New times arrived. But alongside the flowering of humanism and the Renaissance, a grave moral and spiritual crisis shook the Church. Alas, the changes were accompanied by violence and destruction of extreme brutality, owing to the iconoclastic fury of the Protestants.
Indeed, the adherents of Church reform condemned holy images, basing themselves on Biblical prohibitions:
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them”
In its materiality the image is deceiving; the danger exists that the true believer may venerate the image itself more than what it represents. The image, by its power of seduction, may lead the senses astray instead of inciting to prayer. By its excessive cost, the image encourages the egoistic pride of rich donors and not their charitable duty towards the most deprived; God must be served through his poor rather than by vain expenditure on sculptures and paintings of excessive proliferation. Those were some of the arguments set forth, with variations, by all the leaders of the Reformation in their works, their sermons or their pamphlets. Luther was relatively moderate, insisting on the educative role of narrative subjects while denouncing temptations to idolatry and the squandering of money. Thus he blamed Carlstadt’s iconoclastic zeal at Wittenberg in 1522 and condemned the violence of “criminals and pillaging hordes of peasants” at the time of the peasant revolts of 1524—1525 in South Germany. In Switzerland, first Zwingli, then Calvin, criticized sacred images more radically, urging their suppression or destruction.
As the ideas of the Reformation, mingled with material and social demands, made headway in Europe, the manifestations of iconoclasm multiplied in diverse forms: sporadic outbreaks or intense explosions like that in the Netherlands during the year s66; spontaneous acts of handfuls of individuals driven by poverty and religious fanaticism, or movements orchestrated by civic authorities won over to the new doctrines. Thus at Strasbourg beginning in 1524, under the auspices of the town council, paintings, crucifixes, altarpieces and other images began to be removed from religious buildings and systematically destroyed or sometimes carefully dismantled. Inevitably, in many towns, sculptors in want of commissions were reduced to expatriating themselves or to begging for living allowances, and often ended up in poverty. The printing press played a considerable role in the spread of the Reformers’ doctrines, in particular those of Luther and Calvin. And preachers everywhere carried on the most active propaganda, for example thundering against the scandalous figures of female saints adorned more luxuriously than prostitutes, a veritable incitement to voluptuousness and not to pious thoughts.
At Steenvoorde in Flanders, on so August 1566, following a sermon by Sebastian Matte, some twenty members of the audience stormed the monastery and laid waste all the images. The destructive rage reached its height during the Beggars’ Revolt; the inhabitants of Tournai sacked the churches of their town, looted the treasuries, profaned the relics and smashed the statues. In France the Huguenots also engaged in blasphemous demonstrations and wholly devastated many religions edifices, in the south and southwest especially. In England, under the auspices of the monarchy, the Anghcan Reformation entailed, over and above the suppression of the monasteries and the sale of their goods, the systematic destruction of monumental figures decorating the church choirs and chapels.
Thousands of sculptures accordingly perished in the agonies of the Bildersturm, annihilated in the flames of pyres and beneath the blows of pickaxes or irreparably mutilated. Works fallen forever into oblivion or illustrious works of which surviving records preserve the memory, sharpening our regret at their loss, such as the altarpiece by Nicholas of Leyden on the high altar of the cathedral of Constance destroyed during the Zwinglian iconoclasm, or the altarpiece by Michael Erhart and Jorg Syrlin the Elder in the cathedral of Ulm, torn down by the Lutherans.
Other agonies, military or revolutionary, later contributed, it is true, to the disappearance of many medieval images. And this is not to forget changes in taste and the desire to renovate or purify church decoration, largely responsible for multiple destructions of Gothic altarpieces, stalls, rood screens and choir screens. If the reforming iconoclasm banned religions art, the Church of the Counter-Reformation, which defended it, wanted itto be above reprdach and called for austerity and decency.
“The Middle Ages ended on the day the Church itself condemned them,” wrote Emile Male, deploring the death of medieval iconographic traditions after the Council of Trent (1545—i563). But we also know that in spite of everything the Middle Ages remained strongly present, as Henri Focillon affirms: “They have not disappeared, they have not been wiped out. It would seem the West is nostalgic for them. The nostalgia became a conscious longing in England in the eighteenth century, with the neo-Gothic style dear to Horace Walpole. It gathered strength with the progress of Romanticism, and the nineteenth century finally gave it the tone and power of an historic force... This marks the beginning of a vast inquiry which, starting from a reaction of taste and ever sustained by more intense forces, ends in a wider knowledge of the past, in a more complete possession of mankind.” Read More
If the taste of late Gothic artists for ornamental luxuriance became more pronounced in architectural decoration, as in Picardy or the Iberian peninsula, without any genuine renewal of plastic language, in the Germanic lands on the contrary sculpture moved into a strange and violent world reshaped now by the social and religious upheavals of the age. The afterglow of a style, this “baroque Gothic” is fascinating to an eye and mind willing to accept its excesses and vagaries. Within a broad movement essentially affecting the southern part of the Empire and involving a new generation of sculptors active from about 1510 on, the tendency described as “Danubian” asserted itself with force and originality.
Over and above controversies concerning the notion of a “Danube school” in painting (Doriaustil), there is general agreement on a close community in spirit and forms between the works of the main representanves of the Danubian style and the sculptures produced concurrently in the same Austro-Bavarian region. The genesis of the new plastic style occurred within the late Gothic tradition, taking .the old methods a step further while developing new rhetoric in perfect osmosis with the contemporary graphic and pictorial language, as shown by the sculptures of Hans Leinberger, mentioned at Landihut from iio to 1530. If, for example, the tumultuous draperies clothing his figures and soaring far out from the body in arbitrary folds spring from the previous Gothic conception, their treatment avoids angles and breaks in favour of floating undulations at the edges and large inflated folds, tracing long diagonals interrupted here and there by little stiff crinkles on the surface of the fabric: a treatment closely corresponding to the manner of Albrccht Altdorfer (Re— gensburg, c. 1480*1538), as seen in his pen and ink drawings on a dark ground where white highlights bring out the forms and billowing folds with festooned curves and parallel bands.
Leinberger, who, moreover, worked in 1518-1519 at the same rime as the painter for the new Sehiine Maria pilgrimage church in Regensburg, appears to have transformed Altdorfer’s graphic inventions into volumes. At the very least he exploited plastically the new formal pos— sibilities offered by the Danubian style, as also initiated by other artists inch ai Lucas Granach the Elder (Gronach 1472-Weimar 13) and Jhrg Breu (Augsburg, c. 1475- 1537). The pictorial component is even more present in Leinberger’s bmewood or boxwood reliefs without poly chromy (some bearing the sculptor’s monogram), which reflect the strange atmosphere of Danubian works and a characteristic taste for the vegetable kingdom. In the moving scenes of martyrdom or the Passion, the natural elements, like the falling branches of the grear sprnces on rhe banks of the Danube, seem quickened by the same inner movement as the figures, their hair, their clothing and even some accessories. The lines play freely and mingle in an apparent but skilfully controlled confusion. Both in works of very small format and in monumental figures, the poses and drapery, far more than the faces, render the emotions with a power of expression and a capacity ofinvennon that puts Leinberger in the front rank of the sculptors of his time and makes him the equal of the great Danubian painters. His influence pervades a large number of anonymous Bavarian sculptures of varying qualities, often hard to classify into distinct groups, like the one formed by the works of the Master of the Altotting Doors, a personality more independent than the mere imitators of the master.
Leinberger also exerted a certain influence on the Salz— burg and Passau workshops, connected by their common links with the Danube school. The Master of lrrsdorf, Andreas Laekner, or the sculptors who worked with the painter Wolf Huber (c. 1485 — Passau 1553), notably on the Peldkirch altarpiece (1515—1521), borrowed extensively from engraved or painted models for the compositional designs and formal types of their carvings in relief or inthe round.
The mysterious Master l.P., maker of several small panels in pearwood without polychromy carved with a subtle virtuosity, was active during the I520s, perhaps at Pasiau or Salzburg, and more doubtfully in Prague, where sculptures attributed to his workshop are preserved (altar— pieces of Zlichov and the Tyn church). The Mourning over the Dead Christ in Leningrad, signed with the monogram I.P., shows how the master absorbed and transformed Leinberger’s vision, amplifying the pathos and sense of space, which he developed further in depth and suggested by foreshortened bodies, delicate shadings and increased emphasis on natural setting. In the Original Sin reliefs at Gotha and Vienna (the latter dated 152i), inspired by a Drer engraving of 1504, the accent is placed on the fabulous landscape, the fantastic rocks and tall trees with rough and knotty trunks, made in the image of the Danubian painters. The free attitude of the two nude figures, Adam turning seen from behind, and Eve animated by a slight contrapposto, shows a concern for the representation of the body marked by the humanism of cultivated circles, for whom, moreover, these small cabinet pieces highly prized by collectors were intended. Master I.P. thereby links up with the new art of the Renaissance, although his tall slim figures with their rngged features remain alien to antique balance and regularity, and later seemed to evolve towards a mannerist formulation.
On the edge of the Danube region and outside it, countless works of traditional use, altarpieces and devotional images, were made in ateliers that followed the general trend of style in the iins and I520s and seem more resistant to the Renaissance spirit even when they resort abundantly to an antique repertory of ornament, with garlands, pilasrers and putti. Regional or individual nuances shift the common tendencies towards an overwrought accentuation of forms, lines and expression:
the leering and gesturing figures in the altarpiece of Mauer near Melk (Lower Austria); the giddy swirling movement that galvanizes the Zwettl sculptures (Lower Austria); the monsfrously overblown tulip of Hans Witten’s pulpit in the cathedral of Preiberg (Saxnny); the brutal dynamism of Claus Berg’s apostles in the cathedral of Cstrow (Meeklenbnrg); or the rentacular sprouting of the Tree of Jesse in Douvermann’s alrarpiece at Kalkar (Rhineland).
In addition to the garments buffeted by a violent wind, as in Claus Berg, or blistered and quivering as in the sculptures nfLeinberger and Master I.P., a type of drapery with parallel folds had a widespread success in quite different regions such as Carinthia, Tyrol and Swabia, where the ourpn,t of the Memmingen workshops was characteristic of this Parallelfaltenstil. Thus the Master of Ottobeuren (possibly Hans Thoman, active at Memmingen from 1514 to 1525), named after the Annunciation and Nativity reliefs preserved in the great Benedictine abbey of Ottobeuren, patterns the limewood surface with a strange network of curved and regular lines which is carefully organized and sets up a play of light and shadow. At the same time the forms of his figures, whose quiet self— possession is very much in the Swabian tradition, acquire a genuine plasticity which seems to echo the new humanism; it recurs in most contemporary works, beginning with those of Leinberger and the Danubian sculptors. On the other hand, the reliefs place the figures in tiers on ascending levels in almost complete contempt of the representation of space.
Master H.L. carried the tension and instability of lines to their peak. His monogram appears on several prints dated from 1511 to 1522 as well as on the Breisach altar— piece, completed in 1526, without our being able to ascertain whether this engraver was also the sculptor or merely the designer of the carvings. And his training remains equally obscure, since the manner of this sculptor, who has affinities with Danubian art, is strikingly original. The swirling eddies of the clothing, hair, vegetation and clouds tend to submerge the figures in the Breisach Coronation of the Virgin and completely fill the area of the shrine. But extravagance here is restrained with supreme mastery. The intricacy of the forms does not weaken the expressive force, and the overall view of the work is never blurred by excessive ornament. The monumental effects peculiar to late Gothic German altarpieces full of large figure carvings are enhanced here by the power and plastic authority of the divine personages. A sublime work, this Breisach altarpiece, which, as against the serene assurance of the Renaissance, opens up a magic world and points the way to Baroque.
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The manner of the foreign sculptors from the north, however, changed on their contact with Spanish surroundings and their style was transposed by the indigenous masters into a specifically Spanish key. The boom in production was concentrated mainly in the Castilian regions, as well as Catalonia, Andalusia and Portugal, after the middle of the fifteenth century. Often the artists’ names leave no doubt as to their northern origin.
In Toledo, Hannequin de Bruselas, maestro mayor of the cathedral, put up the door of the south transept, the Puerta de los Leones (1462—1465), whose sculptured decoration was the work of Juan Alemn and his collaborators, among whom was Egas Cueman, Hannequin’s brother. From the start northern influences prevailed in this portal. The stiff, impassive, monumental statues of the splays and the figures in relief of the Tree ofJesse on the inner tym— panum are clearly defined by a linear rhythm emphasized by the prominent verticals or diagonals of the tubular folds between the smooth areas. This tense and graphic style, not without delicacy in the treatment of feminine and juvenile faces, hands and details of clothing, presents undeniable resemblances with the sculpture of the Lower Rhine, linked, as we know, with Netherlandish art.
These masters of Toledo, probably schooled in the north before settling in Spain, represent a stylistic phase
parallel to that of their contemporaries from Brussels, Utrecht or Kalkar, such as Master Arnt, in the second half of the fifteenth century. Here as there, the forms and imagery show the dominance of the great Flemish painters, known very early in Spain, as witnessed by the works of Egas Cueman for the abbey of Guadalupe (CIceres), which interpret some typical designs of Rogier van der Weyden. But from the prolific production of Toledo emerged a peculiar tonality attributable to the local milieu. The typically Iberian predilection for ornamental richness showed itself everywhere inside religious buildings: in the teeming flamboyant decor of the choir screen in Toledo Cathedral, the capilla mayor carved from 1483 on under the direction of Martin Sanchez Bonifacso and Juan Guas; in the vast altarpiece in polychromc wood on the high altar (1498—I 504) which sets out the sculptured scenes in superimposed compartments in the Netherlandish manner and ws the joint work of sculptors of such diverse origin as Copin de Holanda, Sebastian de Almonacid and Fclipe Bigamy (i.e. from Burgundy); or yet again in the Toledo church of San Juan de los Reyes, originally destined to house the tombs of the Cathohc Kings, where an astonishing heraldic decor punctuated by figure carvings, conceived by Juan Guas, covers the walls (5478-1495).
In funerary art the Toledo sculptors or their Castihan emulators also affirmed their specific manner, precise and vigorous, with an acuteness verging at times on dryness, as shown by many examples, such as the tombs by Sebastian de Almonacid of the constable Alvaro dc Luna (died 1489) and his wife (cathedral of Toledo); or that, justly famous, of the knight at arms Martin Vsquez de Arce (died 1486) (cathedral of Sighenza), which, unusually, presents the deceased leaning on his elbows and reading, thereby transforming the traditional type of recumbent figure in a humanist mode.
At Seville as well, the foreign masters who arc mentioned after the middle of the fifteenth century (like Lorenzo Mercadante dc Bretafia, Pieter Dancart, who is called airman, Master Marco Flamenco) introduced rigid, energetically outlined forms, physical types and compositional schemes at once stemming from the Netherlands or Lower Rhine and displaying various autonomous accents according to personality. The original use of clay for modelling statues or reliefs distingnishes several series of Sevdlian works. Those ofMercadante on the portals of the Nativity and the Baptism (1466-1467) of the cathedral embellish their somewhat stiff robustness with an emphasis on expression in the rounded and smiling feminine faces. His successor in practising this technique, Pedro Milln (mentioned from 1487 to 1507) sofrened still further the physiognomies of his polychrome terracotta figures, several of which bear his signature, such as the Christ of Sorrows from El Garrobo (Museo de Bellas Artes, Seville).
The enormous altarpiece in polychsFome wood on the high altar of Seville Cathedral, begun from a design by Pieter Dancart around 148 1-5482, and continued by various teams, notably from 5497 to i5cs by Master Marco, then by Pedro Milln mentioned in e5n6-15n7, and from in8 to 1525 byJorge Fernndez and his brother the painter Alexo, had its central part completed only in January 1526. This shows how difficult it is to estimate the share of each in this collective work. Some figures, like those of the Birth of the Virgin, rather suggest the art of Pedro Milln by their regular oval faces and quiet drapet— aes. Others, like the figures of the Raising of Lazarus, have more vivacity, more individuahzed features, and belong to a later stage, perhaps that of Master Marco and Jorge and Alexo Fernndez, which seems to echo the style of the Kalkar workshops in the entourage of Master Arnt.
At Burgos flourished the singular genius of Gil de Silo, the great name of late Gothic Spanish sculpture. Was he a northern master who had emigrated to Spain? A Spaniard trained in the north? The question remains unresolved hecanse of the absence of explicit documents and the perfect fashion his art reveals of northern characteristics and Iberian traditions. For the charterhouse of Miraflores, Gil de Silo created three masterworks: from 1489 to 1493 the alabaster tombs of the parents and brother of Queen Isabella the Catholic Kin gJohn II, Isabella of Portugal and the Infante Alfonso—and from 1496 to 1499 the monumental alrarpiece in polychrome wood. Other works, like the Tree of Jesse altarpiece sn the St Anne chapel of Burgos Cathedral (donated by Luis de Acuha, bishop from 1456 to 1495), were made sn his workshop as well as the tomb of the queen’s page, Juan de Badilla (died ii), for the monastery of Fresdeval (Museo Provincial, Burgos).
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The widespread destruction wreaked during the English Reformation, especially of monumental statuary and decoration, together with the conservatism prevailing in funerary sculpture and the production of alabaster reliefs, augment the difficulties in the study of the stylistic development of English sculpture at the close of the Middle Ages.
Largely exported to the Continent by the workshops of Nottingham or other towns, the overabundant production of small carved and painted alabaster panels, whether independent devotional images or elements of altarpieces, indeed became repetitive after the middle of the fifteenth century. Since the documents corresponding to extant works are often missing and since the sculptors consistently re—employed the same iconographic and stylistic formulas, the English alabasters are difficult to date accurately. But it is easy to recognize them thanks to their simplified, highly typical treatment—lean forms, stereotyped faces, crisp draperies—and their refined polychromy, which delicately brings nut the natural colour of the alabaster.
The large output of alabaster or stone tombs followed the general evolution of funerary art, adopting in particular the twin representation of tomb effigy and withered corpse, the deceased reposing on the tombslab in all the paraphernalia of his earthly glory above the macabre image of his cadaver (tomb of John Fitzalan at Arundel or, at Ewelme, Oxfordshire, tomb of the Duchess Alice of Suffolk, who died in 1477). Inside the churches, the sculptured decoration consisted chiefly of rows of figures in stone sheltered by canopies on the chancel screens and in funeral chapels (chantries), built in large numbers in the late Middle Ages. The statues of English kings adorning the choir screen of Canterbury Cathedrat (1411—1427) have a quiet density scarcely enlivened by a few sinuous falls of drapery, also appearing, at mid—century, in the figures of angels and saints ornamenting the funeral chapel of Richard Beauehamp in the church of Sr Mary at Warwick. This style has been related to the activity of John Massingham, mentioned at Canterbury in 1436, at Oxford, where he was responsible for the decoration of All Souls College from 1438 to 1442, and in London in 1449. Several sculptures from the chapel of Henry V at Westminster Abbey (about 1441—1450) issue from a similar spirit but others, like the Angel and the Virgin of the Annunciation, clearly reveal the influence of painted or sculptured models from Brabant and Flanders by their physical types and conception of draperies with broken and hollowed folds.
But it was at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the next, at the moment of the full flowering of artistic activity, that several sculptors are mentioned as coming from the Netherlands or Germany to work at the English court. Unfortunately, the teams collaborating on the rich decoration of the chapel of Henry VII at Westminster (I503-1512) remain anonymous. On all the walls unfolds a frieze of angels carrying armorial bearings placed above a row of statues. The energetic treatment and expressive force of these sculptures, which verge on dryness and stiffness in the least successful works, evoke in some aspects the art of the Lower Rhine at the end of the fifteenth century and recall the figures of the Divsnity School at Oxford (1481). This harshness, which also appears in stone tombs and in woodcarving—choir stalls, benches, beams, rood screens—is one of the characteristics of English production of the late Middle Ages, unreceptive to Italian novelties. The style of the Florentine master Pietro Torrigsani, summoned to build the tomb of King Henry VII (1512-1518), indeed presents a complete contrast with the pieces from the Gothic workshops of London or regional centres, whose activity was suddenly broken off by the English Reformation in the 1540S.
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In a style familiar and fashionable by turns, the Champagne workshops produced, around 1500, long anonymous processions of devotional images in stone or polychrome wood, in marble or alabaster: Virgin and Child or male and female saints, at whose feet was often carved the donor’s diminutive kneeling figure. The wholly Gothic plastic density of these statues, their poised gestures, their gentle, delicate and regular faces, are accompanied by many anecdotal details and coquetries of dress embroidered braid, small hanging chains, studded belts, pleated and knotted ribbons—even more abundant than in other regions of France. Concurrently the dolorous themes of the Passion are treated in a serious and reserved tone, stripped of pomp or pathoa, in a large and famous collection of works gathered around the St Martha of the church of the Madeleine at Troyes and the Entombment of Chaource (1515).
To explain the decorative excesses of Champagne sculpture, reference has often been made to the influence of the Netherlands, of which Nicolas Halins, established in Troyes from 1494 to 1544, could have been one of the transmitters, but not, as has wrongly been said, the only one. Indeed, the penetration of northern formulas through imported objects or the influx of foreign artists, forms part of a general movement, which in sculpture partially included Champagne as well as Picardy, Artois and Normandy, and broadened in scope through the circulation of engraved models. The art of altarpieces especially, which interpreted the examples of Brusiels and Antwerp in stone or wood, owed much to this influence. The work of the Picardy cabinetmakers and image—makers who carved in oak the stalls of Amiens Cathedral from io8 to and the frames of the first “Puys” (medieval religious societies) of Notre—Dame also show acquaintance with the narrative style, alive and racy, of the Netherlandish workshops. The large stone reliefs of the cathedral choir tower mark the stages of a different stylistic development, more typical of Picardy, which extends from the first scenes from the life of St Firmin (about 1490), arranging tiers of calm figures clad in stiff and simple draperies, to the last episodes in the story of john the Baptist (1531), highly ornate in taste, in which the suppler figures are swathed in animated fabrics enhanced by refined polychromy. ‘the Gothic sculpture of Picardy, little affected by Italian novelties, had an exceptionally late flowering, whose luxuriant effects invaded the great faades of flamboyant Gothic buddings and continued to influence altarpieces well after the middle of the sixteenth century. In Normandy, too, the abundance of sculptured decoration was linked to the last creations of Gothic architecture, marked more rapidly, however, by the intrusion of Renaissance motifs.
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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.
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In the regions washed by the Loire and its tributaries, the “casing up” of French art made itself felt with a particular brilhance, thanks to royal, princely or bourgeois patrons who quickened the art centres of Berry, the Bourbonnais and Tourasne. There, too, the arnstic climate of the early fifteenth century had paved the way for this later flowering.
At Bourges, after the death of Jean de Berry in 14I6, halting the work on the ducal building sites, the workshops kept up some activity, which increased with the installation there of the royal court in 1422 and the great undertakings ofJacques Cccur at mid-century. Father of the celebrated Michel Colombe, the sculptor Philippe Colombe, whose authenricated works have not survived, is recorded at Bourges from 1434 until his death in 1457. Jcan de Camhrai, the Duke’s image-maker, died only in 1439. We may connect with various aspects of his style, rooted moreover in the fonrtecoth century, several anonymous sculptures, preserved from this first part of the century, in which the density and sohdity of forms and the calm rhythm of sohd folds prevail, without excluding a tender and charming vivaciousness in the childlike faces.
In Toasraine, too, a measured power, far removed from all dramatization, a naturalism exact without excessive attention to detail and a quict gentleness reigned from the middle of the ccntury in the statuary which revealed indisputable affinities with the art of the painter Jean Fouquet, established in Tours, where he died around 1480. Thus the energetic handhng of the Virgin and St John on Calvary, originating perhaps in the abbey of Beaugerais, has often been related to the exceptional plastic and monumental sense shown in Fouquet’s pasnted figures. Several oak sculptures, images of worship or decorative panels, bear witness to the activity of woodcarvers at Tours, also certified by documents. Works in stone, like the angels of the tomb of Jeanne de Montjean at Buesl (around 5460, Archaeological Society of Touraine) or the statues of the castle chapel of Chteaudun consecrated in 1464, present equivalent stylistic characteristics, later heightened and enriched in the Tonraine workshop of Michel Colombe.
Colombe’s creations, known from texts, at Bourges where his name appears in 1457 and at Monlins where in 1484 he worked for the luxury-loving Duke of Bourbon, have unfortunately been lost. They would doubtless have enabled us to evaluate the role of this sculptor, coming in fact from the Berry milieu, in the evolution of a specific- ally Bourbonnais style, illustrated by many sculptures from the time of the master’s sojourn or of later date, such as the works of his disciples who remained at Moulins after his departure around 149o. There, notably, was elaborated a particular type of feminine face, regularly oval, sometimes slightly plump, with small features, a large convex forehead and almond-shaped eyes uuder blurred eyebrows, a type that recalls the meek—looking Madonnas painted around the same period by the Brussels painter Jcan Hey, the Master of Mouhns. To the serenity of expressions, the harmonious balance of forms and calm fall of the draperies, is added the exquisite delicacy of gestures that emphasize the fineness of the hands, and a painstaking handhng of details of dress chiselled in the stone.
Majesty prevails in the monumental statues of St Peter, St Anne and St Susanna from the Chteau de Chantelle, carved in the very first years of the sixteenth century, probably by Jean de Chartres, Colombe’s chief collaborator at Moulins. But the face of the Virgin as a child, standing beside St Anne, further refines the type that had become habitual, and the elegance of Susanna reveals a mind that is almost worldly. Bearing witness to the influence of these formulas, even beyond the boundaries of Bourbonnais, many series of saints show kinship in their slender silhouettes, delicate face and informal grace tinged with preciousness and coquetry. One of the most famous is the Mary Magdalene of Montlnon.
The new tonality that henceforth marked Bourbonnais sculpture is part of the general evolution of the Loire country under the dominance of the art of Michel Colombe, which it is at last possible to apprehend. The tomb of Franots II and Marguerite de Foix at Nantes, ordered in 1499 by Queen Anne of Brittany and made from i502 to t507 in the workshop at Tours, where Colombe’s name is mentioned from i496, enables us to define the master’s style at the close of his life. If it draws extensively on the traditional Loire heritage, it also introduces innovative conceptions blending smoothly with the recent contributions of the Italian Renaissance. In the Nantes tomb, Colombe did not content himself with adopting the anttqne decorative repertory brought from beyond the mountains by the court sculptors of Charles VIII and of Louis XII, and already present in the ornamentation of chateaus or figure groups such as the Entombment of Solesmes, dated i49t1. The corner statues of the Cardinal Virtues on the Nantes sarcophagus express the ideal of noble and serene beauty which inspires the sculptor; these statues portray his search for compact and balanced volumes, his care for the human form in the sensitive modelling of the body and the construction of faces with features more sharply drawn than previously. The old Gothic idealism revitalized during the fifteenth century did not oppose Italian art; it opened itself to new ways and encouraged the harmonious meeting of traditional and Renaissance style in this final phase of the Middle Ages on the banks of the Loire. The nephew and collaborator of Colombe, Cuillaume Regnanlt, to whom is ascribed the famous Virgin and Child from Olivet (Louvre, Paris), kept alive at Tours the final style of his master, who died around i5i4, when the mannerist tendencies of the Fontaineblean court were already making headway.
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New times arrived. But alongside the flowering of humanism and the Renaissance, a grave moral and spiritual crisis shook the Church. Alas, the changes were accompanied by violence and destruction of extreme brutality, owing to the iconoclastic fury of the Protestants. 
