Jean Fouquet, Portraitist

A copy of a portrait by Fouquet of King Charles VII of France. The original is in the Louvre.

 Fouquet was recognised very early as a master of portraiture, and it was on this basis, when he was staying in Rome that the Pope Eugene IV commissioned a portrait. This work is now lost, but is known from two partial copies, which reveal his already very personal approach to the genre, distinct from the Flemish and Italians. Two paintings in particular illustrate this quality in his work -- the portrait of King Charles VII and that of the Chancellor of France Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins (both in the Louvre).

 

The copy in  Loches of Fouquet's Virgin and Child (modelled on Agnes Sorel), one half of the Melun diptych.

Other surviving works, in other techniques, attest to his skill as a portraitist. There is a self-portrait in enamel in the Louvre, and the subjects of the Melun diptych (one half now in Berlin, the other in Antwerp). And there are three magnificent drawings (the head of Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins in Berlin, a portrait of a man in a hat in the Hermitage, and a portrait of a papal legate in the Metropolitan Museum New York). Plus excellent 16th century copies of other lost drawings (multiple versions of a head of Agnes Sorel in Florence and the French National Library, and a portrait of Arthur de Richemont in the French National Library). These works reveal Fouquet to be a precursor of Jean Clouet and Hans Holbein.

 

Detail of the Pieta by Fouquet in the church at Nouans les Fontaines.

 

This mastery of portraiture is even more evident in the small scale manuscripts such as the various Books of Hours he produced. Within these manuscripts the artist has introduced a new genre, the group miniature portrait, which highlights the importance of a political or social group (good examples are his illustrations of the trial of the Duke of Alençon, or Louis XI presiding over a chapter of the Order of Saint Michael).

 

Copy of Fouquet's portrait of Etienne Chevalier and Saint Stephen, one half of the Melun diptych, in  Loches.

Further Reading: Wikipedia entry on Fouquet's portrait of the court jester Gonella https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_the_Court_Jester_Gonella