Photo. Giraudon.
FRANÇOIS, DAUPHIN.
Musée Condé.
Corneille de Lyon.
The painter who acquired the old Queen’s special favour after the death of François Clouet was Carron, who made a series of designs (reproduced in tapestry) from the History of Artemisia, in which Catherine herself is represented mourning for Henri II in the guise of the Queen of Caria. A drawing by Carron representing the Duc d’Alençon, her youngest son, on horseback is in the passage of the Tribune at Chantilly.
Pierre Gourdel, Dubois and Bussel, followers of François Clouet, are only known to us by mediocre engravings, but numerous drawings by the Brothers Lagneau have come down to us. These may be met with in the Louvre, in the portfolios at Chantilly and elsewhere. They suffer from an exaggerated taste for realism; and representations of old, wrinkled men and women seem to have been their favourite themes. A good example of their work is the portrait of an Old Man at Dijon, where, however, it is erroneously assigned to Daniel Dumoustier. This latter artist, on the contrary (according to his own statement), took particular pleasure in representing his sitters as younger and more beautiful than they really were. By him there are at Chantilly portraits of Louis XIII (in coloured chalk), of Albert de Gondi Archdeacon of Paris, of Henri Duc de Guise,[130] of the Princess Palatine (the devoted friend of the Grand Condé), and an interesting portrait of Henriette de France in her girlhood. Numerous other examples of his work are in the Louvre; and he is certainly the most important of the artists who followed François Clouet. In company with his sons Pierre and Nicolas he carried on the art of pencil drawing in France from the sixteenth well into the seventeenth century. Saint-Simon speaks of him as a man who was fond of books and knew both Italian and Spanish. He lived in the Louvre, and throughout his lifetime retained his hold upon public taste.
There is yet one more artist-family to be mentioned: that of the Quesnels, who were held by the two first Bourbon Kings, Henri IV and Louis XIII, in the same high estimation as were the Clouets by the Valois. There are two portraits at Chantilly (Cabinet Clouet) which are attributed to François Quesnel: that of the Duc de Sully and of his brother Philippe de Bethune. These paintings markedly display the strong tendencies to realism so characteristic of the Brothers Quesnel.