Charles Antoine Coysevox ( or ; 29 September 164010 October 1720), was a French sculptor in the Baroque and Louis XIV style, best known for his sculpture decorating the gardens and Palace of Versailles and his portrait busts. Biography Coysevox was born 29 September 1640 in Lyon. He was the son of a sculptor, from a family which had emigrated from Franche-Comté, a Spanish possession at the time. He made his first work of sculpture of the Madonna when he was only seventeen, Coysevox came to Paris in 1657 and joined the workshop of the sculptor Louis Lerambert. He trained himself further by making copies in marble of Roman sculptures, including a Venus de Medici and the Castor and Pollux. In 1666, he married Marguerite Quillerier, Lerambert's niece, who died a year after the marriage. In 1679, he married Claude Bourdict. In 1667 he was commissioned by the bishop of Strasbourg, Cardinal Fürstenberg, to statuary for his château at Saverne (Zabern). In 1671, after four years spent working at Saverne, he returned to Paris. In 1676, his bust of the king's painter Charles Le Brun gained him admission to the Académie Royale. He became part of the extraordinary team of sculptors, painters, and decorators, under the control of Le Brun, who between 1677 and 1685 produced the decoration of the Palace and Gardens of Versailles. Later, between 1701 and 1709, when Louis XIV built a new Château de Marly, where he could escape from the crowds and ceremony at Versailles, with Coysevox providing several works for that site. Coysevox rose steadily in the artistic hierarchy. He became a professor at the Royal Academy in 1678, and then its director in 1702, with an annual pension of four thousand livres. In this position, he guided the training of a generation of French sculptors, including his nephews Nicolas Coustou (1659–1733) and Guillaume Coustou (1677–1746), who became important figures in French sculpture of the early 18th century. Coysevox died in Paris on 10 October 1720. Monumental sculpture A large part of his work is found at the Palace of Versailles. One of his most famous works is the large stucco medallion of Louis XIV, found in the Salon of War in the Palace. The King is portrayed as a Roman Emperor on horseback, trampling his enemies, like a modern Caesar, gazing ahead to the future, as a figure of Victory offers him a