Editing Pierre Puget (section)

===Marseille and Toulon===
After three years with da Cortona in Rome, he returned to Marseille, bringing with him the decorative tastes of the Italian Baroque. In [[Livorno]], he had made drawings of the highly-ornamented baroque decoration of Tuscan galleys and warships, as well as designs of imaginary ships painted by Cortona for his ceilings. He showed these to [[Jean Armand de Maillé-Brézé]], Grand Admiral of the French fleet, and was given a commission to design a carved medallion for the stern of a new French warship, named for the Queen, [[Anne of Austria]].{{Sfn|Lagrange|1868|pages=16-17}}

The death of the Grand Admiral in 1646 ended his first work in naval decoration. He began painting, mostly religious works, in the style of [[Annibale Carracci]] and [[Rubens]]. He also received a commission in 1649 to make several public fountains for new squares in [[Toulon]]. In 1652 he was commissioned to make baptismal fonts for the Marseille cathedral. From 1662 to 1665, he made a series of paintings for the Cathedral of Marseille.{{Sfn|Lagrange|1868|pages=24-25}}

He was recognized as a painter but still poorly paid; In 1653, he was commissioned by the Brotherhood of Corpus Domini to make two large paintings, ''The Baptism of Clovis'' and ''the Baptism of Constantine'' (now in the Marseille Museum of Art), for a total of one hundred forty ''livres'', a very small amount for the time and amount of the work. He completed another religious painting, ''Salvator Mundi'', in December 1655.  Altogether he is recorded as having painted fifty-six paintings, of which nineteen were documented in 1868 as still existing. A serious illness in 1665 and advice of doctors caused him to abandon painting entirely.{{Sfn|Lagrange|1868|pages=24-30}}

In 1650, he was living in Toulon, and was married there. He turned his attention entirely to sculpture. In 1655, he received his first important commission for the sculptural decoration of the entrance of the [[Hôtel de Ville, Toulon|Hôtel de Ville]] in Toulon; he produced a porch supported by muscular [[Atlas (architecture)|atlantes]], still in existence on a new municipal building facing the port. He used as his models two of the muscular workers who unloaded ships along the quay in front of the building. Their faces and postures in the sculpture vividly expressed their struggle with the weight on their shoulders.{{Sfn|Lagrange|1868|pages=50}} The work was finished in 1657. He was paid fifteen hundred ''livres'', to which the city authorities, pleased with the work, added a supplement of two hundred ''livres''.  His work was widely praised, and terra-cotta copies were made and circulated.  Puget was converted from a modestly-talented painter to a celebrated sculptor.{{Sfn|Lagrange|1868|pages=24-30}}{{Sfn|Geese|2015|p=303}}

<gallery mode="packed" heights="200">
File:Pierre puget - Sainte Cécile.jpg|''Saint Cecile'' (1651), (Museum of Fine Arts, Marseille)
File:Longchamp046 Puget Baptême Constantin.jpg|''Baptism of Constantine'' (1653), (Commissioned for Marseille Cathedreal, now in Museum of Fine Arts, Marseille) 
File:Toulon caryatides p1040272.jpg|Atlantes on the portal of the [[Hôtel de Ville, Toulon|Hôtel de Ville de Toulon]] (1657)
Image:Toulon caryatides p1040273.jpg|Detail of an [[atlas (architecture)|atlas]] on the [[Hôtel de Ville, Toulon|Hôtel de Ville de Toulon]] (1657)
</gallery>