(1620 - 1694)
Pierre Puget was the son of a mason and was apprenticed to a ship-builder at the age of 16. By 1637, he had travelled to Italy and is known to have worked in Rome in 1640, serving as a pupil of the architect and sculptor Pietro da Cortona and working on the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. When he returned to Marseilles in 1643, Puget designed and carved marine decoration for ships, in addition to painting portraits. By the 1660s he received several commissions, including being asked to decorate the sterns of battleships of the Royal French Navy in 1669. He was Director of Decorations for the Navy, based at Toulon until 1679, while also a master-sculptor of the arsenal of the Port de Marseille. He died in 1694 at Fougette, near Marseilles.
