- Juste family
Juste is the name conventionally applied to a family of Italian sculptors. Their real name was Betti, originally from
San Martino a Mensola , nearFlorence . Giusto Betti, whose name was afterwards given to the whole family, and Andrea are the first two known to us. Neither seems to have gone out of Italy. But Andrea had three sons - Antonio or Antoine Juste (1479-1519), Andrew (born about 1483), and John or Jean Juste, the best known of the house (1485-1549) - all of whom early emigrated to France and figured prominently during the Renaissance. WithFrancesco Laurana they stand as the most brilliant representatives and the most active emissaries of Italian art beyond the Alps.As early as 1504 the three brothers were in Brittany, at Dol, executing the monument of Bishop
Thomas James . Later, they separated. Antoine worked for theCardinal d'Amboise in the castle ofGaillon ; while Jean, attracted to Tours, spent a few years in the atelier ofMichel Colombe , famous as the sculptor of the "Entombment" in theAbbey of Solesmes . Colombe was the last representative of the Dijon School, founded byClaus Sluter under the first dukes of Burgundy. At his school Jean Juste became imbued with the realism of Flanders, slightly softened and tempered with French delicacy. Through this combination of qualities, he created for himself a style whose charm consisted in its flexibility and complexity. At the death of Michel Colombe (1512) the Justes worked again in concert and inherited his fame.François I of France commissioned them to execute the mausoleum ofLouis XII at St-Denis, and this occupied almost fifteen years (1516-31). But Antoine's share in this work was slight, as he died in 1519. The honour of this work belongs entirely to his brother Jean.The original conception seems to have been
Perréal 's, and yet it was not wholly his. The iconography of tombs was extremely rich in France in the fifteenth century. Its main theme consists of a "gisant " or recumbent effigy of the deceased, laid upon a funeral couch surmounting thesarcophagus , upon the sides of which a procession of mourners is represented. The most celebrated example of this style is the monument ofPhilip the Bold by Claus Sluter, at Dijon (1405), of which there have been several variants, down to the monument ofPhilippe Pot (1480) in theLouvre . The tomb of Louis XII inaugurated a new tradition, or rather a colossal development of the subject. The hero is represented kneeling on acatafalque beneath which the "gisant" appears as a naked, emaciated corpse, "such as death has made it for us".Jean Juste also executed the tombs of
Philippe de Montmorency and ofArtus Gouffier in the church ofOiron (Deux-Sèvres ), that ofJean Rieux , atAncenis , ofThomas Bohier , at St-Saturnin,Tours , and of the AbbéLouis de Crévent at the Trinité,Vendôme . He had one son, John the second, the last sculptor of the family, who died in 1577, and of whom some works are to be seen in the churches of Oiron andChampeaux .References
*DEVILLE, Comptes de Gaillon (1850);
*"Nouvelles archives de l'Art français" (1872 and 1876);
*MONTAIGLON. La famille des Juste (1876);
*LABORDE, Comptes des bâtiments du roi (1880);
*PALUSTRE, La Renaissance en France, II, 84, 98; III, 86, 91;
*COURAJOD, Leçons professées à l'Ecole du Louvre, II (1901), 667 sqq.;
*VITRY, Michel Colombe (1901), 454 sqq.;
*MÂLE, L'art religieux de la fin du Moyen-Age en France (1909), 472.External links
* [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08571b.htm "Catholic Encyclopedia" article]
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