london143 Plaster Cast The NYMPH OF FONTAINEBLEAU after bronze original by BENVENUTO CELLINI (1500-1571) in the Musée du Louvre, Paris FLORENTINE; commissioned 1542 Part of a scheme for the principal entrance to the palace at Fontainebleau commissioned from Cellini by Francois I of France. Cellini intended the subject of the lunette to be both an allegory of Fontainebleau and to show the stag, a device of Francois I, as a reference to the king. Above the Nymph of Fontainebleau, there were to have been two torch bearing Victory figures crowned by a salamander, the emblem of the king. The gate was to have been supported by two great satyrs. Due to the death of the king in 1547 this project was left unfinished. The satyrs, executed as models, were never cast and the pose of one of them is recorded in a drawing in the Ian Woodner family collection in New York and in a related bronze in a private collection in Geneva. The Nymph of Fontainebleau was never installed and was subsequently presented by Henri II of France to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers who placed it, together with the Victories, over the entrance to the Chateau d'Anet. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Nymph of Fontainebleau was replaced by a cast at Anet and the original transferred to the Louvre. The Victory figures were lost by the end of the nineteenth century and are now known only through casts in the Louvre.