Cardinal Richelieu ordered in 1639 that a bronze statue should be erected in the middle of the Place Royale (later Place des Vosges), partly to help stop the location being used for dueling. The sculptor Pierre Biard used a cast of a horse intended for a statue of Henri II on which he placed an effigy of Louis XIII which by all accounts was proportionately too big for the horse. The bronze was melted down during the French revolution for the production of canons. In 1825 a new statue was erected, this a white marble work which Jean-Pierre Cortot had based on a model by Charles Dupaty executed in 1816
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