Jean Goujon

The mature mastery of accomplished French sculptor Jean Goujon, whose earliest recorded work as an architectural sculptor dates from 1540 at Rouen—the Corinthian columns of the organ loft in the Church of Saint Maclou—is first reflected in a rood screen relief depicting the deposition of Christ from the cross (1544–45; Louvre).

Created for the Church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, Paris, this work marks the beginning of his collaboration with the architect Lescot and exemplifies his personal version of Mannerism.

The screen’s central panel, a Pietá, exemplifies Goujon's mature style, which—although indebted to the Italian Mannerist-derived school of Fontainebleau and to the Mannerist painter Parmigianino—remains an entirely personal synthesis of classical Renaissance motifs.

Goujon begins work in 1547 on the fine sculptures for the Fontaine des Innocents, which are figures carved in shallow relief within an architectural framework, commissioned as part of the decoration of the city to commemorate the solemn royal entry of King Henry II into Paris.

Goujon also comments on sculptural ornament in an appendix to an edition of the work of the classical Roman architect Vitruvius, published in 1547, for which he also executes woodcut illustrations.

Lescot’s excellent understanding of Italian Renaissance styles enables him to expel from French architecture the lingering traces of the Gothic style in rebuilding the old medieval palace of the Louvre.

In the Cour Carreé, Lescot combines a French system of pavilions with an Italianate elevation of superimposed orders, enriching the facades with delicate low-relief sculpture designed by Jean Goujon.

Another of Lescot’s surviving major works is the Fontaine des Innocents, built around 1550.

Ronsard, regarded as the leader of the "Brigade," devotes his career to answering du Bellay’s nativist call for new poetry based on classical models.

Equally skilled at writing love poems, pastorals, sonnets, philosophical poems, and political verse, Ronsard’s assimilation of classical and native idiom and verse forms expands the range of French poetry.

The twenty-six-year-old poet produces Odes, a verse collection, in 1550.

His own generation in France will label him "prince of poets.”

Philibert DeLorme has built the Chateau d'Anet for Henry II’s mistress, Diane de Poitiers, between 1547 and 1552.

A gift from the king, it has been built on the former château at the center of the domains of Diane's deceased husband, Louis de Brézé, seigneur d'Anet, Marshal of Normandy and Master of the Hunt.

The château is especially noted for its exterior, notably the statues of the proprietress as Diana, goddess of the hunt, by Jean Goujon and the relief by Benvenuto Cellini over the portal.

Anet is the site of one of the first Italianate parterre gardens centered on the building's facade in France; the garden-designer in charge is Jacques Mollet, who at Anet trains his son, Claude Mollet, destined to become royal gardener to three French kings.