Plate LXVII.
Photo. Giraudon.
MARGOT OF FRANCE.
François Clouet.
Musée Condé.
To face page 238.
Before concluding this chapter on François Clouet attention should be directed to a specially interesting feature about these drawings. Upon the margins, and also on the reverse sides of most of them, are to be found annotations and legends of the utmost historical and iconographic value. Sometimes they appear to be in the handwriting of the artists themselves: often notes with regard to subsequent reproduction in colours; but more often they seem to be the remarks of the connoisseurs and collectors who at different times possessed the drawing—such as was Catherine de Medicis herself. Her handwriting is to be found upon at least sixteen of the drawings in the Musée Condé, easily identified by existing fragments of her letters in the archives at Chantilly and elsewhere. There is, for example, a drawing of Erasmus which had hitherto passed unnoticed until Moreau Nélaton discovered that the Queen had written his name upon it in her own hand. Her autograph is clear enough also on the drawings which present her favourite ladies-in-waiting Hegli[125] and Montchenu and la Romène; whilst she has also annotated the drawings representing Monsieur de S. Valier, “le père de la Grande Senechalle,” and “Monsieur de Nevers,” “le père de Madame de Nevers.” Then upon a drawing of Brissac (so celebrated for his good looks) she notes “brassac depuis maréchal.” Again, “le fu roy de Navarre, Henri,” “Monsieur de Chateaubriand,” “Monsieur de Voldemont,” and “Chandu, capitaine de la porte du Roy.” Besides the sixteen drawings at Chantilly which so obviously bear the Queen’s handwriting, there is as already mentioned in the Deligand Collection a likeness of “Brasseu,” daughter of Diane de Poitiers, and in the Uffizi a drawing representing Queen Claude, “mère du roi Henri,” on both of which we also find Her Majesty’s angular writing. She has corrected, moreover, the title upon one pencil drawing wrongly entitled Madame de Nevers d’Albret into Madame de Vendôme d’Alençon.
Yet by far the larger number of the drawings bear notes in a variety of different handwritings: at Chantilly, the Bibliothèque Nationale, in the Uffizi and in the British Museum (Salting Bequest). M. Moreau Nélaton is strongly of opinion that these notes were all made either by the Queen herself or by secretaries written at her dictation. He is certainly right in regard to one of these, for we can trace the same handwriting in a private letter “a ma cousine Madame la Connetable” signed by the Queen; and again on the margin of the three drawings representing “François Dauphin,” “Marie Royne d’Ecosse,”[126] and “Charles Maximilian d’Orleans” respectively. It is a well-formed caligraphy with a peculiar trick of abbreviating “et” into “&,” which appears both in the letter and in the notes. There is no proof, however, as to who were the other annotators, whether Court secretaries or not. They may just as well, as M. Dimier[127] suggests, be other collectors through whose hands in the course of time the drawings have passed. This much, however, is quite certain: that all are posterior to the drawings themselves. The different handwritings—of which there are at least four, if not five (including that of the Queen), have puzzled Bouchot as much as Dimier and Moreau Nélaton, and all these authorities have their own special theories upon the subject. It is evident that in most cases the notes do identify the persons represented in the drawings upon which they are found, and they are thus of greatest historical value: and more especially is this the case with the drawings at Chantilly (many of which are stained with blotches of colour), since they are the originals from which were derived the copies and portraits found now in other collections.