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Born at Liege, Varin worked at Rochefort in 1615 and at Liege and Sedan ca. 1623. He arrived in Paris in 1625 and succeeded Rene Olivier at the mint in 1629 (marrying his widow in 1630). By 1646 he was engraver general of the mint of France and in 1647 he became Controleur General des Poincons et Effigies. Varin established the style of the seventeenth-century French medal and reorganized the French mint. He was also a noted portrait sculptor and was received into the Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1665. See Forrer 6, pp. 361-72; Jean de Foville in Michel 5, pp. 769-72; Thieme-Becker 35, p. 161; Jacquiot, pp. 79-93; Mazerolle, Varin; V. Tourneur, ""Les origines de Jean Varin,"" Revue belge de Numismatique 84 (1932), pp. 65-76. --- from The Molinari Collection, Andrea S. Norris and Ingrid Weber, Published by Bowdoin College, 1976