AETATIS SVE XLIII 1562
he is depicted three-quarter-length life size, dressed in a doublet of black velvet with lace insertions, with a herbarium. The picture hangs at present on a screen in Gallery XV.
Another unquestionably authentic work is the charming Portrait of Elizabeth of Austria, Wife of Charles IX. (No. 130), of which a preparatory study in chalk, dated 1571, is to be found in the Paris Print Cabinet. The face is drawn and modelled with rare delicacy, and every detail of the richly jewelled gold brocade costume is rendered with faultless and miniature-like precision.
Yet another precious little picture from the same hand is the small three-quarter-length Portrait of Charles IX., King of France (No. 128), which is a reduced replica of the signed life-size version in the Vienna Museum. Both pictures were originally in Vienna, whence they were removed by Napoleon in 1809, but only the larger picture was taken back to the Austrian capital in 1815.
The Portrait of Claude de Beaune (No. 133a) is possibly another, though not very important, work from the master’s own brush; but neither the Portrait of François de Lorraine, Duc de Guise (No. 131), nor the Portrait of Henri II., King of France (No. 129), are of sufficient merit to justify their attribution to François Clouet; whilst the portraits of Charles IX. (No. 132) and Elizabeth of Austria (No. 133) are frankly admitted to be copies after originals by the master.
CORNEILLE DE LYON
François Clouet’s chief rival in royal favour was another Netherlander domiciled in France, who, from the city in which he spent the years of his greatest activity, has become known as Corneille de Lyon. He was apparently the head of a busy workshop at Lyons, from which were turned out large numbers of thinly painted, daintily touched-in three-quarter profile heads, executed almost transparently on a light ground. although these portraits are now generally described under the generic name of Corneille de Lyon, only the best among them can be accepted as the master’s own handiwork. Room XI. at the Louvre contains several insignificant and badly repainted portraits of this type. They are of no importance, as they are only copies or studio productions. Corneille became naturalised in 1547, in which year he was appointed Painter to the King. He died about 1575.
THE SCHOOL OF FONTAINEBLEAU
The death of Perréal and Bourdichon a few years after the accession of François i. had left France without any artists of note, save the few foreign portrait painters employed by the Court. François i., an enthusiastic art lover, who had seen and admired the great Italian masters in their own country, spared no effort to attract the leading masters to France. We have seen that he actually succeeded in securing the services of the aged Leonardo da Vinci, and that for a brief span Andrea del Sarto worked at his Court. When, about 1530, that art-loving king turned his attention to the decoration of his palace at Fontainebleau, there was not a single painter of French nationality, or artist living in France, who could have been entrusted with so formidable a task, and François i. was again forced to enlist the best Italian painters available for the purpose. Having first engaged Pellegrino and other third-rate artists, he succeeded, in 1531, in inducing the Florentine Rosso to undertake the execution and supervision of the decorative work at Fontainebleau; and in the following year the Bolognese Primaticcio entered his service. Both belong to the Italian eclectic schools, and only concern us here in so far as their example led to the founding of what has been called the “School of Fontainebleau,” which was really an offshoot of the Italian eclectic school.
In the early years of Rosso’s and Primaticcio’s activity at Fontainebleau practically all the work was done by these two painters and their Italian assistants, whose band was joined by Niccolò dell’ Abbate. It was only after the death of François i. that the teaching of the Italian eclectics at Fontainebleau produced a generation of French artists capable of doing justice to the decorative tasks for which an ever-increasing demand had meanwhile arisen. That the Louvre is singularly poor in works by these painters may partly be accounted for by the comparative scarcity of easel pictures painted by artists who were chiefly employed for interior decoration. There is no reason for crediting any Frenchmen with the three anonymous school of Fontainebleau pictures in Gallery XI.: Diana (No. 1013), The Chastity of Scipio (No. 1014), and The Toilet of Venus (No. 1014a). The Chastity of Scipio in particular would appear to be the work of Niccolò dell’ Abbate.