Goujon, Jean

(c. 1510-c. 1565)

   Sculptor who dominated the field in 16th-century France. Goujon was deeply influenced by the Fontainebleau School established by Rosso Fiorentino and Francesco Primaticcio, as well as the art of Benvenuto Cellini, who was active in France from 1540 until 1545. Goujon arrived in Paris in 1544, and there he worked in collaboration with the architect Pierre Lescot. His Pietà (1544-1545; Paris, Louvre), originally part of the rood screen in the Church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, belongs to this period. The Fontainebleau Mannerist vocabulary is clearly seen in this work, particularly in the use of elegant elongated forms. The deep emotional content of the work is typical of Rosso's art, and the thin, closely arranged folds stem from Cellini. Goujon would again collaborate with Lescot at the Louvre in the 1550s, rendering the caryatids in the Salle des Cariatides and the sculptural decoration on the palace's west façade. Among Goujon's most celebrated works are the nymphs from the Fountain of the Innocents (1547-1549; Paris, Louvre), no longer in situ. The fluid lines and classicized forms in these reliefs again recall the art of the Fontainebleau artists. By the early 1560s, nothing else is heard of Goujon. He is believed to have traveled to Bologna and to have died there in c. 1565.