Pilon, Germain (1525/1527?–1590)

PILON, GERMAIN (1525/1527?–1590)

PILON, GERMAIN (1525/1527?–1590), considered the greatest French sculptor of the sixteenth century. Born in Paris to the sculptor Antoine Pilon, who is believed to have trained him, Pilon was chosen for the most prestigious commissions of Catherine de Médicis and her sons Francis II (ruled 1559–1560), Charles IX (ruled 1560–1574), and Henry III (ruled 1574–1589). Catholic and funerary subjects dominated his oeuvre as they did those of most of his contemporaries. The transcendent spirituality of Pilon's sculptures, however, was unequalled by any other artist of his time. His oeuvre combines traditional French prototypes (his Virgin and Child in Notre-Dame de la Couture in Le Mans, from 1570, for example, follows fourteenth-century models) with the breathtaking sophistication of a dying court style and the superhuman power of Michelangelo's figures, which must have been transmitted to him by Francesco Primaticcio (1504–1570).

None of Pilon's earliest documented works (nor any of his father's) has been preserved. It is logical, however, to suggest that he worked at Fontainebleau even before receiving the commission in 1561 for wood statues intended for the queen's garden there: not only would this contact have provided a fundamental inspiration for his elegant style, but it also would account for the fact that many of his earliest known extant sculptures were commissioned for projects overseen by the supervisors of royal architectural works, Philibert de l'Orme (1515?–1570) and Primaticcio. Among these early sculptures were allegorical figures of children holding inverted torches, symbolizing the extinction of life, commissioned in 1558 for the tomb of Francis I (Saint-Denis), but never included in that monument. A sculpture in the Musée National de la Renaissance (Écouen, France) is usually identified as the only one that remains today, but another can easily be attributed to Pilon among the three that were instead used for the monument to the heart of Francis II (Saint-Denis).

The reliefs of the evangelists, sorrowing putti, and the Resurrection of Christ (c. 1559) on the underside of the canopy of the tomb of Francis I can also be attributed justifiably to Pilon. Their exquisite chiseling in extraordinarily low relief shows a brilliance unknown in the technique of any of Pilon's contemporaries, and the dimpling of the draperies occurs, without any other precedent, only in the three female figures carved for the monument to the heart of Henry II (Louvre, Paris), popularly called the Three Graces. This is Pilon's earliest (1560–1563) extant documented work, and his best known.

Pilon was among several sculptors chosen by Primaticcio to realize Henry II's tomb in Saint-Denis (1563–1570). Pilon's sumptuous bronze praying figures of the king and Catherine de Médicis are on the upper level of this two-tiered monument, while his marble sculptures of their corpses rest beneath. Four bronze Virtues stand at the tomb's corners; of these, Justice and Fortitude are Pilon's. The authorship of the four marble reliefs on the base of the tomb is still debated, although it is likely that Pilon carried out two of them: Faith and Religion (the relief traditionally believed to represent hope).

By 1572 Pilon had also completed the over-life-size marble Resurrection (Louvre), toward which the praying figures of the king and queen were oriented. This would be complemented by elaborate effigies (1583) of Henry II and Catherine de Médicis and the mystical Virgin of Sorrows (1586, marble example in Saint-Paul–Saint-Louis, Paris; terra-cotta in the Louvre), all intended for the Valois Chapel, the mausoleum envisioned by Catherine de Médicis.

Charles IX's unhappy reign brought commissions for a grand figure of a horse, known only through the posthumous inventory of Pilon's workshop; the gigantic decorative frame for the clock of the central courthouse in Paris; and appointment as overseer of the Paris mint. Only during Henry III's reign was the frame of the clock, renowned in its time as the Horloge du Palais, completed. (It was replaced in the nineteenth century.) Indeed, the most fecund period of Pilon's career coincides with the fifteen years of Henry III's desperate attempts to restore peace and religious toleration in France. Pilon was commissioned to do fifteen funerary monuments, ranging from a simple epitaph to the costly bronze and mixed-marble tombs of such courtiers as the chancellor René de Birague (1584, surviving elements in the Louvre) and the king's three favorites (1578, formerly in Saint-Paul, Paris), which were destroyed in Pilon's own lifetime in a bloody uprising against Henry III.

Less than half of Pilon's work is preserved today, mostly in the Louvre. Nonetheless, his oeuvre not only constitutes the artistic apogee of the end of the Valois dynasty, but also marks a significant transition in style to the peculiarly disciplined restraint of French baroque sculpture of the seventeenth century. Pilon's influence, paradoxically, also brought a mannered classicism to the sculpture of the Low Countries and England.

See also Catherine de Médicis ; Sculpture ; Valois Dynasty (France) .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Babelon, Jean. Germain Pilon. Paris, 1927. Although some of the attributions are out of date, this well-illustrated book remains a fundamental reference.

Levkoff, Mary L. "Précisions sur l'oeuvre de Germain Pilon et sur son influence." In Germain Pilon et les sculpteurs français de la renaissance. Paris, 1993.

Snyder, James. Northern Renaissance Art. New York, 1985.

Mary L. Levkoff