The artistic style of the celebrated Florentine goldsmith is that of a period when, by an earnest return to antiquity, the mythological element was introduced everywhere, even in the Christian sanctuaries. The character, which we may call autochthone,[19] of the pious and severe Middle Ages, ceased to influence the production of plastic works, when the models were taken from the glorious remains of idolatrous Greece and Rome. The art which the religion of Christ had awakened and upheld suddenly became again Pagan, and Cellini proved himself one of the enthusiasts of the ancient temples raised in honour of the gods and goddesses of Paganism; that is to say, under the impulse given by him, and in imitation of him, the phalanx of artists, of which he is in a manner the chief, could not fail to go far on the new road by which he had travelled among the first. When Cellini came to France he found, as he himself says in his book, that the work consisted “more than elsewhere in _grosserie_” (the _grosserie_ comprised the church plate, vessels, and silver images), “and that the works there executed with the hammer had attained a degree of perfection nowhere else to be met with.” The inventory of the plate and jewels of Henry II., among which were many by Benvenuto Cellini--the inventory prepared at Fontainebleau in 1560--shows us that, after the departure of the Florentine artist, the French goldsmiths continued to deserve that eulogium; and to comprehend of what they were capable in the time of Charles IX., it is sufficient to recall the description, preserved in the archives of Paris, of a piece of plate which the city had caused to be made to offer as a present to the king on the occasion of his entry into his capital in 1571.