In sculptural works, as in every other branch of art, historical sentiment and faith seemed to die out with the fifteenth century. Mediæval art was subjected to protest; the desire seemed to be to re-create beauty of form by going back to the antique; but the emphatically Christian individuality was no longer reached, and this pretended _renaissance_, in which even earnest minds were induced to gratify themselves, only served to exhibit the feeble efforts of an epoch that sought to reproduce the glories of a vanished age. In the time of Charles VIII. and Louis XII., Lombarde-Venetian art, the affected and ingenious imitation of the Greek style, was introduced into France; it suited the common people, and pleased mediocre intellect. The sculptors who came at that period to seek their fortunes at the court of the French kings worked exclusively for the aristocracy, and vied with one another in adorning, with an ardent infatuation for Italian art, the royal and aristocratic palaces which were being built or restored in every direction, such as the Châteaux of Amboise and Gaillon. But they failed to do any injury to French artists, who still remained charged with the works of sacred sculptures; and their style became but slightly, if at all, influenced by this foreign immigration. Even Benvenuto Cellini himself failed to exercise much effect on the vigorous schools of Tours, Troyes, Metz, Dijon, and Angers; his reputation and his works never passed, so to speak, beyond the limits of the court of France, and the brilliant traces they [Illustration: Fig. 289.--“St. John the Baptist preaching in the Desert.” Bas-relief in Carved Wood by Albert Dürer. (Brunswick Gallery.)] left behind them were confined to the school of Fontainebleau. Ere long, some zealous artists from all the principal centres of the French schools left their country and betook themselves to Italy; among these were Bachelier of Languedoc, Simon and Ligier Richier of Lorraine, Valentine Bousch of Alsace, and Jacques of Angoulême, who had the honour of a victory over his master, Michael Angelo, in a competition of statuary (many of the former artist’s works now exist in the Vatican); Jean de Boulogne, and several others. Some of them, after they had become celebrated on the other side of the Alps, returned to their native country, bringing back to it their own native genius matured by the lessons of the Italians. There was, therefore, always a French school that preserved its individual characteristics, its generic good qualities and defects, which are so well represented in the sculptures of the Hôtel du Bourgtheroulde, Rouen (Fig. 290). [Illustration: Fig. 290.--Bas-relief of the Hôtel du Bourgtheroulde, Rouen, representing a Scene in the Interview between Francis I. and Henry VIII., on the Field of the Cloth of Gold.]