This bronze statue is called “David remerciant Dieu d’avoir frappé Goliath” (“David thanks God for being able to strike Goliath”), and also known as “David vainqueur de Goliath” (“David defeats Goliath”), and it refers to the Biblical story of young hero who managed to defeat the giant who was threatening his village.

The statue was created by the 19th Century French sculptor Jean-Etienne Chaponnière. According to Wikipedia:

John-Étienne Chaponnière (July 11, 1801 – June 19, 1835), also known as Jean-Étienne Chaponnière (sic), was a Swiss sculptor active in Italy and France.

Chaponnière was born in Geneva, where he studied at the school of the Société des Arts under Joseph Collart and Charles Wielandy. He moved to Paris in 1822, where he studied first at the École Gratuite de Dessin and then under sculptor James Pradier, who advised him to abandon painting for sculpture. After a period in Naples from 1827-1829, he moved to Florence where he lived with Lorenzo Bartolini, and then onwards to Rome. In 1827 he created his first major piece, la Jeune captive pleurant sur le tombeau de Byron, which he sold to the Musée Rath in Geneva. It was sufficiently well-received that he was made an honorary member of the Société des Arts. His subsequent works, including the Son of William Tell, an allegorical bas-relief for the bust of Marc-Auguste Pictet, and a Hunting and Fishing Group (later renamed Daphnis and Chloe), were also successful in Geneva in 1829. After a brief time in Switzerland, he returned to Paris, where his Daphnis and Chloe proved successful enough in 1831 that Adolphe Thiers commissioned a bas-relief of the taking of Alexandria for the Arc de Triomphe (which was subsequently shown in the Salon of 1834). Chaponnière retitled his Jeune captive figure as Une captive de Missolonghi, under which title it was exhibited in the Salon of 1833. His 1834 David and Goliath was also a success, and was in 1854 cast in bronze for Geneva’s promenade des Bastions. In rapidly declining health, Chaponnière died in 1835 at Monnetier-Mornex (Haute-Savoie), near Geneva.