(b Paris, Feb 19, 1714; d Paris, Oct 8, 1774).
French bronze-caster, collector and designer, son of Jacques Caffiéri. He succeeded his mother as Marchand Doreur Privilégié du Roi in 1743. Trained by his father, and an associate in his business from 1747, he continued the workshop and succeeded his father as Sculpteur et Ciseleur Ordinaire des Bâtiments du Roi. In 1754 he was admitted to the Académie de Saint-Luc, Paris, and on 16 January 1756 became a master bronze-caster and chaser. Under his direction the Caffiéri workshop continued to prosper by working for a prestigious clientele, and Philippe became wealthy. He was able to form a collection that included drawings and paintings by Rembrandt, David Teniers (ii), Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Chardin, François de Troy (ii), Louis Lagrenée, Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard and sculptures by Jacques-François-Joseph de Saly, Etienne-Maurice Falconet and Michel-Ange Challe.
Caffiéri rejected the Louis XV style in which his father had worked, favouring instead the richly decorative technique of black patination with gilding, which he used particularly for Neo-classical works. Both his own works and those carried out under the supervision of various architects show his freely interpreted versions of canons of the ‘Greek style’, which lack the often dogmatic stylistic vocabulary apparent in the work of some of his contemporaries. After ...