It is said that in the statue of “Diana,” Goujon has portrayed the form of his patroness, Diana of Poitiers. And, indeed, the cold nude figure of the goddess of Chastity might well serve as a character-sketch of the passionless beauty who captivated the Dauphin Henry when he was half her age, ruled France for half a decade, and—a _poseuse_ to the last—died leaving large sums to found a home for repentant Magdalens of Paris. Almost every prominent French artist during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries was closely connected with one or other of the Court favourites. In the case of Goujon it was Diana of Poitiers. His career was immensely helped by the friendly aid of the mistress of Henry II. The part played by Diana of Poitiers in the career of Goujon can be paralleled from the history of almost every prominent French artist. Indeed, women played so great a part in French Court life that it would be strange if traces of their influence could not be readily found. French sculpture was in the first place an art of the Court. It was equally an art of the boudoir. For the market-place and the forum of the Hellene, the Frenchman substituted the bedroom. Here policies were discussed and shaped; here culture grew and the arts were moulded. A complete history of the relationship between French sculpture and French womanhood would certainly prove that the influence of the French Court beauties upon sculpture was at least as potent as that of the “blue stockings” led by Madame de Rambouillet upon literature. One thing, however, must be remembered. This influence differed entirely from that which Phryne exercised over the art of Praxiteles, La Bella Simonetta over Botticelli, or Emma Hamilton over Romney. It was not emotional, but material. The impulse behind it was not love, but a desire for power. Indeed, the same thing may be said of the influence of the Court beauties upon French life in general. When the Marquise de Montespan set herself to attract the attention of Louis XIV., she knew that he did not love her. “He knows that he owes it to himself to possess the most beautiful woman in France.” This holds true of most of the other women who exercised such power throughout this period of French history. Montesquieu has summed up the motives inspiring their efforts in a sentence in the “Persian Letters”: “Do you think, Ibben, that a woman consents to be the mistress of a minister for love of him? What an idea! It is in order that she may lay before him every morning five or six petitions.” The far-seeing Frenchman enables us to grasp what the blackguardly old father-in-law of the Marquise de Montespan meant when he heard of his daughter’s success, and cried, “Here’s fortune knocking at my door at last.”