Pierre Franqueville was a Flemish sculptor, bronze caster and architect. He came from a noble family and was initially educated in natural sciences and the humanities. From 1562, he was trained as a draughtsman in Paris. In 1565, he went to Innsbruck and assisted the sculptor Alexander Colin, who worked there for Emperor Maximilian I. It was during this time that Franqueville first devoted himself to sculpture. With a letter of recommendation from Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, he travelled to Florence and began working in the workshop of Giambologna. Soon Franqueville took on his first independent commissions and began to design and model his own bronze figures in addition to sculptures in marble. He worked together with Giambologna in the 1570s, when they were commissioned by the Grimaldi family to decorate their palazzo and a chapel with sculptures. In the 1580s, Giambologna and Franqueville were both back in Florence. Franqueville produced portrait sculptures as well as allegorical and mythological works, many of which are still to be seen in churches and squares in Florence and other Tuscan cities. In 1604, Franqueville signed a will in Florence. In the same year, he was summoned to Paris by Marie de' Medici, Queen of France, to supervise the installation  of Giambologna's equestrian statue of King Henry IV on the Pont Neuf. Franqueville remained in Paris until his death in 1622 and continued to produce numerous other sculptures both in bronze, and, above all, in marble. Franqueville's portrait in the Uffizi, which Roland Schauls used as a model for this portrait, was painted by Frans Pourbus the Younger between 1609 and 1615, when Pourbus was in Paris. It has been in the collection of the Uffizi Gallery since the 17th century.