DE PAULIS

Biografia

? Alexis-Joseph Depaulis
(b Paris, 30 Aug 1792; d Paris, 15 Sept 1867). French medallist. He entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in 1813 and trained there under Bertrand Andrieu, for medal making, and Pierre Cartellier, for sculpture. Early in his career he contributed to the medallic history of Napoleon I’s reign (Conquest of Illyria; French Academy at Rome; Orphanage of the Legion of Honour) and to James Mudie’s National Medals (George III; Return of Napoleon; British Army in the Netherlands; Charge of the British at Waterloo). He was responsible for a number of the portraits in the Galerie métallique des grands hommes français, including those of Antoine Arnaud (1817), Pierre Jolyot de Crébillon, Jacques Amyot (1819), Abbé Suger and Bayard (1822), also for Martin Luther (1821), among others, in the Series numismatica universalis virorum illustrium by Amédée Pierre Durand (1789–1873). Depaulis’s later work became increasingly ambitious in scale and in relief. His monumental commemorative medals for the Bombardment of the Fort of St Jean d’Ulloa (1838), the Battle of Isly (1844) and the Capture of Sebastopol (1855) were much admired by contemporaries. In these medals, as in his later piece celebrating the Suez Canal (1864), he re-established the technical supremacy enjoyed by French engravers at the Paris Mint.
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