Paris: Grant Allen's Historical GuidesAllen, Grant
History
Paris: Grant Allen's Historical Guides
Allen, Grant
Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- Guidebooks
Germain Pilon’s too tearful Mater Dolorosa (painted
terra-cotta) close by, from the Sainte Chapelle, indicates the
beginnings of modern French taste in church furniture. His recumbent
tomb of Valentine Balbiani, on the other hand, is admirable as
portraiture; but the genius of the artist is only fully displayed in the
repulsive figure of the same body seen emaciated in death and
decomposition beneath it. Barthélemy Prieur’s recumbent figure of Anne
de Montmorency shows survival of the older type, doubtless due to the
prejudices of patrons.
Above it is an admirable piece of Renaissance sculpture, by Jean Goujon,
for the decoration of the rood-loft (now removed) in St. Germain
l’Auxerrois. The rare beauty of the existing one at St. Étienne-du-Mont
(by a far inferior artist) enables us to estimate the loss we have
sustained by its disappearance. The Deposition, in the centre, marked by
the highly classical style and secular or almost sensuous beauty of its
Maries, and the anatomical knowledge displayed in its Dead Christ,
should be contrasted with earlier specimens in adjacent rooms. In the
accompanying figures of the four Evangelists, notice how earlier
conceptions of the writers and their attendant symbols have been
altogether modified by a Raphaelesque spirit. You would scarcely notice
the eagle, angel, bull, and lion (compare Sacchi upstairs), unless you
were told to look for them. Germain Pilon’s Agony in the Garden displays
an exactly similar transformation of a traditional subject.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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