{"id":19069,"date":"2013-05-21T23:14:37","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T21:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/?p=19069"},"modified":"2017-10-20T14:53:40","modified_gmt":"2017-10-20T12:53:40","slug":"francois-ier-patron-of-french-renaissance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/francois-ier-patron-of-french-renaissance\/","title":{"rendered":"Fran\u00e7ois Ier: Patron of French Renaissance"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Une cour sans femmes est comme un jardin sans fleurs<\/strong><\/em><\/span>” (“a court without women is like a garden without flowers.”)<\/p>\n

Thus spoke\u00a0Fran\u00e7ois Ier<\/strong><\/em><\/span>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>(Francis I<\/strong> in English), like a true Frenchman some would say.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But contrary to some other French monarchs, female company was not his only preoccupation.<\/p>\n

In fact, the lifetime dream of\u00a0Fran\u00e7ois\u00a0was to bring the fledgling Italian Renaissance\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/span>to the French soil.<\/p>\n

“Une nouvelle Rome<\/em><\/strong><\/span>” (a “New Rome<\/strong>“) was to emerge in the French capital.<\/p>\n

With that goal in mind, the French King invited to his court several Italian artists, whose task was to establish l’<\/strong>\u00c9cole <\/strong>de Fontainebleau<\/a><\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

This proved to be the most prolific and most influential of art schools in France at the time.<\/p>\n

The \u00c9cole<\/strong><\/em>‘s first uncontested leader was a Florence-born artist by the name of Rosso Fiorentino<\/strong><\/span>, literally meaning in Italian “the red from Florence<\/strong>“, an obvious reference to his hair color.<\/p>\n

By all accounts, “Il Rosso<\/strong><\/em>” was a highly eccentric figure. “Out of his time”, so to speak.<\/p>\n

His work has in many ways prefigured modern tendencies that were to be found in art schools throughout the following centuries.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, his immediate successor was also fellow\u00a0Italiano<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, called in French “Le Primatice<\/strong><\/em><\/span>“, who enjoyed the precious assistance of a skilled disciple, Niccol\u00f2 dell’Abbate<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n

In turn, these masters, or maestros<\/em><\/strong>, if you will, yielded a tremendous influence on the works of many other artists, most prominent of which is perhaps Jean Goujon<\/strong><\/span>, whose Allegories<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0can still be seen on the fa\u00e7ade of the Louvre<\/strong><\/span>.<\/p>\n

Jean Goujon<\/strong>, as well as many other Protestant artists, had a deep impact on the French artistic scene of the 16th century and beyond.<\/p>\n

That is, until the Edict of Nantes<\/strong><\/span> was revoked in the following century by Louis XIV<\/strong><\/span>, when they all had to leave the French kingdom en masse<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Although Versailles<\/strong><\/span> was known to be the Sun King<\/strong>‘s favorite palace, the sudden decision of declaring French Protestants personas non gratas\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>was not taken there, but rather in Fontainebleau.<\/p>\n

The statement could not have been made any clearer, indeed.<\/p>\n

But back to Fran\u00e7ois Ier.<\/p>\n

If “la Jeconde<\/em><\/strong><\/span>“<\/em>, or “la Mona Lisa<\/em><\/strong><\/span>” (as it is better known in the non-Francophone world), is today a French property,\u00a0it is no doubt he who ought to receive the credit.<\/p>\n

Why so?<\/p>\n

Because if it were not for Fran\u00e7ois Ier, Leonardo da Vinci<\/strong><\/span> would probably never have felt compelled to set foot in France and bother to bring his still unfinished tableau <\/em><\/strong>(painting)\u00a0in his suitcase.<\/p>\n

In other words, that would have been one flower that le Roi\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>would have been particularly sorry to miss in his jardin<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

“Une cour sans femmes est comme un jardin sans fleurs” (“a court without women is like a garden without flowers.”) Thus spoke\u00a0Fran\u00e7ois Ier\u00a0(Francis I in English), like a true Frenchman some would say. But contrary to some other French monarchs, female company was not his only preoccupation. In fact, the lifetime dream of\u00a0Fran\u00e7ois\u00a0was to bring…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":23690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[275875,65766,275892,250036,275894,275891,275893,275887,275884,275889,275882,275883,275890,275886,8626,9229,275885,275888,228950,11690],"class_list":["post-19069","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-vocabulary","tag-fontainebleau","tag-francois-ier","tag-french-art","tag-french-history","tag-french-kings","tag-french-renaissance","tag-french-royalty","tag-il-rosso","tag-jean-goujon","tag-lecole-de-fontainebleau","tag-la-jeconde","tag-la-mona-lisa","tag-la-nouvelle-rome","tag-le-primatice","tag-leonardo-da-vinci","tag-louis-xiv","tag-niccolo-dellabbate","tag-rosso-fiorentino","tag-sun-king","tag-versailles"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19069"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28476,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19069\/revisions\/28476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/french\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}