SOUTHWESTERN FRANCE

The serene clarity of the Loire statuary is embellished, moreover, with particular accents which contrast or harmonize with the monumental simplification and the picturesque details, the inward expressions and gracious effects. Southwestern France, the north and Champagne display different facets of these tendencies in the regional variants of French sculpture at the close of the Middle Ages.
A touch of suavity brings out the childlike and languid charm of many anonymous sculptures, in polychrome stone, of the third quarter of the fifteenth century in the regions of Toulouse and Rodez. As usual, the works of the masters, Jacques Morel, active at Rodez in 1448, or Pierre Viguier, recorded at Villefranche-de-Rouergue and Rodez from 1451 to 1497, are now destroyed or very fragmentary, making it difficult to identify for certain the originator of this personal tone in Lataguedoc and Roucrguc sculpture.
“Nostre Dame de Grasse” at Toulouse and the Annunciation at Inires bear charming witness to  this style which blossomed and diversified at the end of the fifteenth century, spreading its influence towards Albi and Moissac as well. The generous gifts of Louis I of Amboise, bishop,of Albi from 1473 to 1502, spurred important undertakings:
the monumental Entombment carved for his Chteau de la Combfa, and the teeming flamboyant decor of the rood screen ana chaucel screen of Albi Cathedral, where the figure carvings renewed the traditional local types, gain in weight and complexity and are brightened by picturesque strokes of inspiration.
A graver sentiment, related to the art of the Loire, emanates from the figure groups created at the beginning of the sixteenth century in Prigord and in Bordclais by the workshop of the Master of the Biron Entombment, which makes much of the Italianizing ornamental repertory.