The two great schools of Christian painting in Europe were born, grew and flourished in the free cities of Flanders in the north, and in the free cities of Italy in the south. French masters, working in the provincial centres of Tours, Dijon, Moulins, Aix and Avignon, were inevitably subdued by the dominant and powerful masters of the north and south, and how far they succeeded in impressing a local and racial individuality on their works is, and long will be, a fruitful theme for constructive artistic criticism. The famous triptych of Moulins, now with many other works attributed to the painter of the Bourbons, known as the Maître de Moulins, who was working between 1480 and 1500, has long been accepted as a work by Ghirlandaio. The well-known painting at the Glasgow Museum, a Prince of Cleves, with his patron saint, St. Victor of Paris, now assigned to the Maître de Moulins, was recently exhibited among the Flemish paintings at Bruges, and has long been attributed to Hugo Van der Goes. The Burning Bush, given to Nicolas Fromont, has been with equal confidence classed as a Flemish work, and even ascribed to Van Eyck; and the Triumph of the Virgin, from Villeneuve-les-Avignon, now on irrefragable evidence assigned to Enguerrand Charonton, has been successively attributed to Van Eyck and Van der Meire. Even if all the paintings which the patriotic bias of enthusiastic critics has attributed to French masters, known or unknown, be accepted, the continuity is broken by many gaps, which can only be filled by assuming, after the fashion of biologists, the existence of “missing links.” Further researches will doubtless elucidate this fascinating controversy.
Among the French Primitifs[171] possessed by the Louvre may be mentioned the Martyrdom of St. Denis, and a Pietà, Nos. 995 and 996, attributed wholly or in part to Malouel, who was working about 1400 for Jean sans Peur at Dijon. A Pietà (No. 998), now attributed to the school of Paris of the late fifteenth century, contains an interesting representation of the Louvre, the abbey of St. Germain des Prés and of Montmartre, and has been ascribed to a pupil of Van Eyck, and later to an Italian painter named Fabrino. By Fouquet (about 1415-1480), the best known of the early French masters, there are portraits of Juvenal des Ursins and Charles VII. Two works (Nos. 1004 and 1005), the portraits of Pierre II., Duke of Bourbon, and of Anne of Beaujean, catalogued under unknown masters, are now assigned by many critics to the Maître de Moulins.[172] Nicholas Froment, who was working about 1480-1500, is represented by admirable portraits (No. 304 a.), of Good King René and Jeanne de Laval, his second wife. Jean Perréal, believed by M. Hulin to be identical with the Maître de Moulins, is also represented by a Virgin and Child between two Donors (No. 1048).
The later master, of Flemish birth, known as Jean Clouet, a painter of great delicacy, simplicity and charm, who died between 1540 and 1541, having spent twenty-five years as court painter of France; his brother, Clouet of Navarre; and his son, François Clouet, who was his assistant during the ten later years of his life, are all more or less doubtfully represented. Nos. 126 and 127, portraits of Francis I., are attributed to Jean Clouet, or Jehannet as this elusive personality is sometimes known; Nos. 128 and 129, two admirable portraits of Charles IX. and his queen Elizabeth of Austria, to François Clouet; No. 134, a portrait of Louis de St. Gellais, is ascribed to Clouet of Navarre. Other portraits executed at this period will be found on the walls, and are of profound interest to the student of French history.