At the end of the
fifteenth and the
beginning of the
sixteenth centuries,
the French invasion of
Italy brought both
artists and patrons
into closer contact
with the Italian
Renaissance.
The most famous of
the artists who were
lured to France was Leonardo
da Vinci ,
spending the last
three years of his
life (1516-19) at the
court of François I.
From the Loire valley,
which until then had
been his favourite
residence, the French
king moved nearer to
Paris, where he had
several palaces
decorated. Italian
artists were once
again called upon, and
two of them, Rosso
and Primaticcio
, who arrived in
France in 1530 and
1532 respectively,
were to shape the
artistic scene in
France for the rest of
the sixteenth century.
Both artists
introduced to France
the latest Italian
style, Mannerism
, a sometimes anarchic
derivation of the High
Renaissance of
Michelangelo and
Raphael. Mannerism,
with its emphasis on
the fantastic, the
luxurious and the
large-scale
decorative, was
eminently compatible
with the taste of the
court, and it was
first put to the test
in the revamping of
the old Château de
Fontainebleau.
There, a horde of
French painters headed
by the two Italians
came to form what was
subsequently called
the School of
Fontainebleau .
Most French artists
worked at
Fontainebleau at some
point in their career,
or were influenced by
its homogeneous style,
but none stands out as
a personality of any
stature, and for the
most part the painting
of the time was dull
and fanciful in the
extreme.
Antoine Caron
(c1520-c1600), who
often worked for
Catherine de Médicis,
the widow of Henri II,
contrived complicated
allegorical paintings
in which elongated
figures are arranged
within wide,
theatre-like scenery
packed with ancient
monuments and Roman
statues. Even the Wars
of Religion, raging in
the 1550s and 1560s,
failed to rouse French
artists' sense of
drama, and
representations of the
many massacres then
going on were detached
and fussy in tone.
Portraiture tended
to be more inventive.
The portraits of Jean
Clouet
(c1485-1541) and his
son François
(c1510-72), both
official painters to
François I, combined
sensitivity in the
rendering of the
sitter's features with
a keen sense of
abstract design in the
arrangement of the
figure, conveying with
great clarity social
status and giving
clues to the sitter's
profession. Though
influenced by
sixteenth-century
Italian and Flemish
portraits, their work
remains, nonetheless,
very French in its
general sobriety.
