Foyatier was the child of a family of modest means (his father was a
weaver and later a farmer at Bezin, a hamlet near
Bussières, Loire). He started by working on religious figures, while taking a design course at
Lyon. In 1817, he entered the
École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts ("National Higher School for Arts and Crafts") in Paris. In 1819 he exhibited his first pieces and, aged 26, was awarded a scholarship for the
French Academy in Rome at the
Villa Médicis.
At the Villa Médicis he created the
mould for his piece
Spartacus, which is very well known. A Royal Command of 1828 for a production in marble made him famous.
After a brilliant career as a sculptor and painter, he died on 19 November 1863 and is buried in the Petit-
Clamart cemetery in a suburb of Paris.
Some of Foyatier's works have been lost; several were melted down during the
Second World War.
Spartacus[2] (1830), Larger-than-life statue, marble, Paris, Musée du Louvre: Originally (1831) erected in an ensemble of eight statues for l'allée des grands hommes ("Avenue of Great Men") in the
Jardin des Tuileries, the statue represents Spartacus breaking his chains, and was moved to the Louvre in 1877.
Fanny Lewald intimated that Foyatier's Spartacus was modeled after the pianist and composer Franz Liszt. (Zwölf Bilder nach den Leben, p. 337).
Cincinnatus (1832–1834), statue, marble, Paris, erected in the Jardin des Tuileries in 1836 near a large round pond, this statue also was one of the des grands hommes series.
La Sieste[3] (1848), statue, marble, Paris, Musée du Louvre
Les derniers jours d'Herculaneum ("The last days of
Herculaneum" (?)), 2.65 m (8 ft 8 in) bronze in the Jardin des Olives of the abbot's palace at
Remiremont. Destroyed in 1942.