Note 343 — Chapter X · Gothic Art in Normandy[314]

Opposite the tomb of the d’Amboise cardinals (1513-25), predominantly Gothic in character, is the purely Renaissance monument of Louis de Brézé (1536-44), seneschal of Normandy, son of the daughter of Charles VII and Agnes Sorel. The kneeling figure on the tomb is the notorious Diane de Poitiers, his widow. The critics say that if the De Brézé mausoleum is not the work of Jean Goujon, Diane’s favorite sculptor, then there must have been living here an unknown XVI-century master of the first order. Jean Goujon was in Rouen, making the wooden doors of St. Maclou, at that time.

Paul Vitry, Jean Goujon (Collection, Les Grandes Artistes), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1908); Louis Gonse, La sculpture française depuis le XIV^e siècle (Paris, 1895); Léon Palustre, La Renaissance en France, vol. 1 (Paris, Quantin, 1888), 3 vols.