Pierre Granier was a proficient but minor French sculptor, trained in the excellent atelier 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...

 who produced a generation of highly competent sculptors for the Bâtiments du Roi

Bâtiments du Roi

The Bâtiments du Roi was a division of Department of the household of the Kings of France in France under the Ancien Régime. It was responsible for building works at the King's residences in and around Paris.-History:...

. Granier served as a modest member of the extensive team that provided sculpture for the Château de Versailles and its gardens

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...

. Strict control over the subjects, scale, materials and to a great extent the design of sculpture for Versailles was exercised by the premier peintre du Roi, Charles Le Brun

Charles Le Brun

Charles Le Brun , a French painter and art theorist, became the all-powerful, peerless master of 17th-century French art.-Biography:-Early life and training:...

. According to Antoine-Nicolas Dézallier d'Argenville

Dezallier d'Argenville

The family of Dezallier d'Argenville produced two writers and connoisseurs in the course of the 18th century.Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d'Argenville , avocat to the Parlement de Paris and secretary to the king, was a connoisseur of gardening who laid out two for himself and his family, before writing...

, Le Brun provided a wax model for Granier's marble group Ino and Melicertes, and a Shepherdess was sculpted after a sketch given by Le Brun.

Born at Les Matelles

Les Matelles

Les Matelles is a commune in the Hérault department in southern France....

 near Montpellier, he was an official of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, where he was received in 1686 and to whom he had presented his bust of Louis XIV.

When the marble sculpture of a god discovered at Smyrna

Smyrna

Smyrna was an ancient city located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Thanks to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. The ancient city is located at two sites within modern İzmir, Turkey...

 was offered to Louis XIV

Louis XIV of France

Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...

, Granier was commissioned in 1686 to provide a missing right arm, raised and brandishing a thunderbolt: the result was the so-called Jupiter de Smyrne, now conserved at the Louvre Museum.

Further reading

• F. Souchal, French Sculptors of the 17th and 18th Centuries, The reign of Louis XIV, vol. II, Oxford, 1981.