PUGET, Pierre (1622-1694), born at Marseilles on 31st October 1622, painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer, is a rare instance of precocious genius and mature power. At the age of fourteen he carved the ornaments of the galleys built in the port of his native city, and at sixteen the decoration and construction of a ship were entrusted to him. Soon after he went to Italy on foot, and was well received at Rome by Pietro di Cortona, who employed him on the ceilings of the Barberini palace and on those of the Pitti at Florence. In 1643 he returned to Marseilles, where he painted portraits and carved the colossal figure-heads of men-of-war. After a second journey to Italy he painted also a great number of pictures for Aix, Toulon, Cuers, and La Ciotat, and sculptured a large marble group of the Virgin and Child for the church of Lorgues. A serious illness in 1665 brought Puget a prohibition from the doctors which caused him wholly to put aside the brush. He now sculptured the caryatides of the town-hall of Toulon (Louvre), went to Normandy, where he executed a statue of Hercules and a group of Janus and Cybele for the marquis of Vaudreuil, and visiting Paris made the acquaintance of Le Pautre and Fouquet, who determined to employ him at Vaux and sent him to Italy to choose marbles for his work. The fall of Fouquet found Puget at Genoa, where he remained employed by the nobles of the town. There he executed for Sublet des Noyers his French Hercules (Louvre), the statues of St Sebastian and of Alexandre 'Sauli in the church of Carignano, and much other work. The Doria family gave him a church to build; the senate proposed that he should paint their council-chamber. But Colbert bade Puget return to France, and in 1669 he again took up his old work in the dockyards of ...