French sculptor who spent much of his life in Rome. He was the son of a sculptor, who took him to Rome in 1832. Ambitious, but unstable, he spent many years wandering and did not return to Paris until 1843, when he made his debut in the Salon. In 1847 he married one of George Sand's daughters and was a friend of figures like Delacroix and Chopin. He is particularly noted for the creation of sensual subjects in marble, such as the Woman Bitten by a Snake, exhibited in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. This statue was based on a body cast of Madame Sabatier, and provoked one of the liveliest art scandals of the nineteenth century. //