The century of ColumbusWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
History
The century of Columbus
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Renaissance
Innsbrück possesses a series of bronze statues, all of them {103}
executed in the first half of the sixteenth century, which has always
attracted the attention of the world artists ever since. There are
twenty-eight colossal bronze figures around the tomb of the Emperor
Maximilian which stands in the centre of the nave of the Cathedral.
They are designed to represent the heroes of the olden time and one of
them, usually looked upon as the finest, is an ideal statue of King
Arthur of the Briton legends, famous for the nobility of the face and
pose. He is represented in the plate armor of the early fifteenth
century. The statue of Theodoric is also considered to be not only a
very fine example of the work of the period, but also one of the
world's great bronze statues. The difficulties encountered {104} in
the accomplishment of the casting of the bronze for these were so
great that the Emperor invited Peter Vischer from Nuremberg to
superintend at least this portion of the work and it is probable that
his influence was felt also on the modeling. The designs are usually
attributed to local artists at Innsbruck, however, of whose names we
are not sure. In nothing are these older periods so different from
ours as in the utter neglect of artists to make any effort to secure
their personal fame.
[Illustration: HENRY VIII ON FIELD OF CLOTH OF GOLD
(FROM THE BAS-RELIEFS OF THE HÔTEL BOURG HÉRALDE, ROUEN)]
In France even before the time of the Renaissance, or at least before
the effect of Greek ideas was felt, there was a magnificent
development of sculpture, an inheritance from the older period of the
thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries which had left such
magnificent monuments as the tombs in St. Denis, Le Beau Dieu at
Amiens and the statues in the porch of the cathedral at Chartres. The
first of these French Gothic sculptors of Columbus' Century is
Colombe, trained in Flanders, who founded a school of sculpture at
Tours. He {105} executed the tomb of Margaret of Austria and her
husband Duke Philibert of Savoy in the Marble Church of Brou. Tours
became a great centre of art in the latter half of the fifteenth
century. Its name, the town of spires, indicates that there had always
been aspirations after effect in their ecclesiastical architecture and
this reached a culmination in statuary at this time. With Colombe his
nephews worked while Jean Juste and his son collaborated in the poetic
tomb built in honor of the son and daughter of Charles VIII in the
Cathedral of Tours. Here also they erected the famous tomb of Louis
XII and Anne of Bretagne, which has since been carried to St. Denis.
The Justes had a power of putting touching human qualities into marble
that has always given a special interest to their work. Jean Fouchet
probably made at this time the lovely tomb of Agnes Sorel at Loches
which has been so famous and has helped to make Loches a favorite
pilgrimage place ever since.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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