(b Aix-en-Provence, bapt 16 April 1637; d Paris, 28 April 1714). French sculptor. He studied sculpture first in Aix, then in Paris at the Acad?mie Royale from 1661. He studied at the Acad?mie de France in Rome from 1663 to 1673, and while there he executed two copies of Classical statues for the ch?teau of Versailles; of these, the marble Venus de' Medici (1666-73; see Souchal, p. 104) was housed in the Appartement des Bains. He also completed a marble bust of Louis XIV (untraced). On his return to Paris he contributed a number of medals to the Histoire m?tallique, the medallic record of the principal events of the reign of Louis XIV. In 1680 he married the still-life painter Genevi?ve Boullogne (1645-1709), sister of the painters Bon Boullogne and Louis Boullogne (ii). From 1680 to 1688 he produced marble sculpture for the palace and gardens at Versailles, including a Callipygian Venus after the Antique and two terms, one of Jupiter (based on a design by Pierre Mignard) and one of Juno (all in situ). He became a member of the Acad?mie Royale in 1689, on presentation of an oval marble medallion depicting St James the Less (Paris, Louvre). He visited Aix and Marseille on several occasions. Among works planned on these visits was a silvered wood statue of the Virgin and Child for the church of the Grands Carmes at Aix (h. 1.4 m, 1704; Aix-en-Provence, Cathedral of St Sauveur). In 1688 he put forward a proposal for an equestrian statue of Louis XVI in Marseilles, which came to nothing. With so many exceptional talents then in royal service, Cl?rion was never in the forefront; his classicism remained conventional, cold and unimaginative.
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