XVI century art French art of the XVI century

Introduction

The spiritual life of France in the sixteenth century was also an incessant struggle between the old and the new, between the local and the alien, between the freedom of the spirit and the requirements of the law. The French Renaissance of the 16th century joined Italian with more spontaneity and more understanding than German, and, as Geimuller found out, especially in the 17th century and later continued to develop in the same direction, transforming and expanding Italian problems and sometimes returning to national objectives. The Romanesque blood flowing in the veins of the French, along with the Gallic and Germanic, made the creators of medieval Gothic, the most powerful northern national art capable, more fully perceive and develop the forms of the south on their own, than was possible for the Germans and the Dutch; French art was becoming more and more decisive, in any case much bolder than German or Dutch, now began to develop into real court art, the light of which was the sun of the mercies of the kings who loved the pomp. For the French kings of the 16th century, from among whom came such strong representatives as Francis I, Henry II and Henry IV, the promotion of the arts was not only a matter of state, but a deed close to their heart; In this regard, French science refers to the departments of the history of French art not by the changes of its directions, but by the names of the sovereigns, and, moreover, the changes in style do not always completely coincide with the time of their reign. During the XVI century, in the visual arts of France, even more noticeably than in its poetry, the movement, which we call, following scholars such as Laborde, Müntz, Palustr and Lemonnier, French Renaissance in the closest sense of the word, is fully developed.