, under whose direction he worked for the sculptural decor of Versailles

Palace of Versailles

The Palace of Versailles , or simply Versailles, is a royal château in Versailles in the Île-de-France region of France. In French it is the Château de Versailles....

 and its gardens and for the Tuileries. Sébastien Slodtz was the outstanding sculptor to come out of Girardon's atelier (Souchal 1968). He held the post of Dessinateur de la Chambre et du Cabinet de Sa Majesté, a post that two of his sons filled after him.

Sébastien Slodtz is best known for his Aristaeus fettering Proteus, begun in 1688, installed in 1714 in the Bassin d'Apollon on the grand terrace

Gardens of Versailles

The Gardens of Versailles occupy part of what was once the Domaine royal de Versailles, the royal demesne of the château of Versailles. Situated to the west of the palace, the gardens cover some 800 hectares of land, much of which is landscaped in the classic French Garden style perfected here by...

 at Versailles, where it remains. His other chief works were the Hannibal Barca counting the rings of the Roman knights killed at the Battle of Cannae (illustration) for the Allée du Roi, which was designed as a pendant for Nicolas Coustou

Nicolas Coustou

Nicolas Coustou was a French sculptor and academic.Born in Lyon, Coustou was the son of a woodcarver, who gave him his first instruction in art. At eighteen he moved to Paris, to study under C.A...

's Julius Caesar and for which Girardon provided a terracotta maquette a statue of St Ambrose in the Dôme des Invalides, and a bas-relief Saint Louis sending missionaries to India. Other works were provided for the Château de Marly

Château de Marly

The Château de Marly was a relatively small French royal residence located in what has become Marly-le-Roi, the commune that existed at the edge of the royal park. The town that originally grew up to service the château is now a dormitory community for Paris....

, such as the marble Vertumnus for the Cascade and sculptures for the Val de Grâce.

His sons, notably René-Michel Slodtz

René-Michel Slodtz

René-Michel Slodtz or Michelangelo and in France, Michel-Ange Slodtz was a French sculptor working in a Rococo style, and active mainly in Rome and Paris, and for the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi....

 (1705-64) called Michelange, the only great sculptor among the Slodtz, according to François Souchal, but also his two brothers, who worked in partnership largely for the ephemeral royal and princely occasions overseen by the department of the Menus Plaisirs: the designer-decorator Sébastien-Antoine (1695-1754) and the sculptor Paul-Ambroise (1702-58), who was the only one of the three to be accepted in the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. Their lively, dashing drawings cannot be told apart, even by specialists.

Among the pupils of Sébastien Slodtz was Pierre de L’Estache

Pierre de l’Estache

Pierre de l’Estache was a French sculptor. He produced a copy of the Kallipygian Venus in Rome in 1722-23, for Augustus the Strong's Grosser Garten in Dresden . He was president of the French Academy in Rome in 1737-1738...

.