François Clouet (born 1515 or 1520) was a French Renaissance painter who loved art from a very young age. He immortalized in his portraits the society of the court of the royal house of Valois. Clouet was born to Jean Clouet whom they worked with together from as early as 1536. He replaced his father in 1540 as the official painter to Francis I. Due to the quality of his work he remained in this office for long and served Henry II, Francis, and Charles IX. In addition to making portraits, Clouet painted genre subjects including theatrical scenes and nude figures. The former attested by a picture, as well as by an engraving entitled “Scene of the Commedia dell’Arte.
Clouet directed a large workshop in which enamel designers, miniaturists, and decorators carried out his projects. He also supervised the decorations for the triumphal entries of the French kings and for funeral ceremonies. As a typical Renaissance painter, his works were closely related to the humanistic circles. The works were praised by many poets of his day, including Joachim du Bellay and Pierre de Ronsard. But as a portrait painter he was less profound than Jean Clouet. However, he was able to render a more fleeting, vivid expression of the face. Clouet’s works are characteristic of the French Renaissance with their almost elegant stylization, dry precision, and clear-cut plasticity. It has been possible to identify Clouet’s work on the basis of two signed pictures, “Portrait of Pierre Quthe” and the “Diane de Poitiers”, and of another one that bears a 16th-century ascription to him.
