258 Sculpture in the Renaissance Period. After Michelangelo's death, in 1564, not a single sculp- tor arose in Italy who attained to an individual style. His immediate successors were little more than imitators of his manner ; and among his later followers, Giovanni da Bologna, known as John of Bologna, (1524 — 1608), and Stefano Maderno (1571 — 1636), are the only sculptors whose works entitle them to special notice. John of Bologna's masterpiece is the bronze Mercury floating on the Wind, in the Uffizi Gallery, a miracle of airy lightness. The messenger of the gods rests one foot on the breath of a bronze zephyr, and is about to launch himself into the air. A fine bronze group of the Rape of the Sabines, in the Palazzo Vecchio, Venice, is scarcely less celebrated : his fountain at Bologna is con- sidered one of his happiest compositions. Stefano Maderno' s chief work is the statue of St. Cecilia in the convent of that saint in Rome, which is remarkable for a simplicity and dignity wanting to his other productions. Both these artists, and still more their followers and imitators, lost sight of the true aims of sculpture and of the distinction which exists between the provinces of painting and statuary. It will be remembered that we had to notice this error in speaking of the decline of Greek art ; and the history of Italian sculpture, from the time of Michelangelo to that of Canova, is a history of a similar decadence of the Renaissance style. 2. Sculpture of the Renaissance Period in France and the rest of Europe. The development of the French Renaissance style of sculpture may be well studied in the Louvre, which con- tains a series of monuments belonging to the fifteenth and
