Marie d’Acigné (1502–1558), Madame de Canaples c.1525
Jean Clouet (1486–1540)
National Galleries of Scotland
(d Paris, 1540/1). French painter of Netherlandish descent. He was celebrated in his lifetime, but no documented works survive. A handful of portraits, however, including Man Holding Petrarch's Works (Royal Coll., Windsor), and a number of drawings (mainly in the Musée Condé, Chantilly) are attributed to him on fairly strong circumstantial evidence. The paintings belong to the tradition of Netherlandish naturalism that dominated French portraiture at this time, but the drawings are more personal and often of very high quality. They have been compared to those of Clouet's contemporary Hans Holbein the Younger, with which they share a keenness of observation; whereas Holbein's drawings are overwhelmingly linear, however, Clouet's are subtly modelled in light and shade with a delicate system of hatching that recalls Leonardo, whose work he could well have known.
Text source: The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford University Press)
