Training as a sculptor and early career He was born in
Valenciennes to François Marie Saly (1684–1776) and his wife Marie-Michelle Jardez (1690–1760). He began his training as a sculptor at nine years of age under local master Antoine Gilles in Valenciennes from 1726-1727. In spite of his parents' meager income, he was sent to Paris in 1732 to train in the studio of the leading sculptor at Paris,
Guillaume Coustou. At the same time he attended the school of the
Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, winning medals in 1734, 1737 and 1738. Winning that last medal, first place in the
Prix de Rome competition, gave him the right to study at the
French Academy at Rome, at the time the single mainstream route to a successful official career as a sculptor in Paris. He first received his stipend in 1740, and he arrived in Rome on 13 October 1740. He stayed there for eight years between 1740–1748, and lived at the Academy. The goal here was that through the study of
antiquities and the masters of the past, one would develop and refine one's artistic taste. More practically it meant making marble copies of Roman sculpture for the French king. in 2016
In Copenhagen: The King and his statue Saly showed the king the first sketch of the equestrian statue on 4 December 1754. The king approved a sketch for the whole monument in August 1755. Then Saly began a thorough study of horses from the king's stalls. This resulted in a little model, which he showed the king in November 1758. Casts of this model are found in both the collection of the Academy and the State Collection, now the
Danish National Gallery. Another cast has been exhibited at the
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in
Madrid, since 1777 when it was donated by Manuel Delitala to whom Saly had gifted it in Copenhagen, according to an inscription on the base. Saly also sculpted around this same time a life-size bust of the king, of which seven bronze casts were created, and a sculpture of Moltke, the head of the Asiatic Company, of which three bronze casts were created. Saly, after having set up an appropriate studio, carried out the work on the large model of the equestrian statue 1761-1763, and the plaster cast was presented to the Academy members on 3 February 1764. The king also saw this model. Preparations for the bronze casting took four more years, and Frenchman Pierre Gors did the casting on 2 March 1768. 1768 is officially considered the statue's completion date.
Johan Martin Preisler made a large engraving of the equestrian statue 1768-1769 in commemoration of its completion, and The Danish Asiatic Company cast two
medallions, one by Wulff and the other by Daniel Jensen Adzer. The base for the statue, however, was first deliverable in 1770, and the unveiling of the equestrian statue finally took place in the courtyard at Amalienborg Palace on 1 August 1771, five years after the King's death in 1766. It commands the site still to this day, and has been restored 1997-1998.
The end of his days in Copenhagen Saly held the post of Academy Director until 15 July 1771, two weeks before the equestrian statue's unveiling. He quit in protest over a new set of rules that gave increased influence to native-born Danes. This all occurred during the reformist reign of
Johann Friedrich Struensee, Saly was named Knight of the
Order of St Michel in Paris, but was not allowed to bear the title while living in Denmark. Saly, although no longer Director of the Academy, kept the apartment at Charlottenborg, from 1771 to at least 1774. During this time he tried to justify an additional sum from the Danish Asiatic Company for his extraordinary services on the monument to Frederik V, considering how much longer the statue took to complete than originally planned. He was not satisfied with the conclusion of his financial negotiations.
Return to Paris He left for Paris along with his father on 2 July 1774; most of the other family members had died by this point. One of his two sisters had married a French sea officer in Danish service. Back in Paris in 1775 he could now bear the title of Knight. He was named Senior Professor at the French Academy in Paris 29 July 1775. Already seriously ill when he left Denmark, he died on 4 May 1776. He was buried at
Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. ==Legacy==