Jean Goujon

Jean Goujon ( * before 1510, † 1572 ) was a French sculptor of the 16th century and the "French Phidias " was called.

Goujon was from 1555 to 1562 worked as an architect and decorative works at the Louvre, where he executed a frieze among others. Many of his works were produced in collaboration with the architect Pierre Lescot. Goujon was a Huguenot; the fateful for the Huguenots Massacre of St. Bartholomew of 23-24. August 1572 he did not live.

After his works to judge, he seems to have formed in Italy in Roman times. In addition, Cellini and Primatice appeared to him, of which he appropriated the characteristic of fine figures about lean conditions. The first of his famous works are the reliefs of the rood screen of St- Germain l'Auxerrois (1541-1544, now in the Louvre ), the Entombment of Christ and the four Evangelists, awarded by the fine treatment of low relief. There followed in 1550 the reliefs on the Fontaine des Innocents in Paris, of which three, river nymphs performing, located in the Louvre, and four caryatids in the Swiss Hall of the Louvre.

Henry II employed him in the construction of the castle Anet, where he wrote his major work, the resting marble figure of Diana with a deer and dogs executed among others a well. This marble sculpture was formerly in the Louvre, but she's been missing since the 2nd World War; get are a marble copy in the Vatican and casts at the Louvre and in Stockholm. One writes Goujon also the tomb of Louis de Brézé, the husband of Diana of Poitiers, in the cathedral of Rouen, where he worked in the period 1541-1542. Also four reliefs in the Louvre with three nymphs, a Genius of water and a Venus to come from him.

Jean Goujon was a master of relief style in his compositions graceful and lively, and in his characteristic less affected than his contemporaries. Stitches of his major works were published in 1844 by Reveil.