Michelangelo was without doubt the greatest sculptor of the Renaissance. His work, which was traditional and yet individual, derives its form and its technique from the classic and yet is full of an intensity of feeling that belong only to himself and to his own day. His heroic nudes express profoundly the pathos and futility of man's life; yet, while they speak a philosophic lan guage, they embody also a physical beauty that is even more eloquent. The Captive, in the Louvre, most perfectly realizes these qualities, but they are present also in the marvellous figures of the Medici Tombs, Florence, and in the Seated Moses, which was to have been a part of a colossal mausoleum for Julius II. His David, Florence, is sensationally realistic and his Pieta, in St. Peter's, Rome, anticipates in its superb pictorialism, its amazing and dramatic technique, and its tender sentiment the greatest characteristics of the baroque sculpture of the following cen tury.
Among the later renaissance sculptors Jacobo Sansovino (1486 is notable for the technical excellence and classic grace of his figure sculpture in the Loggetta of Venice ; Benvenuto Cellini (150o-1571) for his excellent decorative work and especially for the Perseus, in the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence; and Giovanni Bologna (1524-1608) for his colossal fountains and the amazing dexterity which he often shows in the presentment of the human figure.
Outside of Italy, the Renaissance was most at home in France.
Not only the subject-matter of classic sculpture, but also that Hellenic feeling for grace which informs also the best work of the Italian school, became thoroughly a part of the French tradi tion. In France the Renaissance is not, as in England, an alien mode. Jean Goujon (1510?-1566?) was a master of draperies and of the decorative rendering of the feminine form, not sur passed in the world. In his decorations for Pierre Lescot, Louvre, Paris, he has combined the most exquisite sensuous loveliness with classic restraint and dignity. Germain Pilon (1535-1590) though more realistic than Goujon attains at times a greater monumentality.
In Germany, where the religious wars prevented the extensive growth of sculpture, the new spirit met with more resistance. Renaissance ideas are fused with the Gothic in the decorative work of Peter Vischer of Nuremberg (146o-1529) and of his son Peter Vischer the Younger (1487-1528). England employed a few Italian artists; the Tomb of Henry VII. in the Chapel of Henry VII., Westminster Abbey, by Pietro Torrigiano (1472– 1528), is one of numerous examples which were to prove a mine of ornamental motives to later decorators. Spain developed a more vigorous Renaissance tradition, sending her artists to Italy to study under the greatest masters. Of these Bartolome Ordonez and Alonso Berruguete, both pupils of Michelangelo, are the most celebrated.