JEAN FOUQUET
Of far greater importance is the school which flourished at Tours, for here at last we meet with clearly marked personalities whose names are definitely connected with extant works, even if the character of their art remains essentially Flemish. The best known artist of this group is Jean Fouquet (c. 1425–1480?), who was Painter to Charles vii. and Louis xi. and wrought the wonderful miniatures in the famous Book of Hours at Chantilly. He was distinctly more successful as an illuminator than as a painter, although his masterpiece, the Chevalier diptych (of which one wing is at the Antwerp and the other at the Berlin Museum), is a work of considerable merit. The Louvre owns an interesting painting from his brush—the portrait of the corpulent Chancellor of France, Guillaume Juvénal des Ursins, Baron de Trainel (No. 288). He is depicted in three-quarter profile to the right, dressed in a fur-edged red robe, with hands folded in prayer, before an open book on a cushion. The pilasters in the rich architectural setting terminate in two bears supporting the Chancellor’s coat of arms. This important picture was bought in 1835 for the sum of £36. It was then attributed to Michael Wohlgemuth!
Fouquet is known to have painted Charles vii. in 1444; but the Portrait of Charles VII., King of France (No. 289), with the inscription along the top, “le très glorieux roy de france,” and below, “charles septiesme de ce nom,” cannot certainly be identified with the picture referred to in contemporary records. The Louvre picture was acquired in 1838 for £18.
The name of Jean Fouquet has for a long time been connected with the admirable little portrait known as The Man with the Wineglass (No. 1000, formerly No. 1000a). It was shown as a work of Fouquet at the Exhibition of French Primitives; and the attribution is still maintained by many French critics, although in the official Catalogue the picture is given to an Unknown French painter of the fifteenth century known as “The Master of 1456” from a dated picture in the Liechtenstein Gallery in Vienna. The whole style of the painting would, however, point to German origin, the only thing French about the picture being the type of the personage represented. It is interesting to note that this portrait, which was bought from a Paris dealer in 1906 for £7600, was formerly in the collection of Count Wilczek in Vienna, and was bought by its former owner at Ulm. It is probably the work of a painter of the Swabian school.