A second female figure on the tomb, with a child in her arms, has been supposed intended to represent the nurse of the duke; as if the design of the sculptor had been to read a lesson to mortality, by exhibiting the warrior in the helplessness of infancy, in the vigor of manhood, and as a breathless corpse. Some persons, however, consider it as a personification of Charity; others suppose that it represents the Virgin Mary. In the midst was originally an erect statue of De Brezé, decorated with the various symbols of his dignities; but this sinned beyond the hope of redemption against the doctrines of liberty and equality, and it was accordingly removed at the time of the revolution, together with two inscriptions. One of them, which detailed his honors, with the addition that he died July twenty-third, 1531, has recently been recovered by the care of M. Riaux, and is restored to its place. The other inscription and the effigy, it is feared, are irrevocably lost. An equestrian statue in the upper part of the monument was suffered to remain, and, as a record of the military costume of the sixteenth century, I annex a sketch of it. The armorial hearings upon the horse and armor are nearly obliterated.--The pile is surmounted a figure of Temperance; the bridle in whose mouth shews how absurd is allegory, when "submitted to the faithful eye."
[Illustration: Equestrian Figure of the Seneschal de Brezé, in Rouen Cathedral]
Lenoir, who, in his work on the _Musée des Monumens Français_, has treated much at large of the history of Diana of Poitiers, and has figured her own beautiful mausoleum, which he had the merit of rescuing from destruction, pronounces[87] this monument to be from the hand of Jean Cousin, one of the most able sculptors of the French school.
Over the altar in the Lady-Chapel is the only good painting in the cathedral, the _Adoration of the Shepherds_, by Philip de Champagne, a solid, well-colored, and well-grouped picture. Two cherubs in the air are excellently conceived and drawn: the whole is lighted from the infant Christ in the cradle, a _concetto_, which has been almost universally adopted, since the time when Corregio painted his celebrated _Notte_, now at Dresden.