Francesco Primaticcio

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(b Bologna, 1504-5; d Paris, between 2 March and 14 Sept 1570). Italian painter, draughtsman, stuccoist and architect, active in France. He was in France from 1532 and was the most influential Italian artist there in the 16th century. With Rosso Fiorentino, he developed a style of interior decoration, combining Mannerist painting and stucco relief, that became known as the FONTAINEBLEAU SCHOOL.

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The Italian painter, sculptor, and architect Francesco Primaticcio (1504-1570) was instrumental in transplanting mannerist palace decoration from Italy to France and in giving French mannerist art its individual character.

Francesco Primaticcio was born in Bologna on April 30, 1504. He worked in Mantua from 1525 or 1526 until 1532 under Giulio Romano. In the Palazzo del Te, Giulio carried out one of the most elaborate programs of mannerist art in all Italy. He represented a series of mythological scenes and motifs in frescoes and stucco reliefs in a decorative style that his teacher, Raphael, had created only a few years earlier.

In 1532 Primaticcio was called to France to work on the decorations of the royal palace of Francis I at Fontainebleau. He came equipped with all the things Giulio Romano had taught him: a rich vocabulary of classical nymphs and satyrs and Roman gods and goddesses plus the fashionable new mode of paintings combined with stuccoes. Giorgio Vasari in his Lives (2d ed. 1568) states that "the first works of stucco done in France and the first frescoes of any account originated with Primaticcio." Together with II Rosso, Primaticcio developed this tradition in the form that set the general direction of French palace decoration for the next 150 years.

In 1541 the King made Primaticcio one of his chamberlains. Three years later he appointed him abbot of St-Martin at Troyes, a position that carried no duties or responsibilities but an abundance of prestige and money. Meanwhile the King commissioned him to decorate one room after another at Fontainebleau with his paintings and stucco figures.

Gradually, under the influence of Parmigianino, Primaticcio's style began to change. His figures, which until now had had normal proportions, started to become fantastically elongated. Tiny heads appeared on top of long, thin, curving necks. Arms and legs tapered down to tiny hands and feet. These strange creatures lounged languidly and effortlessly in poses that were always elegant though sometimes bizarre. This figure type that Primaticcio created at Fontainebleau was endlessly repeated by French artists throughout the remainder of the 16th century and even into the 17th.

Primaticcio's works in architecture are much less well known. The most striking is the small Grotto of the Pines (ca. 1543) at Fontainebleau. Here sculptured giants appear to grow out of rough-hewn stones, and at the top of each arch the keystone seems about to slip out of place, giving the impression - quite intentionally-that the whole structure might at any moment collapse. Primaticcio designed the circular chapel for Henry II and his wife, Catherine de Médicis (ca. 1560; destroyed), at St-Denis and added a wing, the Aile de la Belle Cheminée (1568), to the palace at Fontainebleau. He died in Paris sometime between May 15 and Sept. 14, 1570.

Further Reading

The main work on Primaticcio is in French: Louis Dimier, Le Primatice (1928). Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (many editions), contains a good although incomplete biography of Primaticcio. The best modern account is in Anthony Blunt, Art and Architecture in France, 1500-1700 (1953).

Italian painter, sculptor, and architect who was important as a bringer of High Renaissance and Mannerist design to Northern Europe. He worked with Giulio Romano in Mantua (1526–31), and then at Fontainebleau from 1532 for François I^er where he designed the Aile de la Belle Cheminée (1568) and other parts, including the heavily rusticated Grotte de Pins (c.1543) in a style reminiscent of Giulio Romano's work. He also designed the Valois mortuary-chapel at St-Denis with obvious influences from Bramante, da Sangallo, and Vignola (1563—destroyed). Vasari credited him with the first stucco ornament and the first frescoes of any account in France: certainly his combination of paintings with stucco decorations was very influential.

Bibliography

• Blunt (1982)
• Chilvers Osborne & Farr (eds.) (1988)
• Jane Turner (1982)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

"Primaticcio" redirects here. For the Italian wine grape also known as Primaticcio, see Sangiovese.

Odysseus and Penelope, 1563

Francesco Primaticcio (April 30, 1504 – 1570) was an Italian Mannerist painter, architect and sculptor who spent most of his career in France.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Gallery 3 Notes 4 References 5 External links

Biography

Born in Bologna, he trained under Giulio Romano in Mantua and became a pupil of Innocenzo da Imola, executing decorations at the Palazzo Te before securing a position in the court of Francis I of France in 1532.

Together with Rosso Fiorentino he was one of the leading artists to work at the Chateau Fontainebleau (where he is grouped with the so-called "First School of Fontainebleau") spending much of his life there. Following Rosso's death in 1540, Primaticcio took control of the artistic direction at Fontainebleau, furnishing the painters and stuccators of his team, such as Nicolò dell'Abate, with designs. He made cartoons for tapestry-weavers and, like all 16th-century court artists, was called upon to design elaborate ephemeral decorations for masques and fêtes, which survive only in preparatory drawings and, sometimes, engravings. François trusted his eye and sent him back to Italy on buying trips in 1540 and again in 1545. In Rome, part of Primaticcio's commission was to take casts of the best Roman sculptures in the papal collections, some of which were cast in bronze to decorate the parterres at Fontainebleau.^[1]

Primaticcio retained his position as court painter to François' heirs, Henri II and François II. His masterpiece, the Salle d'Hercule at Fontainebleau, occupied him and his team from the 1530s to 1559.

Primaticcio's crowded Mannerist compositions and his long-legged canon of beauty influenced French art for the rest of the century.

Primaticcio turned to architecture towards the end of his life, his greatest work being the Valois Chapel at the Abbey of Saint-Denis, although this was not completed until after his death and was destroyed in 1719.

Gallery

Alexander tames Bucephalus

The rape of Helena, 1530-1539

Ceiling at Chaalis Abbey

Annunciation at Chaalis

Notes

1. ^ The project, which brought a first virtual confrontation with Roman sculpture to French patrons and artists, is surveyed in detail by S. Pressouyre, "Les fontes de Primaticaà fontainebleau" Bulletin Monumentale 27 (1969):223-38. The precious moulds, at the instigation of Leone Leoni were sent to the Habsburg court in the Spanish Netherland in 1550 and, after serving to make a set of stucco casts for Charles V's daughter Mary of Hungary, Queen-governess of the Netherlands at Binche (where they were destroyed by Henri II's troops in 1554) they were probably forwarded to Leoni in Milan. (Bruce Boucher, "Leone Leoni and Primaticcio's Moulds of Antique Sculpture" The Burlington Magazine 123 No. 934, (January 1981), pp. 23-26).

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References

The Oxford Dictionary of Art, ISBN 0-19-280022-1

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Francesco Primaticcio

External links

• Entry in 'Art-cyclopedia'
• Château de Fontainebleau (in English)

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