After having devoted her PhD studies to the sculptor François Duquesnoy (1597–1643), Marion Boudon-Machuel has turned, since a first article published in 2009, toward the study of sixteenth-century sculpture in Champagne. The geographic framework of this study is conceived on the basis of an artistic center of sculpture in Troyes, which would have expanded, from place to place, through the networks of sculptors and mobile workshops of the “beautiful sixteenth century.” Its geographic boundaries are therefore quite blurry. With Troyes as the epicenter, it includes the entire diocese (corresponding more or less to the current department of the Aube). It overflows, however, into the eastern margins of the diocese of Sens and into the north of the diocese of Langres. To the north, the southern fringe of the diocese of Châlons is taken into consideration (altarpieces of Bussy-Lettrée and Soudron, Virgin of Mercy of Clesles), as are works of the diocese of Reims and the archiepiscopal city. The chronological framework of Boudon-Machuel's work finds its foundations in the historical and cultural context until the end of the sixteenth century, disturbed by the Wars of Religion. She demonstrates, however, that, far from having been held back by this unfavorable context, the production of sculpture in Champagne after 1530, and even more from 1550, was marked by a singular dynamism that helped forge the defining stylistic features of this artistic center throughout the sixteenth century.

This first observation leads the author to address the small scale of Protestant vandalism, in contrast to other provinces in the kingdom, which were quite violent. The reason for this discrepancy, she suggests, can be found by turning to the social and cultural microhistory of the city, a “Church of temporisers,” including the reformed communities. The networks of the commissioners were clearly influenced by the presence of the royal building site of Fontainebleau, which allowed the art of the court to be easily received in southern Champagne. This interest in royal and court tastes, however, was also relayed by the high nobility—such as the Guise or the Dinteville, for example—as shown by the magnificent tomb of Claude de Lorraine and Antoinette de Bourbon-Vendôme (which has, unfortunately, disappeared), intended for the princely chapel Saint-Laurent of Joinville. It was through these routes that Italian art penetrated widely into the formal repertoire of southern Champagne artists. These works later served as models for the artists hired by the local nobility, the prelates, or the bourgeois. Dominique Florentin's installation in Troyes from 1540, for example, profoundly marked the features of the city's sculpture. On the whole, the author is quite successful in establishing convincing links between the organization of the networks of commissioners and the spread of sculptural forms.

It is quite natural, then, that a careful examination of the more than 500 sculptures comprising Boudon-Machuel's corpus would follow. Such an arduous task is made even more difficult by the fact that few of these works have been dated with precision (Saint Symphorien de Sainte-Tanche [1559], Saint Jean l’Évangéliste de Saint-Florentin [1572]). It is on this basis that Boudon-Machuel isolates a “precious” style in the years 1530–40, which she qualifies as “first mannerism.” The statuary of Claude Bornot and Jacques Juliot, a member of a dynasty of image makers documented in Troyes in the middle of the sixteenth century, belong to this ensemble.

One of the most striking features of this sculptural tradition, however, remains the weight of a central actor, Dominique Florentin, whose manner quickly became a particularly appreciated formal language until his death in 1570/71. Unfortunately, very few works by Florentin survive, and the circumstances of his upbringing and education continue to be the subject of conjecture (he was probably born in Florence at the beginning of the century, he knew Genoa, Mantua, or Rome before intervening as a stucco artist in Fontainebleau from 1540). Alongside one of the rare French sculptors of the Renaissance to be quoted in ancient artistic literature, François Gentil, he played a decisive role in shaping the landscape of Champagne sculpture. However, this acculturation was only made possible by the flexibility of the organization of the workshops, as well as their great number, and was accelerated by an emulation that led them to elaborate formulas of great elegance, likely conceived from models in clay, and marked by a knowledge of the modern rules of architecture and of the principles of perspective in round sculpture. This book participates in the current reassessment of sixteenth-century French art, on which one might also consult the recent catalogue Toulouse Renaissance, edited by Axel Hémery and Pascal Julien.