Jacques Sarazin

Jacques Sarazin or Sarrazin (1588/90 – 3 December 1660) was a French sculptor, who is less known for his paintings. His preparatory drawings in chalk have become more prominent in recent decades.

Sarrazin was born in Noyon, France, and went to Paris with his brother, where he trained in the of Nicolas Guillain. He went to Rome in 1610 and worked there under a Frenchman named Anguille. Starting thus, Sarrazin speedily obtained employment from Cardinal Aldobrandini at the Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati, where he won the friendship of Domenichino, with whom he afterwards worked on the high altar of Sant'Andrea della Valle. Sarazin also provided stucco bas-reliefs for San Lorenzo in Miranda, Rome.

In 1628 he was called to Paris, where he married a niece of Simon Vouet, whom he had met in Rome and with whom he collaborated closely in the 1630s, in hôtels particuliers and châteaux in the Ile-de-France, notably Maisons-Lafitte. Sarazin assembled a large atelier to provide interior and exterior sculptures for the Château de Maisons, for Claude de Bullion at the Château de Wideville and in other private commissions. His usual assistants were Gilles Guérin, Philippe de Buyster and Gérard van Opstal.

His success attracted the notice of Louis XIII's minister François Sublet de Noyers, a grand patron who entrusted to him his best-known work, the decoration of the great portal and the dome of the western facade of the interior court of the Louvre. Sarazin's famous Caryatides of the attic show the profound study of Michelangelo. He now executed many commissions from the Queen, and was an active promoter of the foundation of the Académie. The mausoleum for the heart of the prince de Condé in the Jesuit church of the Rue Saint Antoine was his last considerable work He died on 3 December 1660 while it was in progress, and the crucifix of the altar was completed by his pupil Pierre Le Gros the Elder.

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