PONCE, Jacquiot

Jacqiot (Jacquiau; Jacquieu; Jacquin; Jacquio) Ponce (Ponsio; Ponso; Ponzio), French sculptor, stuccoist and painter. He was incorrectly identified by Vasari as Paolo Ponzio Trebatti, a Tuscan sculptor. In documents he identified himself as a French sculptor: ‘Io Ponsio Francese’. He probably trained in Italy, perhaps in the circle of Francesco Primaticcio, and is named as a member of the Accademia di S Luca in Rome in 1527 and 1535. He probably returned to France in Primaticcio’s retinue, collaborating with him at Fontainebleau, and in 1552 on the grotto at the château of Meudon (destroyed), near Paris, for the Duchesse d’Etampes.

Returning to Rome around 1553, he was paid between 1553 and 1556 for stuccowork and frescoes in apartments at the Palazzo Sacchetti (formerly Palazzo Ricci). These decorations reflect the style of the Fontainebleau school and include grotesques and landscape frescoes in the apartments of Giacomo Marmitta, secretary to Cardinal Giovanni Ricci, and those in the Camera d’Audienza and Salotto Rosso. Stuccos in the Sala degli Stucchi were probably executed in collaboration with other artists.

Tomb of Blondel de Rocquencourt

Andr� Blondel, controller general of finances, was a prot�g� of Diane de Poitiers. Of the mausoleum erected after 1558 by his wife in the convent of the Filles-Repenties in Paris, all that survives is this relief. Instead of death and decay, this Mannerist variant of the traditional gisant presents an image of sleep and bodily repose.

La Tireuse d'épine (The Thorn Remover)

Tomb of Blondel de Rocquencourt