to attribute to the greater part of the masterpieces of armour of this period a German origin.
M. Maindron goes on further to state that on examining the drawing of the figures, the arrangement of the compositions, and the disposal of the forms, he recognizes the method of a French artist, imbued with the traditions of Etienne de Laune. A resemblance can certainly be noted to Etienne's method in the rendering of the figure subjects upon the suit. A real charm of contour, a wonderful perspicuity of design, a general disposition towards a soft gracefulness, a tranquillity of gesture maintained even in the strongest situations, a striving for simplicity in the apparel and draperies, a desire to shake off the traditions of decoration taken from antique armament—these are the leading characteristics of the general theme of enrichment carried out on this suit. Yet, in the restraint of their outlines and in the almost timid tranquillity of their draperies, the figures in the history of Pompey seem almost to recall the methods of Frans de Vriendt, a Flemish artist of the third quarter of the XVIth century.
Modern critics have not hesitated to attribute the drawings and the composition of the Henri II suit to French artists, and M. Maindron does not quarrel with such an attribution. But as regards their execution he holds views a little at variance with those of the Baron de Cosson, and these appear so sound that we think they merit quotation. His opinion, which he admits is supported by no documentary evidence, is that German goldsmiths were responsible for this work. He cannot, of course, point exactly to the studio in which it was produced; but he is inclined to believe that it was executed at Petit-Nesle by those masters and journeymen goldsmiths who had been trained in the first place by Benvenuto Cellini. The finish of the workmanship and the minuteness of the detail remind him of those painstaking goldsmiths of Augsburg and of Nuremberg, men capable of intense concentration and spirit, and possessed of untiring patience, who could undertake works of immense length and bring them to completion by servile copying of models, extraordinary workmen certainly, but workmen who lacked that genuine creative energy which produces masterpieces irrespective of the difficulties presented by the particular medium in which they are working. These workmen were not super-craftsmen who, whatever they worked upon, moulded it to something absolutely original and like the work of no one else. But still in the production of one of these armours, each armourer, whatever his nationality, may in a sense be said to have contributed his particular qualities of imagination or of craftsmanship. But as M. Maindron says, we lack
