DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63221#0103
THE ARTISTS OF THE RENAISSANCE
71
goldsmith’s daughter and where his son Francois was born.
He left it in 1523, to take up his office at Court, and lived
between Paris and Fontainebleau on a salary of five pounds
a year, besides what he made by his separate works. This
was considered a good income. Painters at that time ranked
higher and received more than men of letters ; their travel-
ling expenses were paid as well as their wages, and Francois
Clouet, also painter-in-general to the Valois, even had a suit
of mourning thrown in.
This youngest Clouet climbed high on the Court ladder.
He was the friend of the lordly Ronsard, and the Poet
wrote sonnets to the Painter. Clouet must have been be-
loved by the throng of ladies whom his hand so exquisitely
immortalized. “He surpassed all his fellows in his lovely
portraying of Nature,” says one of his contemporaries, and
the galaxy of his drawings and paintings does not contradict
the saying. Who that has seen them has not felt the spell
of his scintillating pencil? Who has not marvelled at his
power of lucidity? there is no other word for it. Now it
is a portfolio of drawings, strong of line, faint in colour,
living in charm. Now again a painting in oils: the little
head of a princess, keen, delicate, simple though bejewelled;
or the full-length figure of a Duke in black velvet—either
of them springing in bold relief from a deep blue, or a
fresh green background.
The work of the father, Jean Clouet, comes, at its best,
very near to that of the son, and critics have often failed
to identify the elder man’s pictures. The portrait in the
Louvre, of Francis I in white satin against red damask, is
supposed to be his, and so is that of the same King in the
71
goldsmith’s daughter and where his son Francois was born.
He left it in 1523, to take up his office at Court, and lived
between Paris and Fontainebleau on a salary of five pounds
a year, besides what he made by his separate works. This
was considered a good income. Painters at that time ranked
higher and received more than men of letters ; their travel-
ling expenses were paid as well as their wages, and Francois
Clouet, also painter-in-general to the Valois, even had a suit
of mourning thrown in.
This youngest Clouet climbed high on the Court ladder.
He was the friend of the lordly Ronsard, and the Poet
wrote sonnets to the Painter. Clouet must have been be-
loved by the throng of ladies whom his hand so exquisitely
immortalized. “He surpassed all his fellows in his lovely
portraying of Nature,” says one of his contemporaries, and
the galaxy of his drawings and paintings does not contradict
the saying. Who that has seen them has not felt the spell
of his scintillating pencil? Who has not marvelled at his
power of lucidity? there is no other word for it. Now it
is a portfolio of drawings, strong of line, faint in colour,
living in charm. Now again a painting in oils: the little
head of a princess, keen, delicate, simple though bejewelled;
or the full-length figure of a Duke in black velvet—either
of them springing in bold relief from a deep blue, or a
fresh green background.
The work of the father, Jean Clouet, comes, at its best,
very near to that of the son, and critics have often failed
to identify the elder man’s pictures. The portrait in the
Louvre, of Francis I in white satin against red damask, is
supposed to be his, and so is that of the same King in the