MAUSOLEUM OF THE CARDINAL

DE RICHELIEU.

GIRARDON.

THE Cardinal is represented in a reclining posture on his death bed. He places one hand upon his heart, and directs the other towards one of the pious works he composed *. He is supported and consoled by Religion, while Science appears plunged in profound affliction at his feet.

This monument formerly decorated the church of the Sorbonne. The design was given by Le Brun, to Girardon, who executed it in white marble, and it is considered one of the best productions of that artist. The principal figure is about six feet high.

Francis Girardon was born at Troyes, in Champagne, in the year 1627. He quitted an indifferent master, who instructed him in the first principles of his art, to receive the lessons of Francis Auguir. His talents and rising reputation induced Louis the Fourteenth to send him into Italy, with a pension of 1000 crowns. Girardon availed himself of the liberality of the King, and stu

* Upon the other side of the tomb, two small Genii support the arms of the Cardinal, and the ensigns of his dignity.

died, with much assiduity, the finest antique statues.Upon his return to France, he was employed with the first artists of his time, to embellish the royal mansions. Le Brun dying in 1690, Girardon was nominated by the king, inspector general of the works of sculpture. In 1698, he lost his wife, to whose memory he erected a monument in the church St. Landry, which was executed after his design, by his disciples Lorrain and Nourisson. He died at Paris, in 1715, at the age of eighty-eight.

taste.

Girardon was one of the most laborious of the French sculptors. His works, which are in general highly finished, are distinguished for accuracy of design and good Besides the Tomb of the Cardinal de Richelieu, Paris still possesses the fine equestrian statue of Louis the Fourteenth, in the place Vendôme. It is about twenty feet high, and was wrought in bronze, at a single cast, by J. Balthazar Kneller, a very ingenious artist. At Versailles, there are the " Bath of Apollo," composed of ten figures; and a great number of other esteemed productions. Girardon furnished the models of the greater part of the statues that decorate the "Hôtel des Invalides."

Julien inv

LA FONTAINE.

I ondon Published by Verner Heed & Share Louitry, 1808.

Engravd by George Cooke