Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/289

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In France. 259 sixteenth centuries. The fine marble statues of Peter d'Evreux Navarra and his wife Catherine d'Alencon, from the Carthusian church in Paris, date from the close of the fifteenth century. It was not until the beginning of the sixteenth, however, that any great artist arose capable of giving an essentially French character to the Renaissance sculpture of the country. The chief French sculptors of the early part of the sixteenth century were Michael Colombe (1431 — 1514), Jean Juste, and Jean Texier. The Louvre contains an extremely fine bas-relief of the Struggle between St. George and the Dragon, attributed to Co- lombe, remarkable for delicacy of execution and boldness of conception, produced about the time that Jean Juste was at work on his celebrated tomb of Louis XII. and his wife, Anne of Bretagne, in the church of St. Denis, and Jean Texier was engaged on the forty-one groups and bas-reliefs of the cathedral of Chartres, by which he is principally known. We now come to a trio of great artists who have been justly called the restorers of French sculpture. These were Jean Goujon, Jean Cousin, and Germain Pilon. Jean Goujon (1530 — 1572) was engaged from 1555 to 1562 in the decoration of the Louvre, portions of which still remain as specimens of his easy, graceful style. He adopted the tall slim proportions of the human frame, so much favoured by Cellini in sculpture and Primaticcio in painting. The Louvre contains a few choice works of Jean Goujon. The largest and most famous is the marble group of Diana, in which the goddess of hunting reclines on a pedestal adorned with bas-reliefs representing marine ani- mals, with one arm round the neck of a stag. Another s 2