The great treasure of Nantes is the two noble sepulchral monuments which occupy either transept,and one of which has (in its nobleness)the rare distinction of being a production of our own time.On the south side stands the tomb of Francis II.,the last of the Dukes of Brittany,and of his second wife,Margaret of Foix,erected in 1507by their daughter Anne,whom we have encountered already at the Chateau de Nantes,where she was born;at Langeais,where she married her first husband;at Amboise,where she lost him;at Blois,where she married her second,the "good"Louis XII.,who divorced an impeccable spouse to make room for her,and where she herself died.Transferred to the cathedral from a demolished convent,this monument,the masterpiece of Michel Colomb,author of the charming tomb of the children of Charles VIII.and the aforesaid Anne,which we admired at Saint Gatien of Tours,is one of the most brilliant works of the French Renaissance.It has a splendid effect,and is in perfect preservation.A great table of black marble supports the reclining figures of the duke and duchess,who lie there peacefully and majestically,in their robes and crowns,with their heads each on a cushion,the pair of which are supported,from behind,by three,charming little kneeling angels;at the foot of the quiet couple are a lion and a greyhound,with heraldic devices.At each of the angles of the table is a large figure in white marble of a woman elaborately dressed,with a symbolic meaning,and these figures,with their contemporary faces and clothes,which give them the air of realistic portraits,are truthful and living,if not remarkably beautiful.Round the sides of the tomb are small images of the apostles.There is a kind of masculine completeness in the work,and a certain robustness of taste.
In nothing were the sculptors of the Renaissance more fortunate than in being in advance of us with their tombs:they have left us noting to say in regard to the great final contrast,the contrast between the immobility of death and the trappings and honors that survive.They expressed in every way in which it was possible to express it the solemnity,of their conviction that the Marble image was a part of the personal greatness of the defunct,and the protection,the redemption,of his memory.A modern tomb,in comparison,is a sceptical affair;it insists too little on the honors.I say this in the face of the fact that one has only to step across the cathedral of Nantes to stand in the presence of one of the purest and most touching of modern tombs.Catholic Brittany has erected in the opposite transept a monument to one of the most devoted of her sons,General de Lamoriciere,the defender of the Pope,the vanquished of Castelfidardo.
This noble work,from the hand of Paul Dubois,one of the most interesting of that new generation of sculptors who have revived in France an art of which our overdressed century had begun to despair,has every merit but the absence of a certain prime feeling.It is the echo of an earlier tune,an echo with a beautiful cadence.Under a Renaissance canopy of white marble,elaborately worked with arabesques and cherubs,in a relief so low that it gives the work a certain look of being softened and worn by time,lies the body of the Breton soldier,with,a crucifix clasped to his breast and a shroud thrown over his body.At each of the angles sits a figure in bronze,the two best of which,representing Charity and Military Courage,had given me extraordinary pleasure when they were exhibited (in the clay)in the Salon of 1876.They are admirably cast,and they have a certain greatness:
the one,a serene,robust young mother,beautiful in line and attitude;the other,a lean and vigilant young man,in a helmet that overshadows his serious eyes,resting an outstretched arm,an admirable military member,upon the hilt of a sword.These figures contain abundant assurance that M.Paul Dubois has been attentive to Michael Angelo,whom we have all heard called a splendid example but a bad model.The visorshadowed face of his warrior is more or less a reminiscence of the figure on the tomb of Lorenzo de'
Medici at Florence;but it is doubtless none the worse for that.The interest of the work of Paul Dubois is its peculiar seriousness,a kind of moral good faith which is not the commonest feature of French art,and which,united as it is in this case with exceeding knowledge and a remarkable sense of form,produces an impression,of deep refinement.The whole monument is a proof of exquisitely careful study;but I am not sure that this impression on the part of the spectator is altogether a happy one.It explains much of its great beauty,and it also explains,perhaps,a little of a certain weakness.That word,however,is scarcely in place;I only mean that M.Dubois has made a visible effort,which has been most fruitful.Simplicity is not always strength,and our complicated modern genius contains treasures of intention.This fathomless modern element is an immense charm on the part of M.Paul Dubois.I am lost in admiration of the deep aesthetic experience,the enlightenment of taste,revealed by such work.After that,I only hope that Giuseppe Garibaldi may have a monument as fair.
