Palace of Fontainebleau or Château de Fontainebleau, located 55 kilometers southeast of the center of Paris, in the commune of Fontainebleau, is one of the largest French royal châteaux. The medieval castle and subsequent palace served as a residence for the French monarchs from Louis VII to Napoleon III. Francis I and Napoleon were the monarchs who had the most influence on the Palace as it stands today. It became a national museum in 1927 and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981 for its unique architecture and historical importance.
The School of Fontainbleau refers to two periods of artistic production in France during the late Renaissance centered on the royal Palace of Fontainebleau that were crucial in forming the Northern Mannerism.
Francesco Primaticcio was an Italian Mannerist painter, architect and sculptor who spent most of his career in France.
Niccolò dell'Abbate, sometimes Nicolò and Abate was a Mannerist Italian painter in fresco and oils. He was of the Emilian school, and was part of the team of artists called the School of Fontainebleau that introduced the Italianate Renaissance to France. He may be found indexed under either "Niccolò" or "Abbate", though the former is more correct.
Jacopo Caraglio, Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio or Gian Giacomo Caraglio known also as Jacobus Parmensis and Jacobus Veronensis was an Italian engraver, goldsmith and medallist, born at Verona or Parma. His career falls easily into two rather different halves: he worked in Rome from 1526 or earlier as an engraver in collaboration with leading artists, and then in Venice, before moving to spend the rest of his life as a court goldsmith in Poland, where he died.
In the history of art and design, strapwork is the use of stylised representations in ornament of ribbon-like forms. These may loosely imitate leather straps, parchment or metal cut into elaborate shapes, with piercings, and often interwoven in a geometric pattern. In early examples there may or may not be three-dimensionality, either actual in curling relief ends of the elements, or just represented in two dimensions. As the style continued, these curling elements became more prominent, often turning into scrollwork, where the ends curl into spirals or scrolls. By the Baroque scrollwork was a common element in ornament, often partly submerged by other rich ornament.
Giovanni Battista di Jacopo, known as Rosso Fiorentino, or Il Rosso, was an Italian Mannerist painter who worked in oil and fresco and belonged to the Florentine school.
An old master print is a work of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition. The term remains current in the art trade, and there is no easy alternative in English to distinguish the works of "fine art" produced in printmaking from the vast range of decorative, utilitarian and popular prints that grew rapidly alongside the artistic print from the 15th century onwards. Fifteenth-century prints are sufficiently rare that they are classed as old master prints even if they are of crude or merely workmanlike artistic quality. A date of about 1830 is usually taken as marking the end of the period whose prints are covered by this term.
Giorgio Ghisi was an Italian engraver from Mantua who also worked in Antwerp and in France. He made both prints and damascened metalwork, although only two surviving examples of the latter are known.
Catherine de' Medici's building projects included the Valois chapel at Saint-Denis, the Tuileries Palace, and the Hôtel de la Reine in Paris, and extensions to the château of Chenonceau, near Blois. Born in 1519 in Florence to an Italian father and a French mother, Catherine de' Medici was a daughter of both the Italian and the French Renaissance. She grew up in Florence and Rome under the wing of the Medici popes, Leo X and Clement VII. In 1533, at the age of fourteen, she left Italy and married Henry, the second son of Francis I and Queen Claude of France. On doing so, she entered the greatest Renaissance court in northern Europe.
Luca Penni (c.1500/1504–1556) was an Italian painter of the 16th century best known for his work in France as part of the First School of Fontainebleau. He was nicknamed Le Romain.
The Henry II style was the chief artistic movement of the sixteenth century in France, part of Northern Mannerism. It came immediately after High Renaissance and was largely the product of Italian influences. Francis I and his daughter-in-law, Catherine de' Medici, had imported to France a number of Italian artists of Raphael's or Michelangelo's school; the Frenchmen who followed them in working in the Mannerist idiom. Besides the work of Italians in France, many Frenchman picked up Italianisms while studying art in Italy during the middle of the century. The Henry II style, though named after Henry II of France, in fact lasted from about 1530 until 1590 under five French monarchs, their queens, and their mistresses.
Juste de Juste was a Franco-Italian sculptor and printmaker in etching, a member of the Betti family of sculptors from near Florence, who became known as the Juste family in France, where Juste de Juste's father Antonio and his two brothers emigrated and spent most of their careers. Juste de Juste has been widely accepted as the author of seventeen etchings of naked or écorché (flayed) male figures signed with a complicated monogram. He also worked as a stuccoist of the School of Fontainebleau under Rosso Fiorentino.
Northern Mannerism is the form of Mannerism found in the visual arts north of the Alps in the 16th and early 17th centuries. Styles largely derived from Italian Mannerism were found in the Netherlands and elsewhere from around the mid-century, especially Mannerist ornament in architecture; this article concentrates on those times and places where Northern Mannerism generated its most original and distinctive work.
Timoclea or Timocleia of Thebes is a woman whose story is told by Plutarch in his Life of Alexander, and at greater length in his Mulierum virtutes. According to Plutarch's biography of Alexander the Great, when his forces took Thebes during Alexander's Balkan campaign of 335 BC, Thracian forces pillaged the city, and a captain of the Thracian forces raped Timocleia. After raping her, the captain asked if she knew of any hidden money. She told him that she did, and led him into her garden, and told him there was money hidden in her well. When the Thracian captain stooped to look into the well, Timocleia pushed him into the well, and then hurled heavy stones into it until the captain died.
Girolamo Mocetto was an Italian Renaissance painter, engraver, and stained glass designer. He was heavily influenced by Domenico Morone, Giovanni Bellini, Bartolomeo Montagna, Cima da Conegliano, and especially Andrea Mantegna. He is most important as an engraver, and his engravings of the compositions of others are his most successful prints.
Léonard Thiry, was a Flemish Renaissance painter and printmaker. He is considered a member of the First School of Fontainebleau, working as an assistant to Rosso Fiorentino and continuing under Francesco Primaticcio, but none of his individual contributions can now be identified. His designs were reproduced as prints by Léon Davent, René Boyvin and others, although he does not seem to have worked any plates himself. He is credited with some drawings.
Léon Davent was a French printmaker in the mid 16th century, closely associated with the First School of Fontainebleau. He worked in both engraving and etching and many of his works are based on designs by Francesco Primaticcio, "rendered boldly and freely". Others use designs by Luca Penni and other artists. It is thought that there was a workshop at the Palace of Fontainebleau itself in the 1540s, where he was one of the leading printmakers. Their main purpose seems to have been to record the new style being forged at Fontainebleau, copying both the main subject paintings and the elaborate ornamental stuccos and other decorations.
Bacchus, Venus and Cupid is a 1531-1532 oil on canvas painting attributed to Rosso Fiorentino, now in the National Museum of History and Art in Luxembourg.
Pietà is a c.1537-1540 oil painting by Rosso Fiorentino, originally painted on panel and later transferred to canvas. Now in the Louvre in Paris, it is the only securely-identified original painting by the artist known to have been produced for a courtier of Francis I of France. X-ray examination has shown an initial composition under the bodies of Christ and St John.
