kā`), c.1420–c.1480, French painter and illuminator. He was summoned to Rome in the 1440s to paint the portrait (now lost) of Pope Eugenius IV. His work subsequently revealed the influence of contemporary Italian artists, particularly of Fra Angelico. Fouquet's style is marked by a delicacy of line combined with an amplitude of volume in his portrayal of the human figure. He was court painter to Charles VII and Louis XI and a protégé of Agnès Sorel and Étienne Chevalier, treasurer to Charles VII. His best-known paintings include a diptych, one wing of which represents Agnès Sorel as the Virgin (Antwerp) and the other a kneeling figure of Étienne Chevalier, and his portraits of Charles VII and of the chancellor Guillaume Juvénal (both: Louvre). He is also famous for his illuminations in the Book of Hours for Chevalier (Chantilly) and those for the French translations of Boccaccio and of Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews (Bibliothèque nationale).
Bibliography
See studies by T. Cox (1931) and P. Wescher (tr. 1949).
Fouquet, Jean
(born c. 1420, Tours, Fr.—died c. 1481, Tours) French painter. Little is known about his early life or training, but a trip to Rome in the 1440s exposed him to Italian Renaissance art; upon his return to Tours, Fouquet created a new style, combining the experiments of Italian painting with the exquisite precision of characterization and detail of Flemish art. His most famous works were produced for Charles VII's secretary, Étienne Chevalier: a large Book of Hours with some 60 full-page miniatures and a diptych from Notre-Dame at Melun (c. 1450), with Chevalier's portrait on one panel and a Madonna and Child on the other. The altarpiece of the Pietà in the church at Nouans is his only monumental painting. In 1475 he became royal painter to Louis XI. He broadened the range of miniature painting to include vast panoramas of architecture and landscape and made brilliant use of aerial perspective and colour tonality. He was the preeminent French painter of the 15th century.
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