Étienne Dantoine

funeral monument of Bishop Inguimbert sculpted by Étienne Dantoine, Hôtel-Dieu of Carpentras, 1774

Étienne Dantoine, also Etienne d'Antoine, (February 24, 1737 – March 23, 1809) was a French sculptor.

Born in Carpentras, Dantoine traveled to Marseille in 1747 and studied drawing and sculpting at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture while apprenticed to a potter. After a stay in Rome where he won a Prix de Rome, he returned to France and sculpted the funeral monument of Bishop Inguimbert (1774), which was placed in the choir of the chapel of the Hôtel-Dieu of Carpentras. He then received an annuity granted by the city of Montpellier to execute for them a fountain of The Three Graces (1776) in Place de la Comédie. He then moved to Paris where he married and returned to Marseille. Misfortunes soon hit the artist: his wife died, and the city of Montpellier stopped paying him his pension. In 1799 he was admitted to the Académie de Marseille. Dantoine executed exhibitions between 1800-1803 with a draft public monument representing Languedoc in the form of a connecting Engineering Ocean and the Mediterranean, an allusion to the channel and the two seas. He also presented a globe of the world upon which Justice, Wisdom and Prudence presided. In 1806 he sculpted the cenotaph of General Desaix, consisting of a marble urn on the top of a granite column, which now resides at Château Borély.

References

• Under the direction of Paul Masson, departmental Encyclopedia of Bouches-du-Rhône Departmental Archives of Bouches-du-Rhone, Marseille, 17 volumes published from 1913 to 1937, Volume IV, Volume 2, p. 159 and Volume VI p. 388-389.
• Étienne-Antoine Parrocel, Annals of the painting, Ch Albessard and Bérard, 1862 (read online), p. 412-416.
• André Laurent Alauzen and Noet Dictionary of painters and sculptors of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Marseille, Jeanne Laffitte, 2006 (1st ed. 1986), 473 p. (ISBN 9782862764412), p. 147.