DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63221#0094
66
THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE
and of Louis XII, who gave him a commission at Tours. Here
he was settled by 1473, and here he worked at the Cathe-
dral. His nephews, Bastien and Martin le Francois,
helped him. Fountains for rich citizens, sculpture for Cha-
teaux, tombs for nobles and their ladies, came from his un-
wearied hand. He had a good many pupils. He was, in-
deed, the only French sculptor to found a School of his
own—the School of Tours.
Under his chisel there grew up, in the forest of Bourg-en-
Bresse, the marble Church of Brou—the shrine of married
love, built to perpetuate the grief of the Duchess Margaret
for the beautiful Duke Philibert de Savoie. He was killed
one day out hunting, and she, Margaret of Austria, gave
herself up to his memory and ordered Michel Colombe to
raise a chapel for his tomb. It was to be a chapel with
room for his mother’s resting-place, and her own when her
time should come. On one side he made her an Oratory,
where, while the tomb was being built, she often prayed-
using it as her living-room, that she might still hold daily
converse with the dead. It remains there with stone fire-
place and jewelled window, its silent Altar keeping watch
over the great tombs. In the centre lies the warrior Philibert
at full length, his hair cut square over his forehead. At
his head and feet, and at either side, stand stately marble
children, tender sentinels of his sleep; one holds his helmet,
one his gauntlet, another, at his head, is weeping. His
face is turned to the figure of his wife on the left, his
praying hands to the right—towards the tranquil form of his
mother on her couch of stone. Below, surrounded by birds
and flowers, is stretched, according to the fashion of the
THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE
and of Louis XII, who gave him a commission at Tours. Here
he was settled by 1473, and here he worked at the Cathe-
dral. His nephews, Bastien and Martin le Francois,
helped him. Fountains for rich citizens, sculpture for Cha-
teaux, tombs for nobles and their ladies, came from his un-
wearied hand. He had a good many pupils. He was, in-
deed, the only French sculptor to found a School of his
own—the School of Tours.
Under his chisel there grew up, in the forest of Bourg-en-
Bresse, the marble Church of Brou—the shrine of married
love, built to perpetuate the grief of the Duchess Margaret
for the beautiful Duke Philibert de Savoie. He was killed
one day out hunting, and she, Margaret of Austria, gave
herself up to his memory and ordered Michel Colombe to
raise a chapel for his tomb. It was to be a chapel with
room for his mother’s resting-place, and her own when her
time should come. On one side he made her an Oratory,
where, while the tomb was being built, she often prayed-
using it as her living-room, that she might still hold daily
converse with the dead. It remains there with stone fire-
place and jewelled window, its silent Altar keeping watch
over the great tombs. In the centre lies the warrior Philibert
at full length, his hair cut square over his forehead. At
his head and feet, and at either side, stand stately marble
children, tender sentinels of his sleep; one holds his helmet,
one his gauntlet, another, at his head, is weeping. His
face is turned to the figure of his wife on the left, his
praying hands to the right—towards the tranquil form of his
mother on her couch of stone. Below, surrounded by birds
and flowers, is stretched, according to the fashion of the