This sculpture is located in the center of the Ceres Fountain in the Garden of the Versailles Palace.
This website (visit link) describes the fountain:
"Ceres Fountain
The square Ceres Fountain was laid out between 1672 and 1679 by Thomas Regnaudin, after a drawing by Charles Le Brun. Ceres, the Roman goddess of harvests and corn, is seated on a bed of corn stalks, accompanied by cornflowers and roses. Symbolising summer, the fountain forms a set with those of Bacchus, Flora and Saturn who represent the three other seasons."
Although the description informs us who the architects were, it does not indocate who the sculptor was.
Wikipedia (
visit link) adds that amongst her many attributes, Ceres:
"...was patron and protector of plebeian laws, rights and Tribunes. Her Aventine Temple served the plebeians as cult centre, legal archive, treasury and possibly law-court; its foundation was contemporaneous with the passage of the Lex Sacrata, which established the office and person of plebeian aediles and tribunes inviolate. As representatives of the Roman people, the tribunes held a high-profile immunity to arrest or threat; the lives and property of those who violated this law were forfeit to Ceres, whose judgment was expressed by her aediles.[15] When the Lex Hortensia of 287 BC extended plebeian law to the city itself, and all its citizens, the status of aediles was raised, and their scope was broadened. The official decrees of the Senate (senatus consulta) were placed in her Temple, under her guardianship. Livy puts the reason bluntly: the consuls could no longer seek advantage by arbitrarily tampering with the laws of Rome.[16] The Temple might also have offered asylum for those threatened with arbitrary arrest by patrician magistrates.[17] Goods, property and fines raised through prosecution of those who offended her laws were used to fund her temple, games and cult. Ceres was thus the patron goddess of Rome's written laws; the poet Vergil later calls her legifera Ceres (Law-bearing Ceres), a translation of Demeter's Greek epithet, thesmophoros.[18]
Ceres' role as protector of laws continued throughout the Republican era. Those who approved the murder of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BC justified his death as punishment for his offense against the Lex sacrata of the goddess Ceres: those who deplored this as murder appealed to Gracchus' sancrosanct status as tribune under Ceres' protection. In 70 BC, Cicero refers to this killing in connection with Ceres' laws and cults, during his prosecution of Verres, Roman governor of Sicily, for extortion."
As for the dwarf planet, Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us that Ceres:
"...is the largest object in the asteroid belt and the only dwarf planet in the inner Solar System.[19][20][21] It was discovered on 1 January 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi,[22] the first asteroid to be discovered.[23] It is named after Ceres, the Roman goddess of growing plants, the harvest, and motherly love.
With a diameter of about 950 km, Ceres is by far the largest and most-massive body in the asteroid belt, comprising about a third of the belt's mass.[24][25] Observations have revealed that it is spherical, unlike the irregular shapes of smaller asteroids with lower gravity.[13] The Cererian surface is probably a mixture of water ice and various hydrated minerals such as carbonates and clays.[14] Ceres appears to be differentiated into a rocky core and icy mantle,
and may harbour an ocean of liquid water under its surface.[26][27]
From the Earth, the apparent magnitude of Ceres ranges from 6.7 to 9.3, and hence even at its brightest it is still too dim to be seen with the naked eye except under extremely dark skies.[15] On 27 September 2007, NASA launched the Dawn space probe to explore Vesta (2011–2012) and Ceres (2015)."