Martin Desjardins
Encyclopedia
He was born at Breda
Breda
Breda is a municipality and a city in the southern part of the Netherlands. The name Breda derived from brede Aa and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. As a fortified city, the city was of strategic military and political significance...
, the son of a milliner in a house that would later carry the name 'de Drye Bredasche Hoeden' ("the Three Hats from Breda"). His early training was at Antwerp with the sculptor Pieter Verbruggen
Pieter Verbrugghen I
Pieter Verbrugghen I was a Flemish sculptor. His brother in law, Artus I Quellin, had a studio in Antwerp.-Biography:His biography, accompanied by an illustration, was published in Cornelis de Bie's book of artists Het Gulden Cabinet, 1668...
(1615-1686), while his mature career was spent at Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where he was working from the 1650s. His early Paris work was in decorative stucco reliefs, at the Hôtel d’Aubert de Fontenay (Hôtel Salé) and the Hôtel de Beauvais (staircase). He was accepted in 1661 into the Académie de St Luc as "Martin Desjardins" (a translation of his Dutch name "of the orchard"), and gained a reputation executing private commissions for funerary monuments. In 1671 he was received as a member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture on the basis of a marble relief of Hercules Crowned by Glory(Musée du Louvre, illustration, left)
From this time he received royal commissions, at Les Invalides
Les Invalides
Les Invalides , officially known as L'Hôtel national des Invalides , is a complex of buildings in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France, containing museums and monuments, all relating to the military history of France, as well as a hospital and a retirement home for war veterans, the building's...
and at 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....
, where iconographic treatment and design were tightly controlled and the sculptor was often presented with a sketch or working drawing to follow. His free copy of the king's Roman Diana, the Diana of Versailles
Diana of Versailles
The Diana of Versailles is a slightly over lifesize marble statue of the Greek goddess Artemis , with a deer, located in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. It is a Roman copy of a lost Greek bronze original attributed to Leochares, c...
, was repeated in his workshop several times. His gilt-bronze Four Captive Nations (1682-85) celebrated the early victories of the armies of Louis XIV over the alliances of Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, Brandenburg and Holland, in Louis XIV's Place des Victoires, Paris. They ornamented the socle of Desjardins' equestrian sculpture
Equestrian sculpture
An equestrian statue is a statue of a rider mounted on a horse, from the Latin "eques", meaning "knight", deriving from "equus", meaning "horse". A statue of a riderless horse is strictly an "equine statue"...
of Louis XIV, which was melted down at the Revolution. Today the Captifs are conserved in the Louvre, their gilding weathered away. A marble workshop copy of the Louis XIV is to be seen in the Orangerie at Versailles.
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
was destroyed by the revolutionaries; however the bronze figures from its socle, the river gods of the Rhône
Rhône River
The Rhone is one of the major rivers of Europe, rising in Switzerland and running from there through southeastern France. At Arles, near its mouth on the Mediterranean Sea, the river divides into two branches, known as the Great Rhone and the Little Rhone...
and the Saône
Saône
The Saône is a river of eastern France. It is a right tributary of the River Rhône. Rising at Vioménil in the Vosges department, it joins the Rhône in Lyon....
, which flow together at Lyon, were spared and are conserved in the Hôtel de Ville, Lyon. A commission for a third equestrian monument, for Aix-en-Provence
Aix-en-Provence
Aix , or Aix-en-Provence to distinguish it from other cities built over hot springs, is a city-commune in southern France, some north of Marseille. It is in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, in the département of Bouches-du-Rhône, of which it is a subprefecture. The population of Aix is...
, came to nothing; when the Swedish architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger
Nicodemus Tessin the Younger
Count Nicodemus Tessin the Younger was a Swedish Baroque architect, city planner, and administrator.The son of Nicodemus Tessin the Elder and the father of Carl Gustaf Tessin, Tessin the Younger was the middle-most generation of the brief Tessin dynasty, which have had a lasting influence on...
visited Desjardins in 1687, the sculptor described to him the project he had had in mind, for the king on a rearing horse that would have been supported on its hind legs and tail.
His portrait bust of Pierre Mignard
Pierre Mignard
Pierre Mignard , called "Le Romain" to distinguish him from his brother Nicolas Mignard, was a French painter...
, premier peintre du Roi was a gift to the painter's daughter in the year following Mignard's death (Louvre). Grand 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...
marble bust of the marquis de Villacerf is also at the Louvre.
After his death, in Paris, his nephew Jacques Desjardins continued the atelier, providing the cultural agents of the Swedish crown with plaster models that were the basis in the 1740s, of an equestrian monument of Karl XII of Sweden (Patricia Wengraf, see link).