Death of Jean Goujon

This nineteenth-century illustration by Beyle, titled “Death of Jean Goujon,” depicts the legendary death of the sculptor Jean Goujon, traditionally associated with the violence of the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572. The scene shows him being struck while working in a richly decorated architectural setting, surrounded by tools, reliefs, and draperies that emphasize his identity as an artist. The composition dramatizes the brutal interruption of creation by political and religious violence. It belongs to the nineteenth-century historical imagination, which often linked major artistic figures of the French Renaissance to tragic episodes of national history.