FALCONET, ETIENNE MAURICE (I 716—I 791), French sculptor, was born at Vevey, and died in Paris on Jan. 4, 1791. He was at first apprenticed to a carpenter, but some of his clay figures attracted the notice of the sculptor Lemoine, who made him his pupil. His statue of Milo of Crotona secured his ad mission to the Academy of Fine Arts in 1754. At St. Petersburg (Leningrad) he executed a colossal statue of Peter the Great in bronze (1766). In 1788 he became director of the French academy of painting. Falconer's "Nymphe descendant au bain" is in the Louvre.
His writings were collected under the title of Oeuvres litteraires (6 vols., Lausanne, 1781-82 ; 3 vols., Paris, 1787) .