Alexander and Diogenes (1685, now in the Louvre). Colbert disliked Puget's personality but admired his skill; on 13 May 1672, he offered Puget a commission to make the two statues. Puget was occupied with his tasks for the city of Marseille, and did not begin work until In 1672. The impatient Colbert wrote to Puget, demanding a report on the statue, and observing that the marble belonged not to Puget, but to the royal government. Puguet worked furiously on Milon. However, in 1681, six years after sending the designs, the statue was still not finished; it was finally completed in August, 1682. Puget's Milon of Croton (1682) is a monumental work, nearly three meters high, is one of his most dramatic and expressive works. Illustrating a story by Ovid, it depicts the moment when Milon de Croton, a celebrated warrior but now elderly and weak, is attacked by a lion. His expression at the moment the lion claws Milon's is distorted by pain, and is full of pathos. This work was satisfactory to Colbert, was purchased by the royal government, and given a prominent place in the Gardens of Versailles. Puget in the meantime had begun on another monumental statue for Versailles, of Andromeda. Colbert died the following year and was replaced by as superintendent of royal buildings by François-Michel le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois. A month after Colbert's death, Louvois wrote to Puget for a report on other works that Puget was making, and asking how old he was. Puget responded that he was sixty years old and that he was working with great enthusiasm on his monumental statue of Perseus Andromeda (completed 1684, now in the Louvre) and the bas-relief Alexander and Diogenes (completed 1685, the Louvre). "I was raised making great works..." Puget wrote to Louvois. "The marble trembles before me, no matter how large it is." The two works were completed, loaded on ships in Toulon, and were placed in the gardens of Versailles. Marseille and the Louis XIV statue In 1665 he proposed an even more ambitious commission, to design a new city square next to the port of Marseille, with, as the centerpiece, a monumental equestrian statue of Louis XIV, facing the harbor. Similar monuments had been constructed in Paris, in Place Vendôme and Place des Victoires. Puget designed both the statue and the architecture of the square, which was actually an oval, surrounded