French Renaissance – The Artistic Adventure of Mankind

French Renaissance painting became Italianized even more slowly than architecture and sculpture did. During this period, only one French painter can be mentioned who is known to have traveled to Italy for a long period of time (1445-1448), and who learned the Italian style of painting of the middle of the 15th century. He studied with the Florentine architect Filarete in Rome and named himself: “the good painter of King Louis XI, Jean Fouquet”. He was an illuminator of manuscripts (Jacques d’Armagnac’s Flavius Josephus: The Jewish Antiquities (ca. 1465), Estienne Chevalier’s Book of Hours (1452-1460), and the Munich’s Boccaccio: On the Fates of Famous Men and Women (1458), and also painted oil portraits following techniques of Flemish painters.

An illuminated page of the **Flavius Josephus: The Jewish Antiquities** manuscript in 2 volumes, illuminated by Jean Fouquet, ca. 1465, 430 x 290 mm (folio size) (*Bibliothèque Nationale*, Paris). Titus Flavius Josephus was a scholar who witnessed the sack of Jerusalem by the Romans. His most important works were The Jewish War (ca. 75) and The Jewish Antiquities (ca. 94). The 20 books of his ‘Jewish Antiquities’ were intended to describe the Jewish culture beginning with the world’s creation down to the time of Emperor Nero, all partly relying on Biblical sources. The 11 large-scale miniatures of this 15th century version of the manuscript were executed by Jean Fouquet and his assistants, the miniatures were commissioned by Jacques d’Armagnac, Duc of Nemours between 1470 and 1476. This particular miniature depicts the Taking of Jerusalem. In the center of the illustration soldiers set fire to the great Temple of Solomon. In keeping with the Old Testament description, the temple is cubic in form, but the construction is totally French Gothic in style.

A miniature from the **Book of Hours of Éstienne Chevalier**, manuscript illuminated by Jean Fouquet, 1452-1460, 201 x 148 mm (*Musée Condé*, Chantilly, France). Éstienne Chevalier was secretary and finance minister to King Charles VII of France. As one of those bourgeois court officials who rose in rank and influence in Paris, he acquired considerable wealth. The miniatures of this Book of Hours were by Jean Fouquet. These illustrations include landscapes typical of the early Italian Renaissance, along with depictions of palaces and castles typical of the France of the time. With Fouquet, the great age of French illumination of manuscripts came to an end. The appearance of artists like Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden meant that the center of gravity of European art shifted instead to Flanders and the Netherlands. This particular illustration shows the miniature of The Annunciation. This miniature was produced to illuminate the *‘Matins*‘, the specific prayer for the beginning of the liturgical day.

Miniature from **Boccaccio: On the Fates of Famous Men and Women**, manuscript illuminated by Jean Fouquet, 1458, 400 x 290 mm (*Bayerische Staatsbibliothek*, Munich). Boccaccio offered his worldview in the moral glorification of outstanding personalities in his ‘On the Fates of Famous Men and Women’, a book which contains the unhappy destinies of famous men and women, a book that by the 15th century was a favorite reading of the nobility. The illuminations were by Fouquet and talented members of his workshop. This particular illustration is of Fouquet’s frontispiece (folio 2 verso), and is the largest and most magnificent miniature in the Munich Boccaccio codex. It depicts a grand scene, which has nothing to do with the actual content of the book. It represents the small figure of King Charles VII of France on a raised, canopied seat from which he presides over a trial held in the Vendôme in 1458.

Fouquet spent most of his life in Tours and was recognized as a great artist by his contemporaries. He was the creator of the Loire school, from which the great portrait painters of the 16th century arose. Fouquet’s portraits on wood panel are masterpieces that show sitters penetrated by a calm serenity while covered with the bombastic draperies of Flemish Gothic: Charles VII, Jouvenel des Ursins and, above all, the wonderful Virgin and Child surrounded by Angels, with the features of Agnès Sorel, prototype of the feminine beauty of the time. Fouquet died around 1480, before the arrival of the first Italian painters.

**Portrait of Charles VII of France**, oil on wood, by Jean Fouquet, ca. 1445, 86 x 72 cm (*Musée du Louvre*, Paris). The king is portrayed between drawn curtains. His thin, ascetic face, melancholy eyes, and puritan simplicity are evidence of the profound psychological penetration of the painter and the economy of the means used to express it. The blue hat is adorned with a V-shaped gold pattern; and this is practically the only trace of pomp in the painting. His simple dark red velvet cover is bordered with brown fur at the neck and cuffs. Fouquet has painted the king in three-quarters profile and nothing but the inscription “*le trés victorieux roy de France*” (‘the very victorious king of France’) exclaims that this was the ruler who brought the Hundred Years’ War to a triumphant end. This is Fouquet’s most mediaeval in spirit portrait.

**Portrait of Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins**, oil on wood, by Jean Fouquet, ca. 1455, 93 x 73 cm (*Musée du Louvre*, Paris). The sitter was a powerful lord, the Chancellor of France of both Charles VII and Louis XI, one of the leading figures of France. The background with Renaissance architecture displays an Italian influence. Against this background the monumental figure of the Chancellor kneels in prayer before a lectern, on which a great folio lies open on a cushion of red, white, and yellow stripes. The red of his robe, trimmed with brown fur at the neck and sleeves, is reflected in the heavy, fleshy face of the Chancellor, on his thin lips, and on the head, which combines an overall impression of strength and dignity. The art of Tours, the city where Fouquet lived, was halfway between Italian realism, which permeates the face of this character, and the elegant stylization typical of the art of Flanders, which inspired the folds, still Gothic in style, of Jouvenal’s rich clothes.

**Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels** (right panel of the Melun Diptych), oil on wood, by Jean Fouquet, ca. 1450, 93 x 85 cm (*Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten*, Antwerp, Belgium). This is the right wing of a diptych, originally located in Melun (France). The slender figure of the Virgin appears seated on an elaborate gold throne with one breast bare, a breast-feeding Madonna, but here the feeding has stopped. She has the bulging shaved forehead fashionable for women at the period the panel was painted. Her face and skin as well as the body of baby Jesus are a pale grey-white, as if painted in *grisaille*. The Madonna wears a blue dress, white mantle, and a jewel-encrusted crown. Baby Jesus makes a pointing gesture to the left with his left hand at the patron and the saint figures of the left panel (see picture below). The throne, sumptuously adorned with marble panels, pearls, precious stones, and gold, is surrounded by cherubs painted in vivid red and blue, which greatly contrast with the pale skin of the Virgin and child; their figures, recalling two-dimensional decorations, completely fill the background. The extraordinarily fashionable and somewhat frivolous appearance of this female figure makes a bold statement and strongly contrasts with traditional representations of the Queen of Heaven in the act of breastfeeding, where the actual bare breasts are not represented as a prominent element of the painting. The unnatural colors have been attributed to represent the heraldic colors of the king, being red, white, and blue. The Virgin is believed to be an idealized portrait of Agnès Sorel, mistress of King Charles VII, who died two years before the painting was completed. Agnès Sorel was the prototype of the feminine beauty of the time. In this painting Fouquet didn’t represent reality but rather idealized it based on geometric volumes and unreal colors.

**Melun Diptych**, oil on wood, by Jean Fouquet, ca. 1450, 93 x 85 cm (*Staatliche Museen*, Berlin). The left panel, representing the figures of **Éstienne** Chevalier with St. Stephen, shows the traditional figure of the donor, the French Ambassador to England and later the Treasurer to Charles VII of France, in prayer next to his patron saint, Stephen. The saint, wearing a deacon’s robe, is holding a book, on which a jagged stone is lying, as a symbol of his martyrdom. The formal architecture in the background is in the Italian Renaissance style. On the wall, receding in perspective, the name Éstienne Chevalier is inscribed several times. The donor and the saint were looking towards the figure of the Madonna located on the right wing of the diptych (see picture before).

The influence of Italian art in French painting occurred not only through the Italian colonies of Amboise and Fontainebleau, but also through the immigration of famous painters. François I brought to his court Andrea del Sarto and Leonardo da Vinci; the former stayed briefly in France and Leonardo died in Cloux, near Amboise, on May 2, 1519, two years after his arrival in France, a circumstance that explains why no French building retains traces of his works.

The real Italian influence came to fruition when François I and then Henry II organized grandiose decorating works at the Château de Fontainebleau. The Florentine Rosso Fiorentino arrived in 1530 and two years later the Bolognese Francesco Primaticcio did so. Both grouped around themselves a large number of French painters who formed along with them what has been called the School of Fontainebleau. Rosso died in 1540, but the Primaticcio continued working for almost 40 years until his death in 1570. To the style that was created in the school of Fontainebleau, Rosso contributed certain reminiscences of Michelangelo, the Primaticcio a languor derived from the art of Raphael, and Nicolò dell’Abate (arrived in 1552) a sophisticated grace reminiscent of the figures of the Parmigianino.

Thus Fontainebleau became one of the main focuses of European mannerism with the graceful and elongated line of its female figures and with an intellectualized fantasy that selected voluptuous mythological subjects to represent them with a subtle sensuality that can almost be described as frigid. Without blushing, the ladies of the Valois court disputed the honor of being recognized under the figures of the naked and complacent goddesses the artists painted. This cold eroticism of Fontainebleau produced celebrated works such as Diana the Huntress (Louvre), whose silhouette is almost that of a young boy, the Allegory of Peace (Museo Nazionale del Bargello), the portrait of Diane de Poitiers (Kunstmuseum Basel) and Gabrielle d ´Estrées and her sister the Duchess of Villars (Louvre), all works in which the preciousness of details and frigid and elegant interpretation of the female nude are mixed with a kind of classical erudition that strongly recalls the contemporary poetry of Ronsard and the group of the Pléiade (La Pléiade – 16th century). Among the French painters of the Fontainebleau school was Antone Caron and the two Jean Cousins, father and son. The latter, who died around 1594, was probably the author of the two surprising half figures of Gabrielle d’Estrées and her sister the Duchess of Villars.

**Diana the Huntress**, oil on canvas, by a master of the School of Fontainebleau, 1550-1560, 192 x 133 cm (*Musée du Louvre*, Paris). The figure of Diana is supposed to be an allegoric portrait of Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of King Henry II. The style of the painting shows the influence of the Italian painters (Rosso and Primaticcio) who worked during the decorative works of the castle of Fontainebleau. In its linear elegance the painting exemplifies the French version of the Northern Mannerist style that was introduced to France by Italian artists such as Rosso Fiorentino and Francesco Primaticcio in the 1530s, mirroring the Italian Mannerism. The nude figure of Diana carries a bow and a quiver of arrows, and is accompanied by a dog. In her hair is an ornament in the shape of a crescent moon, an attribute of the goddess. The subtle mannerism of the school of Fontainebleau already shows all its characteristics in this painting by an unknown author. Diana’s elongated silhouette, almost reminiscent of a young boy, and the compact, precise pictorial style of the painting, respond to a transformation of the Italian mannerism imported by Rosso and Primaticcio into a kind of precious frigidity.

**The Allegory of Peace** (or ‘Diane de Poitiers holding a dove’), oil on canvas, by a master of the School of Fontainebleau, 1500’s, (*Museo Nazionale del Bargello*, Florence, Italy).

**Portrait of Diane de Poitiers**, tempera on wood, by a master of the School of Fontainebleau, ca. 1590, 115 × 98.5 cm (*Kunstmuseum Basel*, Belgium).

**Gabrielle d’Estrées and her Sister the Duchess of Villars**, oil on canvas, by a master of the School of Fontainebleau, ca. 1595, 96 x 125 cm (*Musée du Louvre*, Paris). The subject of this painting is mysterious. It is assumed to be an allusion to the birth of César de Bourbon, son of Henry IV and her mistress, Gabrielle d’Estrées. This painting is perhaps the most recognized example of the cold eroticism typical of the school of Fontainebleau. This work, currently attributed to Jean Cousin the Younger, allows us to see to what extent the lessons from the works of Parmigianino were exaggerated throughout the 16th century, a fact that is seen in the sophisticated grace of fresco paintings by Niccolò dell’Abate, a mannerist Italian painter that worked in the *Château de Fontainebleau* as a member of the decorating team under the direction of Primaticcio and that in turn trained many of the painters and decorators associated to the school of Fontainebleau. The graceful and elongated line of these figures and their intellectualized fantasy correspond to the same guidelines established in the erudite and artificial poetry of Ronsard, a rigorous contemporary poet.

But the Valois’ chamber painters were the Clouets, who remained oblivious to the novelties of style introduced by the Fontainebleau school. The first of them, Jean Clouet (ca. 1485-1541) came from Brussels. He was, then, Flemish, and thus we can say that with their presence in France, the Clouets continued the tradition of the secular relationship between French art and that of Flanders and Burgundy. Jean Clouet was succeeded by his son François (ca. 1516-1572). Jean was valet de chambre and painter to King François I, and was known at court as Maître Jean, Jeanet, or simply Janet. The renown he enjoyed made him indispensable when a painter was needed to portray members of the royal family. By him we have an oil portrait of Diane de Poitiers, still in Flemish style. However, most of the portraits we have of the Valois aren’t by Janet, but by his son François. He appeared to have studied the paintings by Holbein and produced a multitude of court portraits of the last members of the Valois. Like Jean Goujon, he knew how to wonderfully interpret the French soul. Ronsard called François Clouet l’honneur de notre France (‘the honor of our France’). In his last drawings made with black chalk with touches of sanguine, Clouet produced wonders of French elegance.

**Diane de Poitiers in younger years**, black chalk and sanguine, by Jean Clouet, early 16th century (*Musée Condé*, Chantilly, France).

**Portrait of Marguerite of Navarre**, oil on oak panel, by Jean Clouet, ca. 1527, 514 x 598 cm (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, United Kingdom). Marguerite was the sister of King François I of France. Here, Clouet portrayed her against a red patterned brocade background with a contrasting green draped ledge. The cupid brooch worn by Marguerite on her hat and the prominently displayed ring suggest the portrait may have been painted to celebrate her marriage to the King of Navarre in 1527. The meaning of the parrot is uncertain. It could symbolize marital chastity, but it may also have a family significance. Other symbolic allusions may be found in the decorative golden knots on her headdress which resemble daisies, ‘*marguerites*‘ in French.

**Portrait of François I, King of France**, oil on wood, by Jean Clouet, 1525-1530, 96 x 74 cm (*Musée du Louvre*, Paris). François I was always eager to present himself in a setting of great splendor. This portrait by Jean Clouet had an important role in popularize this. Here, the artist shows François I dressed in opulent Renaissance apparel; the traditional insignia of royal majesty (crowns, orbs) are not present, but crowns are woven in to the expensive red damask behind the figure of the king. This painting is considered as one of the masterpieces of Renaissance portraiture. The king, in half figure, wears a cap studded with pearls and encircled with white feathers. His magnificent black and white striped satin *doublet* (padded jacket) is lavishly embroidered in gold. A medal of St. Michael is suspended on a gold chain around his neck. His right hand, holding gloves, rests on a table covered with a green velvet; his left on a magnificent sword. His narrowed blue eyes, his shrewd glance, and facial expression give a singular attraction, almost a malicious gesture. The art of Jean Clouet was totally removed from the cold sensuality of the art produced by the school of Fontainebleau.

The French art of the Valois period didn’t reveal any genius of great magnitude such as those we find in Italy in the same time period. But the castles of the Loire, the painting of the Fontainebleau school, the sculpture of Jean Goujon, and the portraits by the Clouets have something that makes them precious: they reveal the French spirit like no other artistic manifestation did before. This seems an exaggeration, for to France we owe the Gothic style in architecture and sculpture, and the excellence of the French cathedrals with their statuary might be thought to be considered the supreme result of the French artistic genius. But in the centuries of the Middle Ages that we call the ‘Gothic’ centuries, France was something more than ‘France’ because she personified Europe; it was the European West that has chosen France as universal site.

**The Bath of Diana**, oil on panel, by François Clouet, 1550s, 133 x 192 cm (*Musée des Beaux-Arts*, Rouen, France). This mythological scene represents Diana surrounded by nymphs and satyrs. The left background is dominated by the imaginary equestrian portrait of Henri II.

**Portrait of **François** I, King of France**, oil on wood, by François Clouet, ca. 1540, 27 x 22 cm (*Galleria degli Uffizi*, Florence).

**Portrait of Charles IX**, sanguine and black chalk, by François Clouet, 1560s, 335 x 225 mm (The Hermitage, St. Petersburg). This drawing shows the king as a young man. François Clouet, son of Jean Clouet, was a painter to four kings: François I, Henry II, François II, and Charles IX. This portrait, which captures the youthful reflexivity of Charles IX, shows the great skill this artist had with the treatment of pencil. Only 54 of these drawings by him have survived, but there is evidence that, following the fashion of his time so ingrained in the Valois court, he made many, in the order of hundreds.

In the time of the Valois, French art seems perhaps more “French” than it was in the time of the Capetians and that will be so in the period of the Bourbons. The architecture of the castles of the Loire region, the Louvre of Henri II, and especially Chambord, can only be conceived in France.