Jean Fouquet ‘peintre du roi’
There is a charming statue of Jean Fouquet outside the Musée Hôtel Morinin, Amboise. It was moved from Place Richelieu in May 2024. The sculptor Daniel Bacqué received the commission from the State in 1930. It replaced his sculpting of a stone nude at the same location, Place Richelieu, in 1967. Limestone statues do not weather well so M.Fouquet, who was a handsome chap, has lost the tip of his nose.
Why is he here? Because of his close connections with Château Amboise as Court Painter to Charles VII and his son Louis XI.
Jean Fouquet c.1420 – 1481 was born, lived and died in Tours. No artist is more French. A gifted landscape painter, he set scenes from the Bible in his beloved Touraine giving many people their first glimpse of the beautiful French countryside.
Leonardo da Vinci is given the credit for introducing the Italian Renaissance to France but seventy years before he arrived in Amboise, Jean Fouquet returned from Italy having spent two years studying giants of the early Renaissance. Masaccio solved the riddle of linear and aerial perspective, Fouquet was the first to use it in France.
The problem is that Fouquet’s French Renaissance more or less died out when he died. From then on, Italy took the lead.
The sculptor has shown Fouquet holding a book so it would be natural to assume he was a writer but no, the book is Fouquet’s masterpiece, a Book of Hours, Livre d'heures d' Étienne Chevalier. Made up of sixty exquisite miniatures, it took him ten years to complete.
The book and another of Fouquet’s masterpieces, a diptych for Notre-Dame de Melun (near Paris) were both commissioned by Étienne Chevalier, Treasurer to Charles VII. Chevalier was on one panel, Agnès Sorel, mistress of Charles VII, depicted as the Virgin, is on the other. The border on the ornate frame was decorated with medallions of gilded enamel. One shows Jean Fouquet. This is the earliest known portrait miniature and the earliest known self-portrait in Western art.
When Fouquet painted the famous portrait of Charles VII in a strange red garment with huge voluminous sleeves, memorable for the king’s sad expression and his unattractiveness, he did not have to travel far. The king, like Fouquet, lived in Tours, Plessis-les-Tours, made world famous by Walter Scott’s novel Quentin Durward.
In 1461 Fouquet was summoned to Paris to paint the mortuary effigy of Charles VII and to record the funeral. He was then put in charge of the preparations for Louis XI's entry into Tours where he would live in his late father’s house.
In 1471 Louis commissioned Fouquet to paint the coats of arms of the knights of his newly created Order of St. Michael. In 1474, he was asked to make a model of the king’s tomb. Jack of all trades, master of all, John Fouquet painted portraits and exquisite miniatures, he illuminated manuscripts, designed sculptures, tapestries and stained glass windows. He also painted a large altarpiece, the “Pietà”, in Saint-Martin, Nouans-les-Fontaines, Indre-et-Loire (not far from Tours).
Fouquet, one of the greatest miniaturists ever, founder of the School of Tours, the French school of painting, was completely forgotten until fragments of his Book of Hours painted for Etienne Chevalier, were discovered in 1808. Many art historians agree that the technical skill of John Fouquet has never been surpassed and that he was the most important artist in fifteenth century France.
If anyone deserves a statue, he does.
Post by Pamela (BA History of Art), Photography by Mark.
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