Michel Anguier

French sculptor

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History

Michel Anguier (born c. 1613, Eu, France—died July 11, 1686, Paris) was a French sculptor who produced decorations for tombs, churches, palaces, and public monuments.

Anguier began working as a sculptor in Eu, France, and later traveled to Paris and Rome. In Rome he was believed to have studied in the workshop of the Baroque sculptor Alessandro Algardi until 1651. From 1655 to 1657 Anguier was employed in the decoration of Anne of Austria’s apartments in the Louvre, modeled on Pietro da Cortona’s decorations in the Pitti Palace in Florence. He later worked at Vaux-le-Vicomte—the château of Louis XIV’s minister Nicolas Fouquet, near Melun—with Charles Le Brun and André Le Nôtre. Anguier’s most important commission, completed in 1667, was the decoration of the Church of Val-de-Grâce in Paris, to which he contributed reliefs and a marble nativity group for the high altar (1665), now in the Church of Saint-Roch in Paris. His reliefs for the triumphal arch of the Porte Saint-Denis, executed in a severely classical style, were completed in 1674.

Anguier’s brother François was also a noted sculptor, and between 1648 and 1652 the two collaborated on a tomb for Henri II, duc de Montmorency, at Moulins.