XVI century art French sculpture of the XVI century

1. The development of French sculpture

The fine arts of France began to develop in the XVI century in closer connection with the creation of architecture than ever before. Already this is due to their substantially decorative nature. In the field of sculpture, even portrait art, besides the medal painting, developed primarily as the art of tombstones and, therefore, in closest connection with the architecture of monuments. In addition, it is necessary to deal mainly with embossed decorations of socles, friezes, margins of walls and gables or other parts of the building.

We have already traced the French sculpture, ending with Michel Colomb, who probably lived through the whole reign of Francis I and captured a good part of the 16th century. Next to his direction, the essence of which we recognized as national-French, the Italian Renaissance now flourished in France in the hands of Italian sculptors who had moved here, seen at work on the decoration of the main creation of Colomb. The most important Italian sculptor, who arrived in France in the retinue of Charles VIII, was the fashionist Guido Madzoni, who returned to Italy in 1516. His best work on French soil was the tombstone of Charles VIII in Saint-Denis, who in 1793 fell victim to revolutionary storms. Under Louis XII, three brothers Giusty, Antonio (1479-1519), Giovanni (1485-1549) and Andrea (born in 1487) Giusti arrived from Florence, of which only two elders with their sons Giusto the Younger and Giovanni the Younger became important . By this, Giusty, who settled in Tours and was called “Just” by the French, dedicated the thorough work of Monteglon and Milanese. Antonio, apparently, designed the project not only for an elegant Renaissance sarcophagus, Bishop Thomas James at the Cathedral in Dole (1505–1507), unfortunately deprived of his powerful figure, but also for the famous tombstone of Louis XII and his wife in Saint Denis (1516–1532). Execution, as there, fell mainly to his brother Giovanni. The tombstone of Louis XII is typical of rich, free-standing tombs of this kind with a canopy. The marble canopy, under which the sarcophagus stands, opens to the outside, on the narrow sides with two, and on the long four arches, furnished with pilasters of imitative Corinthian style, richly decorated with arabesques. On the sarcophagus lie the dead, presented in the form of naked corpses with a striking almost veracity, and on the flat roof of the building they are full of hot life, in royal robes, praying on their knees. In the twelve holes of the arches sit the apostles. The reliefs of the cap depict the acts of the king in a picturesquely free style. All the architectural parts and reliefs of the basement belong, apparently, to Antonio, the recumbent and kneeling images of the king and his wife Giovanni, and the much weaker figures of the apostles, Giusto Giusti. As far as both Giovanni Justi later approached the local style of the Tours School, i.e., the style of the Colomb workshop, their tombs of the sovereign in the Uaron Chapel show. The boundaries between these two styles are undoubtedly blurred. The work of Jean Just still Müntz and Lübke considered the graceful tomb of the children of Charles VIII in Saint-Gatia in Tours (1506). Now it is known that gentle, pure figures and angels belong to Guilom Reynaud, nephew and favorite student of Colomb, and the ornamental parts of the sarcophagus and its pedestal - Girolamo da Fiesole.

Even under Francis I, such significant Italian sculptors as Benvenuto Cellini and Francesco Rustić continued to arrive in France; but it was under Francis I that French sculpture still retained a significant portion of its former national character. The most powerful piece of French gravestone sculpture of this time was the majestic tomb of the two cardinals Amboise in the Cathedral of Rouen (1518-1525). Here the Gothic and the Antique are mixed everywhere. Medium relief depicts St. George, killing the dragon. Ahead of both cardinal, life-size, pray, kneeling with folded hands. The front figure of Georges d'Amboise is one of the most expressive portrait figures of French plastic. The master of this monument is Roulan le Roux, although it can hardly be considered the only master.

2. Germain Pilon

The best works of the national-French sculpture under Francis I also include decorative sculptural works of secular buildings, such as the courtyard of the Hotel d'Ecoville, the arched gallery with a large clock, the left wing of the Burgteruld hotel in Rouen, and religious sculptures on products of small church architecture, such as the railing of the choir the Cathedral of Chartres (1511–1529), the Cloister of Saint Martin on Tours, on the organ railings of Saint Maclu in Rouen, and on the Lettner of the Cathedral in Rodez. A special position is occupied by the Troyes School, where, after the great fire of 1534, in the works of Francois Gentil, Jacques Julio and Domenico Fiorentino, Old French, Italian and German influences intersect. How vividly and directly felt, for example, “Meeting of sv. Zhen "(Mary and Elizabeth) in the church of sv. John! How many antique, almost pagan figures decorated the Gothic choral benches of the cathedral in Osh (1520–1529)! What a clean and rich life of the early Renaissance still breathe the Gothic composition of the famous wooden doors of the southern portal of the Beauvais Cathedral (about 1535), whose six main fields are full of life reliefs from the lives of the apostles Peter and Paul! What a force full of portrait busts of Francis I in the Louvre, especially sharply realistic bronze bust of him and his slyly and gently smiling glazed terracotta bust! All this is based on indigenous French art.

In the reign of Henry II, the classical high renaissance mastered French sculpture. Already a monument to Francis I in Saint-Denis (1548–1551), the corps of which belongs to the number of masterpieces of Delorme’s works, characterizes the new trend. The heads of the plastic decorations of the monument are Pierre Bontan and Germain Pilon, to whom we will return. Bontan achieves the heights of his independent talent, striving for more generalized beauty in the basement reliefs representing the battles of Francis I, while the striking figures of the dead king and queen under the arch and their full lives, kneeling figures and images of their children at the top of the monument, speak about the participation of outsiders . The marble urn Bontana with the heart of Francis I standing in the church is also famous. The urn and its socle are covered with cartouches of the cleanest, still young and fresh ribbon style, which is exactly here for France in its finished form. Bontan is directly followed by Jean Goujon (died between 1564–1568), the famous master, we already know as an architect-artist. Monteglone comprehensively rated it. The French consider him, as a sculptor, to be one of the greatest of the greats, and Geymuller calls him simply the greatest French artist. And indeed, each of his works shows that he is a skillful technician and decorator. However, his elongated, over-refined figures, his beautiful, but general lines, his fine, subtlely small folds of clothes put him in front of the mannerist’s eyes, although we also know how to appreciate the purely French virtues - an expression of delicate, spiritualized charm, especially of his female heads and undoubted grace, which he can give even sharp movements. We first met him in 1540 in Rouen, where he performed some works for Saint Macle and especially for the cathedral. His creation here is the proud monument of Louis de Breze (1535–1540), whose sculptures seem even more truthful than his later works. The half-naked dead, lying supine in the lower niche, is already depicted with stunning, but still moderate naturalness. Gonz says that this monument belongs to eight to ten of the most perfect works of French sculpture. The later direction of Goujon is clearer already in two pairs of caryatids on both sides of the upper niche, where the deceased is in the form of a knight in full arms and with a sword in his right hand.

Of the works of Goujon on the Lettner of the Church of Saint Germain d'Auxeroy in Paris (1541–1544), only the Position in the Coffin and the Evangelists were saved by the Louvre. But it is they who show that our master in Paris immediately fell under the banner of the school of Fontainebleau. After 1544, he worked first with Lesko at the Carnavale Hotel, where stylish and lively marble reliefs with lions above the entrance door indicate his participation; in 1547, the famous altar of the palace chapel in Ecuane, now exhibited in Chantilly, followed, with reliefs telling about the success of the style on the part of more refined technique; between 1547 and 1549 he performed his ingenious bas-reliefs on the Fontaine des Innocents., slender sources standing between pilasters of nymphs, despite his mannerism inspired by unspeakable charm, and the reliefs of the basement, now located in the Louvre, which poetically recreates the life of fabulous sea dwellers. After 1548, Goujon took an active part in the decoration of the castle of Ané, from which the famous marble Diana of the Louvre also comes. The slender, virgin goddess sits on the ground beside a lying deer, around whose neck her right arm is wound. The bow she holds in her left hand extended to the side. Of the two dogs accompanying her, Goujon owns one, lying at the feet of the goddess. Pure, strict elegance should be highly appreciated in it, but one can not but blame the calculated and scattered composition. After 1550, the master was mainly engaged in the plastic work of the Louvre building. Of course, he executed only a small part of all the sculptures with his own hands, but still they belong to the most beautiful creatures of decorative sculpture in France. Caryatids are magnificent in the Caryatids Hall. Their hands no longer had to serve as a support, like the hands of his caryatids on the monument to Breze; the beautiful maidens carry their light burden only on their heads, like the ancient Erechtheion caryatids in Athens; Of course, it is not quite clear why it should have been portrayed with clipped hands, as Goujon did. The master's decorative sense is always stronger than his perception of nature.

The third in this union is the already mentioned Germain Pilon (1535–1590), whose language of forms is internally and externally more animated, but not distinguished by such integrity as that of Goujon. Already in 1558 he participated in the construction of the tombstone of Francis I, in the vault of which he owns eight gently modeled cupids with lowered torches. For the tombstone of Henry II in the Church of Celestines, he performed three female figures holding a gilded urn with a king's heart on their heads. Now they belong to the treasures of the Louvre under the name of the "Three Graces" of Pilon, but they, adjacent to the school of Fontainebleau, do not show the features of Pilon to the same extent as the works of Goujon. As if, in accordance with them, the figures of the Virtues made of wood in the Louvre are unfortunately unfurnished, with no gilding or hands, which were originally borne to St. Cancer. Genevieve. The main works of Pilon are his works, which arose under the guidance of Primaticcio, on the tombstone of Henry II and his wife Catherine in Saint-Denis (1564–1570). He owns two strikingly truthful marble images of the lying dead, two endowed with a strong life and natural in their animation kneeling bronze figures of the upper tier, and by Dimier also the bronze statues of virtues standing in the corners, in which the Primaticcio school's manner is most clearly reflected. Other works of Pilon, such as his painted terracotta group with suffering Maria and the kneeling bronze statue of Chancellor de Birague, which Gonz calls the most beautiful portrait statue of the French Renaissance, are in the Louvre.

Fig. 89. "Three Graces" Pilon

Between modern French provincial schools, we are attracted primarily by the Lorraine school, whose chief master Lizier Ricier (c. 1500–1567) still has a part of Gallofranc severity and strength of feeling among his contemporary luster. Images of suffering and death were his elements. His altar (1523) in Gattonshatel near Saint Miguel, with the Carrying of the Cross, Crucifixion and the Position in the Coffin, reveals realism of the XV century, imbued with Renaissance motifs. His polychrome position in the tomb in the church of sv. Stephen in Saint Migiel competes in strength with the position of the Tomb in Solem, but is filled with a more hectic life than the first. The figure of death on the monument to Rene Shalonsky in the church of St. Petra in Bar-le-Duc makes a terrible impression. In Paris, the pupil of Pilon Barthélemy Prieur (c. 1545–1611) ends the 16th century. Lying images from the tombstone of the constable Montmorency in the Louvre represent the deceased not nude and dead, and by medieval custom still asleep with hands raised in prayer, but at the same time combine modern freedom of form with the old love of truth of life. The sitting bronze dogs of the Louvre from its monumental fountain in Fontainebleau belong to the most vital images of animals of the entire 16th century. A contemporary of Prieur, the elder Pierre Biard (1559–1609), is even more decisively guided along an increasingly realistic course of time. His famous, richly decorated Lettner stairs at Saint-Etienne-du-mon in Paris give him the idea of ​​a true French Renaissance ornamental artist. His Louvre bronze Glory from the tombstone of Margherita de Foix, attributed by some researchers to other masters, fast in movements with a winged goddess, with a body strongly and truthfully transmitted in naked parts, trumpeting fanfare, it seems, however, to some old friends of art to work a decline, we, on the contrary, we welcome it as a premonition of a better, more natural art.

The clearest manifestations of a return to nature at the height of the 16th century are found in France by glazed faience works by Bernard de Palissy (circa 1510–1589), one of the strongest French artists of his time. He discovered with his own experience how to glaze earthenware vessels like earthenware, he immediately began to produce his extremely talentedly fashioned dishes and vases, which he covered with all sorts of sculpted animals, snakes, fish, shells and insects. His bowl with shells in the Louvre is generally one of the most stylish of its kind. Subsequently, decorating his vessels with framed pictures of a baroque character, he approached the generally accepted style of his time.