Coming as he did at
the acme of the French Renaissance, when France was borrowing with
intelligent selection whatever it considered valuable from Italy, he
pleased the dilettanti. There is something distinctly "swell" in his
work. He does not perhaps express any overmastering personal feeling,
nor does he stamp the impress of French national character on his work
with any particular emphasis. He is too well-bred and too cultivated, he
has too much _aplomb_. But his works show both more personal feeling and
more national character than the works of his contemporaries elsewhere.
For line he has a very intimate instinct, and of mass, in the sculptor's
as well as the painter's sense, he has a native comprehension. Compare
his "Diana" of the Louvre with Cellini's in the adjoining room from the
point of view of pure sculpture. Goujon's group is superb in every way.
Cellini's figure is tormented and distorted by an impulse of decadent
though decorative aestheticism. Goujon's caryatides and figures of the
Innocents Fountain are equally sculptural in their way--by no means
arabesques, as is so much of Renaissance relief, and the modern relief
that imitates it.
Pages:
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174