French bronze caster. Little is known about the life of Étienne Martincourt. Like many other bronze casters, he worked on the Right Bank of Paris, north of the Louvre, in a quarter that had been home to many bronze workers since the Middle Ages. After becoming a master in 1762, he was admitted to the Académie de Saint-Luc, a guild of decorative painters and sculptors. Membership in the guild of bronze casters and the Académie allowed Martincourt to design as well as to produce objects in gilt bronze. To do so without this dual membership would have brought stiff penalties from the guilds. //