Catherine De' Medici's Patronage of The Arts - Sculpture

Sculpture

According to the contemporary art historian Vasari, Catherine wanted Michelangelo to make her husband Henry II's equestrian statue; but Michelangelo passed the commission on to Daniele da Volterra, and only the horse was ever made.

On commission from Catherine, Germain Pilon carved the marble sculpture that contains Henry II's heart. The Florentine Domenico del Barbiere, who had worked at Fontainebleau, carved the base. Pilon's fluid style echoes Primaticcio's stucco work at Fontainebleau. The piece may also have been influenced by Pierre Bontemps's monument for the heart of Francis I. Pilon set the bronze urn on the heads of the Three Graces, who are poised back to back, as if to dance. He may have based the design on that for an incense burner for Francis I, engraved by Marcantonio. Pilon's figures, however, with their long necks and small heads, are more like nymphs. A poem by Ronsard is engraved at the foot of the sculpture. It asks the reader not to wonder that so small a vase can hold so large a heart, since Henry's real heart resides in Catherine's breast. Henri Zerner has called the monument, which can be seen at the Louvre, "one of the summits of our sculpture".

In the 1580s, Pilon began work on statues for the chapels that were to circle the tomb of Catherine de' Medici and Henry II at the basilica of Saint Denis. Among these, the fragmentary Resurrection, now in the Louvre, was designed to face the tomb of Catherine and Henry from a side chapel. This work owes a clear debt to Michelangelo, who had designed the tomb and funerary statues for Catherine's father at the Medici chapels in Florence. Pilon openly depicted extreme emotion in his work, sometimes to the point of the grotesque. His style has been interpreted as a reflection of a society torn by the conflict of the French wars of religion.