(baptized March 17, 1628, Troyes, Fr.
died Sept. 1, 1715, Paris) French sculptor.
He studied in Troyes and in Rome, and in 1657 he became a member of the French Royal Academy. In 1666 he received his most famous commission, the Apollo Tended by the Nymphs , for the Grotto of Thetis at The Bath of the Nymphs (1668–70) and The Rape of Persephone (1677–79). Although superficially a Baroque artist, Girardon's deep-seated Classical tendencies also emerge in the serene solemnity of his two principal works outside Versailles: an equestrian statue of Louis XIV (1683–92), destroyed in the French Revolution, and the tomb of Cardinal {{link=Richelieu, Armand-Jean du Plessis, cardinal and duke de">Richelieu in the church of the Sorbonne (1675–94). Though influenced by the work of Gian Lorenzo Bernini , his own style was more restrained.