Le Gros (Le Groux), Pierre, the Younger

LEGROS (LE GROS), PIERRE, the Younger. – French sculptor, born in Paris on 12 November 1666, died in Rome on 3 May 1719. Son of the sculptor Pietro L., who worked in the park at Versailles, he received his first instruction from his father. A student at the French Academy in Rome from 1690 to 1695, he subsequently settled there, residing in the city until his death, except for an interval of two years, between 1713 and 1715, when he went to France.

A typical representative of the exuberant Baroque taste, he sought pathetic effects through the intense movement of masses and the liveliness of expressions. Most of his works are in Rome; the best known are: Religion Punishing Heresy (1695–99), in the church of the Gesù, to the right of the altar of S. Ignatius; the statue of S. Stanislaus Kostka on his deathbed, in his room near the church of S. Andrea al Quirinale; the funerary monument of Cardinal G. Casanate (1708); and the grandiose statues of the Apostles Thomas and Bartholomew in the basilica of S. Giovanni in Laterano. His masterpiece, the statue of S. Ignatius with three silver angels for the church of the Gesù, has unfortunately been lost, having been melted down at the end of the eighteenth century to pay the contributions imposed on the Papal States under the Treaty of Tolentino.

Some of his works went to France, for example, the beautiful details of the mausoleum of the Duke of Bouillon at Cluny. Among his decorative architectural works, the most celebrated was the catafalque designed in 1711 in the church of S. Luigi dei Francesi in Rome for the funeral of the Grand Dauphin of France.

(Anderson photograph)
LEGROS, PIERRE – Statue of S. Tommaso (ca. 1710) – Rome, Basilica di S. Giovanni in Laterano.