Jean Fouquet

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(b Tours, c. 1415-20; d Tours, before 8 Nov 1481). French painter and illuminator. He is regarded as the most important French painter of the 15th century and was responsible for introducing Italian Renaissance elements into French painting. Little is known of his life, and, apart from a signed self-portrait medallion (Paris, Louvre), his only authenticated work is the Antiquit?s juda?ques (Paris, Bib. N., MS. fr. 247). A corpus of works by Fouquet has therefore been established on the basis of stylistic criteria, but its exact chronology is uncertain.

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The French court painter and manuscript illuminator Jean Fouquet (ca. 1420-ca. 1480) was the leading 15th-century artist in France and the first painter in northern Europe to be vitally influenced by the Italian Renaissance.

Acritic has aptly referred to Jean Fouquet as "a piece of France personified," so completely does his art reflect the sophisticated French temperament. Born at Tours, the illegitimate son of a priest, Fouquet probably received his early training in Paris as a manuscript illuminator. His leap to fame is attested to by the probability that he accompanied a French mission to Rome in 1446, for the Italian artist Antonio Filarete recorded that Fouquet portrayed Pope Eugenius IV with his two nephews. In Rome, Fouquet would have seen the frescoes (later destroyed) in the Vatican by Fra Angelico, and the style of the famous Florentine had a deep and lasting effect on his own.

When Fouquet returned to France, he opened a workshop in Tours. He received commissions from Charles VII and members of his court and from Louis XI, who made him official court painter in 1474. Fouquet died in Tours before Nov. 8, 1481, when a church document mentions his widow.

Panel Paintings

The earliest of Fouquet's several large panel portraits is probably Charles VII, painted about 1445 before Fouquet's trip to Rome, for it evinces no Italian influence. On the frame the monarch is described as "very victorious," probably a reference to the Truce of Arras, which was in fact one of very few victories enjoyed by the despondent Charles. The portrait is abstractly staged, objective, and unflattering. Fouquet manifested his sober clarity of vision in a self-portrait (ca. 1450; Paris), unusual in being a small, painted enamel roundel and notable as the first preserved independent self-portrait to be made north of the Alps.

About 1450 Fouquet undertook his most famous pair of pictures, the Melun Diptych (now divided between Berlin and Antwerp). On the left panel is Étienne Chevalier, treasurer of France in 1452, being presented by his name saint (Stephen) to the Virgin and Child on the right panel. The donor is placed before the variegated marble walls of a Renaissance palace, and the Madonna in three-quarter length is enthroned in an abstracted space, surrounded by nude, shining, chubby red and blue angels. Giant pearls bedeck the throne and Mary's crown. This image was surely scandalous in its own day, for the Virgin is a recognizable portrait of Agnes Sorel, the King's mistress, shown with a geometrically rounded, exposed breast. Chevalier had worked with Agnes Sorel in governing the shaky kingdom of Charles VII.

Similarly abstract and intellectualized is Fouquet's portrait Guillaume Jouvenal des Ursins (ca. 1455). This chancellor of France kneels in prayer before a highly ornamented wall, the figure placed close to the picture plane for immediacy. One other famous commission is far removed from the courtly milieu: a Descent from the Cross (ca. 1470-1475; Nouans). Monumental figures crowd the large panel, giving the effect of a sculptured frieze against a dark background. There is no overt expression of grief, and the mood of reverential dignity is conveyed in somber tones.

The Miniatures

Fouquet was especially adept in his miniature illustrations for manuscript books. Between 1452 and 1460 the master and his shop made for Chevalier a now-dismembered Book of Hours The miniatures are notable for showing Parisian architectural monuments, and there is a unique illustration of the contemporary staging of a mystery play. The donor's name and initials are decoratively, and pridefully, used throughout the compositions. Chevalier himself attends the anointing of the body of Christ for burial, and again he is shown, as in the Melun Diptych, being presented to the Madonna by St. Stephen. Italianate ornament and marble paneling occur frequently, and there are splendid landscape backgrounds reminiscent of the Loire Valley. Flickering highlights in many miniatures are rendered in gold, a touch of elegance that is typically French. Fouquet and his shop illuminated many other books; chief among them is the Grandes chroniques de France (1458).

Further Reading

The best monographic study of the paintings and miniatures of Fouquet is Paul R. Wescher, Jean Fouquet and His Times (1945; trans. 1947). See also Trenchard Cox, Jehan Foucquet, Native of Tours (1931), and Klaus G. Perls, Jean Fouquet (1939; trans. 1940).

Jean Fouquet, self portrait (1450). The earliest portrait miniature, and possibly the earliest formal self-portrait.^[1]

Jean Fouquet or Jehan Fouquet (1420 - 1481) was the most important French painter of the 15th century, a master of both panel painting and manuscript illumination, and the apparent inventor of the portrait miniature. He was the first French artist to travel to Italy and experience at first hand the Italian Early Renaissance.

Contents 1 Life 2 Works 3 Gallery 4 External links 5 References

Life

Jean Fouquet was born in Tours. Little is known of his life, but it is certain that he was in Italy about 1437, where he executed a portrait of Pope Eugene IV (now surviving only in much later copies), and that upon his return to France, while retaining his purely French sentiment, he grafted the elements of the Tuscan style, which he had acquired during his period in Italy, upon the style of the Van Eycks, which was the basis of early 15th-century French art, and thus became the founder of an important new school. He was court painter to Louis XI.

Works

Also referred to as Souquet, Jean's supreme excellence as an illuminator, the exquisite precision in the rendering of the finest detail, and his power of clear characterization in work on this minute scale, have long since procured him an eminent position in the art of his country; his importance as a painter was fully realized when his portraits and altarpieces were for the first time brought together from various parts of Europe, at the exhibition of the "French Primitives" held at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

One of Fouquets most important paintings is "Melun diptych" (c. 1450), formerly in Melun cathedral. The left wing depicts Etienne Chevalier with his patron saint St. Stephen (now in in Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) while the right wing shows a pale Virgin and Child surrounded by red and blue angels (Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp). Since at least the seventeenth century, the Virgin has been recognized as a portrait of Agnès Sorel.^[2] The Louvre has his oil portraits of Charles VII, of Count Wilczek, and of Guillaume Jouvenal des Ursins, as well as a portrait drawing in crayon; while an authentic portrait from his brush is in the Liechtenstein collection.

His self-portrait miniature would be the earliest sole self-portrait surviving in Western art, if the portrait in the National Gallery, London by Jan van Eyck were not in fact a self-portrait, as most art historians believe it to be.

Far more numerous are his illuminated books and miniatures that have come down to us. The Musée Condé in Chantilly, Oise contains forty miniatures from a Book of Hours, painted in 1461 for Etienne Chevalier, already seen on the Berlin wing of the Melun altarpiece. From Fouquet's hand again are eleven out of the fourteen miniatures illustrating a translation of Josephus at the Bibliothèque Nationale. The second volume of this manuscript, unfortunately with only one of the original thirteen miniatures, was discovered and bought in 1903 by Mr Henry Yates Thompson at a London sale, and restored by him to France.

Gallery

Livre d'Heures	left wing of "Melun diptych" depicts Etienne Chevalier with his patron saint St. Stephen	right wing of "Melun diptych"Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels Showing Charles VII mistress Agnès Sorel (c.1450) Wood, 93 x 85 cm, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.	Portrait of Charles VII of France
The Battle of Gilboa, by Jean Fouquet	Construction of the Temple of Jerusalem	Pompey in the Temple of Jerusalem, by Jean Fouquet	The taking of Jerusalem by Herod the Great, 36 BC
Arrival of the crusaders at Constantinople	Marriage of Charles IV and Marie of Luxembourg	Fouquet depicts Charles VII as one of the three mages. This is one of the very few portraits of the king. According to some sources, the other two mages are the Dauphin Louis, future Louis XI, and his brother	Copy of Portrait of Pope Eugene IV
Saint Margaret the Virgin attracts the attention of the Roman prefect, (from an illuminated manuscript)

External links

• English version of online exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale de France but French version here is much fuller
• Fouquet's decorations for the Book of Hours Treasure of the National Library of The Netherlands displayed via The European Library
•  "Jehan Fouquet". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Jehan_Fouquet. 

References

1. ^ As opposed to ones "inserted" into religious or other scenes. Jan van Eyck painted a self-portrait (National Gallery, London that is widely believed to be a self-portrait and is dated 1433
2. ^ Snyder, J. (1985). Northern Renaissance art painting, sculpture, the graphic arts from 1350 to 1575. New York: Abrams; p. 247.

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