Jaques Augustin-Catherine Pajou, “Mercure ou le Commerce”, 1780, Detail, Marble, 196 x 86 x 82 cm, Richelieu Wing of the Louvre Museum, Paris

The son of famous sculptor Augustin Pajou, Jacques-Augustin-Catherine Pajou was born in August of 1766 in Paris, France. He was a painter, both of portraits and historical scenes, and a sculptor in the Classical style, with the emphasis on form, simplicity, proportion and the clarity of formal structure. In 1784, Pajou became a student at Paris’ Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. 

Pajou’s devotion to Greco-Roman art, developed by his later studies in Rome at the Académie Française, was evident throughout his career. For his diploma work at the Royal Academy, he sculpted his “Pluton Tenat Cerbere Enchaint  (Pluto Enchanting Cerebus)”, which was approved by the Royal Academy in 1759 and submitted for admission in 1760. This sculpture is now on view in the Louvre.

Jacques Pajou received a directive from King Louis XVI for the creation of statues to honor great Frenchmen. This led to a succession of work in the 1770s which included busts of naturalist Georges Buffon: Madame Du Barry, the last mistress of King Louis XV; and mathematician and scientist René Descartes. During this time, Pajou also sculpted a statuette of clergyman Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, a master orator known for his sermons.

Jacques Pajou was appointed keeper of  King Louis XVI’s antiquities in 1777, and commissioned by the King to complete the Fontaine des Innocents in Paris, constructed by architect Pierre Lescot and sculptor Jean Goujon. Originally scheduled for destruction for sanitary reasons in 1787, it was saved, largely by the efforts of writer Quatremère de Quincy, and moved to Paris’ square Place Jaochim-du-Bellay. Pajou’s commission was to create a fourth façade for the fountain, in the same style as the other three, so that the fountain could be free standing.