Early in the sixteenth century Tours was the foremost art centre in France. Fouquet, the miniaturist, who died about 1480 A.D., was a native of the town. Jean Clouet (Janet), the portrait painter, also lived at Tours for some time. About 1520 there was an official studio in the town, presided over by Babou de la Bourdaisière with a full complement of sculptors, jewellers, engravers, and painters. The chief product of the school of sculpture at Tours was the long series of Royal Tombs at St. Denis, set up by the French kings of the sixteenth century. It is here that we can best estimate the capacity of the earliest native French sculptors. The similarity in the general design of the royal tombs at St. Denis is so marked that almost any example would be equally illustrative. In many respects the most representative is that of Henri II., upon which Germain Pilon worked for sixteen years. It is remarkable for the magnificent kneeling figures of the French King and Catherine of Medici. But, perhaps, from the historical standpoint, a more instructive example is the tomb of Louis XII., by Jean Juste. This was removed from Tours to St. Denis in 1531. It therefore represents the sculpture of a period midway between Michel Colombe and Germain Pilon. Jean Juste’s design is of a highly conventional character. As in the tomb of Germain Pilon, the central figures are the nude corpses of the King and Queen, rendered with a realistic fidelity which, at any rate, commands respect. Above the tomb Louis and Anne of Brittany figure again. This time they are pictured as in life and fully dressed. The keynote of Jean Juste’s work—its vigorous truth—is the same as that pervading Peter Vischer’s “King Arthur.” Like the work of the Nuremburg sculptor, it is devoid of real charm. It entirely lacks the emotional quality which attracts us in Quercia’s “Tomb of Ilaria del Caretto,” though five hundred years have passed since it was set up in the Cathedral at Lucca. Unlike the Italian sculptor, the French artist has failed to realize the peculiar power of marble and bronze as a medium of artistic expression. Even in the days of Jean Juste (about 1530), however, a change was beginning. It became an accomplished fact a few years later, when the French sculptors finally abandoned the effort to express the thoughts and emotions of the masses and accepted the lesser responsibility of catering for the needs of the few. The importance of French sculpture during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries arises entirely from its association with the dominating factor in the history of the time. The age in which France was the first power in Europe was an age of the _few_, not of the many. This fact entailed the loss of much that might have been stimulating. But, at any rate, it enabled the sculptor to appeal to those who were shaping the history of their time. Roughly, the political situation was as follows: