PILON, Germain
(b. 1525/30, Paris, d. 1590, Paris)

Monument to Valentine Balbiani (detail)

1583
Marble
Musée du Louvre, Paris

20 years after the monument to Henri and Catherine de' Medici, Pilon was to repeat the cadaver theme in a relief on the monument to Valentine Balbiani, wife of the Chancellor René de Birague. The treatment here is closely related to that of the royal figures, though possibly more acidly dynamic.