In the late 15th century, the French invasion of Italy and the proximity of the vibrant Burgundy court (with its Flemish connections) brought the French into contact with the goods, paintings, and the creative spirit of the Northern and Italian Renaissance, and the initial artistic changes in France were often carried out by Italian and Flemish artists, such as Jean Clouet and his son François Clouet and the Italians Rosso Fiorentino, Francesco Primaticcio and Niccolò dell’Abbate of the (so-called) first School of Fontainebleau (from 1531).
French painting is, in France more than in Italy, carried by the movement of edification of the castles launched by the princes. Thus the Constable of France Anne de Montmorency, when he built his largest home, Castle Ecouen, engaged a large number of artists, famous or unknown, to create interior decorations Some of them came since the And were made famous by their creations at Ecou. Thus, all the chimneys of the castle are painted in a very Italian style, the walls comprise broad friezes and the grounds are in colored faien.
Many Italian and Flemish painters are engaged in the court of Francis I and his successors and participate in the decoration of royal homes and castles of the nobility. These artists created a school of painting inspired by the temperate Italian Mannerism called School of Fontainebleau, recalling the decisive role of this site of Kings Francis I, Henri II and Henri IV in the establishment and dissemination of the Renaissance style in Fran. Its most famous representatives are Rosso Fiorentino, Primatice and Nicolò dell’Abbate under François I, then, under Henri IV, Ambroise Dubois and Toussaint Dubreu.
In France, the art of portrait painting was already known and widespread since the mid- fifteenth century, especially thanks to Jean Fouquet and Jean Perreal, but it really gained momentum during the Renaissance, in the sixteenth century, thanks to Pierre and Daniel Dumonsti. The appointed portrait painters of King Jean Clouet and his son François, in the style of great precision and finesse (preparatory drawings made before the execution of painted portraits), perpetuates the style of Ros. They influence later portrait painters such as Corneille de Lyon and François Quesnel, while Antoine Caron, former collaborator of the Primatice, evokes both the festivities of the Cour des Valois and the violence of the so-called “religious ” civil wars, marked by the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
The Italians
Fiorentino Rosso (1494-1540)
Giovanni Battista di Iacopo (1495-1540) was nicknamed Rosso Fiorentino, “the Florentine redhead,” because of his hair color and his hometown. Educated in Florence in the studio of Andrea del Sarto, and very influenced by the art of Michelangelo, he worked in Florence, then in Rome from 1524 to 1527, before returning to Tusca. In 1530, when he was in Venice, invited by the Italian playwright Pierre l’Aretin, he was lucky enough to be introduced to François I, who, charmed, did not take long to call him in France. His arrival in Paris in October 1530 marked a turning point in French art, with the full acceptance of the Renaissance in all artistic fields. He is with the Primatice the creator of the school of Fontainebleau.
In the middle of the French Renaissance, King Valois is an admirer of Italian art. The court of France will then give the means to the Rosso to really develop all his talents of court artist: painter, draftsman, designer of fixed and ephemeral sets, and objects of a… 46 His Majesty is conquered by this cultured artist and musician. She fills him with largesse and entrusts him with the decoration of the castle of Fontaineble. This is how the Rosso gathered around him a team of Italian artists to help with the realization of sets.
For nearly a decade, Le Rosso while creating independent works directs the decoration of Fontaineble. Many of the ensembles and works he has designed have disappeared. We can mention the pavilion of Pomona, the pavilion of Poesles, the low galle. But it is especially the large François I er gallery connecting the old and the new castle of Fontainebleau, realized mainly between 1533 and 1537, which remains his masterpiece made of a decoration decorated with paintings, friezes, frescoes and models of Cut leather and stucco 46 A recurring motif of the gallery is the animal emblem of the king, the salamand. The Rosso is rewarded by his appointment as the first painter of the king and canon of the Sainte-Chapel. The artist then participates in the creation of a sumptuary dishes and creates for the king a cantoral stick (scepter) with fleurdelysée stem, surmounted by a column pedicle carrying in its center a statuette of the Virg. Of the last period of his life, apart from the preparatory drawings for the attention of the engravers Antonio Fantuzzi, Boyvin or the unknown master LD, there are only rare paintings of a religious nature that is preserved from his French period, as in the example of the Pietà visible in the Louvre Museum.
The end of the artist is obscure. The avaricious artist would have accused his faithful friend Francisco di Pellegrino of stealing his savings. The latter subjected to torture saves his innocence. The Rosso, desperate to have lost his friend, would have been destroyed by poisoning at the end of the year 1540. The biography written by Giorgio Vasari, which dwells on this tragic end, is today in doubt.
The Primatice, his deputy since 1532 and more and more his rival authoritarian and displayed, suppresses after 1540 under the pretext of enlargement or his predilection for pedestal sculpture number of decorative works of the red ruler.
It is Aretino, famous and influential writer, who recommended the Rosso to Francis I. In Paris, where he was known as the Roux master, the social rise of the Florentine artist, both painter and sculptor, was extremely fast. The king assured him a very high salary and, in 1532, made him canon of Sainte-Chapelle. As such, five years later, the canonicat at Notre-Dame. But Rosso suffered chronically from an unstable mood; it was fatal to him on November 14, 1540, when he put an end to his life.
By its influence, the Rosso is the founder of the first school of Fontainebleau that launched the French Renaissance in the art of painting. This erudite decorator, attracted by the bizarre and the spectacular, while telling a story with several levels of reading or emotion, upsets the established genres and remains a source of sustainable evolution of the art of ornamentation of the princely courts of the Northern Euro.
Francesco Primatice (1504-1570)
Francesco Primaticcio says Primatice begins his apprenticeship in Bologna, his hometown, and it is with a student of Raphael, Bagnacavallo, that he receives his first training, then in Mantua, near a disciple of Raphael, Jules Romain, who realizes for Frédéric Gonzague one of the major buildings of the time, the palace of. In a setting that invades the walls and vaults, all the resources of Mannerism are implemented to celebrate Love by evoking the loves of the gods or to suggest terror by the representation of titanic clashes.
Primatice acquires near him the aptitude for fabulous transpositions and the sense of a complete decorative art in which stucco ornaments take on a new importance. He becomes an expert in this field, but it is in France, at the Château de Fontainebleau, that he will be able to measure himself.
He arrived in 1532, called by Francis I who wants to make his favorite home a living art center and prestigious. Until his death, Primatice will devote most of his activity to this ambitious enterprise. At first, he collaborates with another Italian master, the Rosso fiorentino, who manages the works and imposes his style: an exacerbated version of Florentine manneri.
The work of the Rosso at Fontainebleau, like that of the Primatice, has been largely destroyed or disfigured. However, the restoration of the Galerie François I er, in the 20th century, makes it possible to appreciate the coherence of an ornamental style where the whim of the invention, the acuteness of forms and rhythms are also expressed in the painted and in stuccoes, with accentuated reliefs, elegant profiles, surprisingly diversified patterns.
The Primatice replaces the Rosso in 1540, at the death of the latter, at the head of the royal enterprises. He reigns supreme over the multitude of artists and workers working on the interior decorations of the castle, the new constructions, the landscaping of the gardens. He oversees the tapestry workshops and those of the founders who perform the statues in bronze.
The two missions to Italy entrusted to him by the king are an opportunity for him to reconnect with the art of the peninsula and to know the most recent formulations, which he adapts with ease in his own way. In 1541, Hippolyte d’Este commissioned him to produce frescoes for the walls of his chapel at the Abbey of Chaalis,. At Fontainebleau, in the gallery of Ulysses (now destroyed), Homer ‘s poem was illustrated in fifty – eight panels distributed between the windows, and the ceiling included ninety – three mythological subjects against a backdrop of grotesques..
At the same time that he realized the gallery of Ulysses, the Primatice gives the projects of the compositions exalting the Love, the Harmony and the Concorde, intended for the ballroom, executed by Nicolò dell’Abbate. The order of the play is by Philibert Delorme who, under the reign of Henry II, assumes the direction of the Buildings of the King.
The advent of Francis II (1559) gives the Primatice all his prerogatives: the monument of the heart of Henry II, the tomb of the king, all the sculptures for the Valois rotunda (now destroyed ) that Catherine de Medici brought to Saint-Denis on the plans of Primati.
The multifaceted genius of the Primatice realized the dream of Francis I by giving to the school of Fontainebleau, not the ephemeral shine of a royal building temporarily privileged, but the radiation of an innovative movement that marked in France so decisive evolution of painting and decorative arts.
Primatice becomes great master of the king’s works after the death of Henry. In Dampierre, originally a mansion became a princely in the sixteenth century, he built in the corner pavilion adjacent to the tower a real sauna, typical example of this taste at the time for a return to a way of life in the antique.
Nicolò dell’Abbate (1509/1512 – 1571)
Niccolò dell ‘Abate was an artist born in Modena, near Bologna, who became very famous in France, playing a fundamental role in the first school of Fontaineble. This school was created by Italian artists active in the castle of Fontainebleau, where they developed a style that reverberated its influence in French art and Northern Europe as well.
The whole family of Abbate, from father to son, was devoted to the arts. We quote with honor among the painters of Modena, his father Jean, his brother Pierre-Paul, his son Jules-Camille, his grandson Hercules, and his great-grandson Pierre-Paul.
Trained in Modena, he studied in the studio of Alberto Fontana and was one of the students of Antonio Begarel.
In 1540 he entered the service of the lords of Scandiano, 27 km from Mode. Between 1540 and 1543, he also decorated the Rocca of the Meli Lupi princes in Soragna, north-west of Par.
He then worked in Bologna between 1548 and 1552, serving a wealthy clientele of clergymen and bankers.
In Bologna, his style is influenced by Correggio and Parmes. His many portraits evoke those of Pontor.
In 1552, Niccolò dell ‘Abate was invited to France in the service of Henry II 55 (he was often called Nicolas Labbé ). At the Château de Fontainebleau, he collaborated in the decoration of the royal building, under the supervision of Primatice (1504 – 1570), another fundamental artist of the School of Fontainebleau, as well as the Florentine painter Rosso (1494 – 1540). Two years later, he gives the drawing of the decor project in honor of Connétable Anne de Montmoren.
In Paris, he performs frescoes on the ceiling of the Hotel de Guise (now extinct), according to the drawings of Primati. The artist then receives many commands of a private nature, such as small portable paintings of mythological subjects inserted in landscapes.
A good part of his artistic production is thus devoted to the genre of ephemeral decorative apparatus, made during important moments that marked the life of the royal court. The main example is the cycle of decorations made for the triumphal entry into Paris of Charles IX and his wife Elisabeth of Austria in 1571, the year of the death of Nicolò dell’Abbate in Fran.
The legacy of the Emilian painter is mainly made up of landscapes that form the backdrop for mythological scenes, motifs that will inspire French artists such as Claude Lorrain (1600 – 1682) and Nicolas Poussin (1594 – 1665).
The Flemings
Jean Clouet (known as Janet, 1475 / 85-1540)
Jean Clouet the Younger (born in 1480 in Brussels, died in 1541 in Paris ) is a portrait painter from the Netherlands Burgundy of the sixteenth centu. His beginnings are poorly known.
Official painter of Francis I, Jean Clouet is among the valets de chambre of the king from 1516, under the orders of his colleagues Jean Perréal and Jean Bourdich. Of Flemish origin, he brought a new style to the painting of ceremonial portraits by practicing, in addition to the traditional miniature (Comments from the Gallic War), the easel painting executed after a pencil drawing, according to the taste of the painters of the North.
He became popular very early to the point that he was awarded almost all French portraits of the early sixteenth century. Of the only two paintings of him attested by texts, one is known only by an engraving ( Oronce Finé ), the other by a replica kept at the Museum of Versailles ( Guillaume Budé ).
But the celebrity Jean Clouet comes from the group of 130 drawings Condé Museum in Chantil. The portraits of the royal family are generally attributed to the painter, and therefore the paintings themselves, as the famous portrait of Francis I at the Louvre (around 1527), whose attribution to Jean Clouet dates back to old and safe tradition.
The reputation of Jean Clouet is probably not usurped and was recognized at all times although his work was quickly confused with that of his son Franço. Jean Clouet really introduced into the art of the French portrait a new finesse and founded in fact a school of official portrait painters who, by Robert Nanteuil and Hyacinthe Rigaud, was to ensure the French supremacy in this field for more than two centuries.
Corneille de Lyon (1510-1575)
Corneille de Lyon or Corneille de la Haye (born between 1500 and 1510 in The Hague and died in 1575 in Lyon ) is a royal painter of Franco – Dutch portrait of the 16th century.
Although known in his day as the Crow of the Hague, we know nothing of his Dutch youth and he arrived in Lyon no later than 15. Realizing from 1536 portraits of several members of the royal family, he obtained the title of royal painter in 1541. Despite this function, he remains in the Rhone city throughout his life. By marrying the daughter of a renowned printer, he became part of the city’s notability, and acquired a solid social position, living in the printing district, near Notre-Dame-de-Confo.
He lives his job as a painter, and seems to cooperate with other artists in the neighborhood (painters or engravers). His studio keeps a gallery of copies of paintings of the most famous people he has portrayed. This allows customers to acquire a new copy, or encourages them to get a portrait by a famous painter. His business seems prosperous until the wars of religion, during which, despite his attachment to the Reformed religion, he does not seem victim of aggression or spoliation. It becomes constrained to the catholic religion in 1569.
Corneille’s art of the little portrait without decoration is innovative for the time. It acquires a high prestige to the point that the paintings of this style end up being designated as “Crows”. Working in oil on wood, he focuses his work on the face and bust. Corneille is very precise in the composition of the pilosities, hair, beards, which he sometimes traces almost hair naked. His models rarely wear heavy decorated clothes, his style remains very sober. The background of his paintings is always plain, without decoration and he seems to work without preparatory drawing.
After the Renaissance, the fame of Corneille fades, his descendants do not take over for the realization of small portraits. It is rediscovered in the 17th century by François Roger de Gaignièr. Falling further into oblivion, his name resurfaced in the nineteenth century, from quotations in the texts of the time. The extreme difficulty of finding reference works causes serious problems of attribution and reconstitution of his artistic corpus. Many misunderstandings and confusions are made by art historians and amateurs. The first unambiguously attributable work was discovered in 1962. Several works reproduce the previous conclusions and the first synthesis on the artist is made by Anne Dubois de Groër in 1996.
Christmas Bellemare (active between 1512 and 1546)
Noël Bellemare is a French painter and illuminator of Flemish origin, active between 1512 and 1546, in Antwerp and Paris. He is credited with stained glass boxes and miniatur. Some of his illuminations have been grouped under the name of the Getty Master of the Epistles convention, presumably at the head of a workshop known elsewhere as the 1520s Workshop.
Christmas Bellemare is the son of an Antwerpian and a Parisian. His presence is attested in Antwerp in 1512, but we find his trace from 1515 in Paris where he finishes and finishes his career. He is installed in the city as a painter and illuminator on the bridge Notre-Dame, alongside other artists and booksellers.
The archives document several official orders in Paris : he painted the ceiling of the hotel-Dieu in 1515, he decorates the entrance of the bridge Notre-Dame in 1531 for the entry of Eleonore of Austria in 1531, a decoration of the Louvre Palace in collaboration with Matteo del Nassaro for the coming of Charles V in 1540. He also performs gilding at the castle of Fontaineble. He is mentioned in 1536 as a painter-illuminator juror.
The first works of the painter are influenced by Antwerp Mannerism as well as by the engraving of Albrecht Dür. Subsequently, an influence of paintings Raphael and Giulio Roma. This influence undoubtedly comes from the attendance of the School of Fontainebleau that he rubs by participating in the decorations of the castle.
Only one work is actually attested by the sources of the hand of Christmas Bellemare: it is the cardboard of a window of Pentecost of the church Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois of Par. By analogy and stylistic comparison, a set of illuminations and stained glass boxes are attributed by the art historian Guy-Michel Lepro.
The corpus of illuminations attributed to it has long been referred to as the Getty Master of the Epistles Convention. These works were also grouped for a time by the American art historian Myra Orth in a larger set of 25 manuscripts and under the name Workshop of the 1520s. Noel Bellemare could have been the leader. Among them, the miniatures attributed to the Doheny Master of the Hours could correspond to an older period of the same painter.
Finally, some of the miniatures of the Master of the Getty Epistles are subsequent to his death: it seems that this same workshop lasted some time after his disappearance.
Grégoire Guérard (active around 1518-1530)
Grégoire Guérard is a painter from the Netherlands, established in Tournus and active in Burgundy between 1512 and 1530, in the region of Autun, Chalon-sur-Saône and Bourg-en-Bres.
He is an artist trained in the northern Netherlands and whose manner seems indebted to a stay in Italy in the years 1515 and 1518
According to sources, he provided a triptych for the Carmelite church of Chalon, another for the church of Saint-Laurent-lès-Chalon, worked at the castle of Brancion and that of Balleure for Claude de Saint-Julien de Balleure, whose son Pierre praises the “beautiful paintings, singular and exquisite work, faults of the divinely learned hand of the excellent painter Guererd Gregoire Hollandois compatriot and parent Erasmus of Rotterdam “.
Grégoire Guérard was recently awarded a dozen panels dated between 1512 and 1530, preserved, with a few exceptions, in southern Burgundy, Bresse or Franche-Com. The major element of this ensemble is the Triptych of the Eucharist at Autun (1515), and at the Dijon Museum, The Arrest of Christ and The Presentation at the Temple of Dijon (1521) are part of it.
Bartholomeus Pons
Originally from Haarlem, Bartholomeus Pons is documented precisely in 1518 in the workshop of Grégoire Guérard in Tourn. It can now be identified to the Master of Dinteville (author of the altarpiece of the Legend of Saint Eugenie in Varzy ).
Godefroy the Batavian (1515-1526)
Godefroy the Batavian is a painter / illuminator from the northern Netherlands active in France. He is known only for his activity at the court of Francis I.
His name comes from a Latin inscription identifying him as pictoris batavi in the 3rd volume of his best known work, the Commentaries of the French War (1520, Condé Museum, Chantilly ). He also signed Godefroy, a signature found in the Triumphs of Petrarque (circa 1524, Library of Arsenal, Paris ). The Comments of the French War (1520, Condé Museum, Chantilly ), the Dominus illuminatio mea (1516, Condé Museum, Chantilly ) and the Life of Magdalena (1517, Condé Museum, Chantilly ) were illuminated under the direct supervision of their author Franciscan, François Du Moulin or Demoulins (fl 1502-24), for presentation to the King and his mother Louise of Savoy, Countess of Angoulême (1476-1531).
The vernacular, tiny and personalized manuscripts provide a glimpse of court art and French taste in the early years of the Renaissance.
The French
Jean Cousin: the father (1490 about-1560) and the son (1522 about-1594)
Jean Cousin the Elder ( Soucy, near Sens, around 1490 or 1500 – Paris, after 1560 ), is also called the Father, or the Old to distinguish him from his son also called Jean Cous. This artist is not only a painter, draftsman and decorator but he is also an engraver. Jean Cousin the Elder represents Jean Clouet, the leading French painter of the 16th century. Nicknamed the “French Michelangelo ” 60, his painting Eva prima Pandora preserved in the Louvre remains his most famous work.
His life is little known, and many works are only attributed to him, sometimes more likely executed by his son Jean Cousin the Younger with whom he is often confused. Another unrelated sculptor also bears the same name.
It is in his native town of Sens, in 1526, that Jean Cousin, the father (1490-1560) began his career as a surveyor, continuing his activity there until 1540. After making cartons for stained glass windows, the cathedral of Sens and an altarpiece for the Vauluisant Abbey in 1530, Jean Cousin the Father moved to Paris in 1540 where he performed important works.
In 1541, he was ordered the boxes for the tapestries of the Life of St. Genevieve and in 1543, he realized for Cardinal Givry the eight boxes of the History of St. Mam. These tapestries, which were to decorate the choir of the cathedral of Langres, were executed by Parisian weavers. It is then that in 1549, he collaborates with the triumphal entry of King Henry II in Paris.
He also works for glassmakers, and executes stained glass boxes in the chapel of the Orfèvres hospital, a Calvary for the Jacobins church in Paris, various stained glass windows for the Saint Gervais church ( The Judgment of Solomon, The martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, the Samaritan woman conversing with Christ, and the cure of the paralytic ), the church of Moret, those of Saint-Patrice and Saint-Godard in Rouen 62 well as for the castle of Vincennes ( L ‘ Approach of the Last Judgment, According to the Apocalypse, The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin ) where he also performs the full-length portraits of Francis I and Henry. Jean Cousin is also credited with grisaille stained glass windows made for the castle of Anet (of which Abraham returning his son Ishmael to Hagar, the Israelites who conquered the Amalekites under the guidance of Moses and Jesus Christ preaching in the desert ).
Only a small number of paintings by Jean Cousin, the father: Eva Prima Pandora, now in the Louvre, and La Chari. These works attest, like the tapestries of the History of Saint Mammès, the influence of Rosso, but Jean Cousin the father was able to interpret in a very personal style the art of the school of Fontainebleau.
Some drawings Pénélope, Martyrdom of a saint and Games of children, are attributed today to Jean Cousin the Father of which one also has two signed engravings: the Annunciation and the Entombme.
Theoretic, the artist published two illustrated treatises of woodcuts, the Perspective Book dated 1560 and the Book of Pourtraicture completed by his son in 1571. Reprinted in 1589, no copy has been found to date. It is however probable that this last work is the one published just after the death of Cousin the Younger in Paris in 1595 by David Leclerc, with engraved plates of Jean Le Cle. This treatise, which is also a masterpiece of anatomical illustration, was reprinted several times in the 17th century.
Jean Cousin the Son (1522-1594) also said the young man was long confused with his father, of whom he was a pupil. Jean Cousin the Younger first studied at the University of Paris at least until 1542, then collaborated in the work of his father. When he died, he took over.
His production seems to have been important. In 1563, he collaborated in the preparations for the triumphal entry of Charles. Around 1565, the contribution of Cousin the Father and Cousin the Son to the funeral monument of Philippe Chabot, admiral of France is controversial; the son is attributed the ornamental frame of the monument and the four winged geniuses treated in a very brilliant Mannerist style.
The only painting attributed to Jean Cousin fils is the Last Judgment dated 1585 and kept at the Louvre Muse. This work reflects both the influence of Florentine Mannerism and that of Flemish a. A number of drawings, illustrations from the Book of Fortune (1568), Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1570), and Aesop’s Fables (1582) reveal a clever artist influenced by his father, the milieu of Saint-Louis and the art of Nordic countries.
Antoine Caron (1521-1599)
Antoine Caron, born in 1521 in Beauvais and died in Paris in 1599, is a master glassmaker, illustrator, and French Mannerist painter of the Fontainebleau Scho.
At the hinge between the two schools of Fontainebleau, Antoine Caron is one of the major personalities of French Manneri. One of the few French painters of his time to possess a pronounced artistic personality. His work reflects the refined, though unstable, atmosphere of the Valois house courtyard during the Wars of Religion from 1560 to 1598.
Leaving Beauvais, where he had been painting religious paintings since adolescence, Antoine Caron worked in Leprince’s workshop in stained glass, then did his training in the workshops of Primatice and Nicolò dell’Abbate at the Fontainebleau School of 1540. in 1550. In 1561, he was appointed painter of the court of Henry II and Catherine de Medici and later became the appointed painter of it.
His function as a painter of the court included the responsibility for the organization of official representations. He, as such, participated in the organization of the ceremony and the royal entrance to Paris for the coronation of Charles IX and the marriage of Henry IV with Marguerite de Valo. Some of his illustrations of the festivities at the court of Charles IX remain and are likely sources for the representation of the court in Valois tapestries.
The few surviving works of Caron include historical and allegorical subjects, court ceremonies and astrological scenes. He is a scholar, and his scholarly and sophisticated scenes reflect the brilliant culture that developed in Paris during the reign of the last Valois.
His massacres were carried out in the mid-1560s, like his only signed and dated painting, the Massacres du Triumvirat (1566) conserved in the Louvre. It evokes the masscres perpetrated during the civil civil wars, in before JC by the triumvirs Antoine, Octave and Lepid. It would be an allusion to the massacres that Protestants were victims during the religious war, mainly from 1561, when three defenders of Catholicism, Anne of Montmorency, Jacques d’Albon of Saint-André and François de Guise formed a triumvirate to oppose the policy of appeasement of Catherine de Medici.
The essential component of his style is the resumption of the very elongated figure of Italian artists, even in portraits like Portrait de femme (1577), an eloquent gesture, a lot of movement and dynamism. He gives a very strange aspect to his compositions. And the liveliness of his colors that contribute to this often fantastical character given to his works.
The other emblematic aspect of his work is the incorporation of fanciful architectures, sometimes mingling with Roman ruins. Like his master Nicolò dell’Abbate, he has often placed almost insignificant human figures in the midst of immense scenes.
Stylistically, his adherence to Northern Mannerism refers to the typology of his characters. Modern criticism calls it “the grandfather of Mannerism “.
The paucity of documentation of French painting at this time means that many of the works attributed to him are also attributed to other artists such as Henri Lerambe. The relative notoriety of Antoine Caron contributes to the association of his name with works comparable to the most known of his own. In some cases, these paintings, for example, the Submission of Milan to Francis I in 1515 (v. 1570) 69 are now attributed to “Antoine Caron’s studio”.
Source From Wikipedia