Account of a Tour in Normandy, Volume 1Turner, Dawson
History
Account of a Tour in Normandy, Volume 1
Turner, Dawson
Architecture -- France -- Normandy; Normandy (France) -- Antiquities; Normandy (France) -- Description and travel
A second female figure on the tomb, with a child in her arms, has been
supposed intended to represent the nurse of the duke; as if the design
of the sculptor had been to read a lesson to mortality, by exhibiting
the warrior in the helplessness of infancy, in the vigor of manhood, and
as a breathless corpse. Some persons, however, consider it as a
personification of Charity; others suppose that it represents the Virgin
Mary. In the midst was originally an erect statue of De Brezé, decorated
with the various symbols of his dignities; but this sinned beyond the
hope of redemption against the doctrines of liberty and equality, and it
was accordingly removed at the time of the revolution, together with two
inscriptions. One of them, which detailed his honors, with the addition
that he died July twenty-third, 1531, has recently been recovered by the
care of M. Riaux, and is restored to its place. The other inscription
and the effigy, it is feared, are irrevocably lost. An equestrian statue
in the upper part of the monument was suffered to remain, and, as a
record of the military costume of the sixteenth century, I annex a
sketch of it. The armorial hearings upon the horse and armor are nearly
obliterated.--The pile is surmounted a figure of Temperance; the bridle
in whose mouth shews how absurd is allegory, when "submitted to the
faithful eye."
[Illustration: Equestrian Figure of the Seneschal de Brezé, in Rouen Cathedral]
Lenoir, who, in his work on the _Musée des Monumens Français_, has
treated much at large of the history of Diana of Poitiers, and has
figured her own beautiful mausoleum, which he had the merit of rescuing
from destruction, pronounces[87] this monument to be from the hand of
Jean Cousin, one of the most able sculptors of the French school.
Over the altar in the Lady-Chapel is the only good painting in the
cathedral, the _Adoration of the Shepherds_, by Philip de Champagne, a
solid, well-colored, and well-grouped picture. Two cherubs in the air
are excellently conceived and drawn: the whole is lighted from the
infant Christ in the cradle, a _concetto_, which has been almost
universally adopted, since the time when Corregio painted his celebrated
_Notte_, now at Dresden.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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