LERAMBERT, Louis II

French sculptor, part of a Parisian family of sculptors that included four generations of court artists. He in 1637 inherited the court position caring for the Antiquities and Marbles of the King, which had become hereditary in his family. He trained in the atelier of Simon Vouet, recently returned from Rome; there he met the sculptor Jacques Sarazin. He was close friends with Le Brun and Le Nôtre and worked in the studio of Sarazin.

Louis Lerambert received court commissions under King Louis XIII and his successor King Louis XIV of France in the three current sculptural genres, overmantels and decorative sculpture, portrait busts and tomb figures. Lerambert was received into the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1664.

He was among the first generation of sculptors providing sculpture for the château of Versailles. Among his works still at Versailles are a pair of marble sphinxes on the Parterre des Fleurs (1667-8), and six of the fountain basins supported with trios of playing putti, musician, child term figures for the Parterre d’Eau.

Antoine Coysevox, who married his niece, was his most prominent pupil.