Claude Michel Clodion

1738 Nancy
1814 Paris


Claude Michel Clodion was born on December 20, 1738 in Nancy and is considered a leading artist of French small sculpture in the rococo style. From 1755 to 1762, he learned sculpture skills from Lambert Sigisbert Adams and Jean Baptiste Pigalles. During his subsequent residence in Rome until 1771, Clodion celebrated his first artistic successes. Following the style of his role models of antiquity, Claude Michel Clodion created numerous vases and decorative works in several Parisian palaces, as well as his clay and marble works of art.
In his figure designs for the porcelain manufactory Sèvre, the artist uniquely combined antique forms and themes with the inexhaustible richness of ideas and joie de vivre of the rococo era. Among his few large-scale works, the marble statue of Montesquieu (1779) that was commissioned by the king is especially worth noting.
Claude Michel Clodion died on March 28, 1814 in Paris.