Portrait of a Woman

portrait

The French Renaissance was much assisted by the Italian enthusiasm of King Francis I (r. 1515-47), who during three invasions of the peninsula established contacts with artists and poets; it expressed itself primarily in a blossoming portrait painting. Young aristocrats increasingly commissioned likenesses of their sweethearts, demanding that artists observe not so much upper-class decorum as vivid naturalness.

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About the Artist

Corneille De Lyon

1500 – 1574

Netherlandish-born painter, active mainly at Lyons in France. He was a native of The Hague (in France he is still often known as "Corneille de La Haye"), but he settled in Lyons in 1534 and in 1540 he became court painter to the Dauphin, later Henry II. Contemporary references to Corneille indicate that he had a considerable reputation as a portrait painter, but only one work survives that is unquestionably from his hand, a portrait of Pierre Aymeric (Louvre, Paris, 1553), authenticated by an inscription in the sitter's handwriting on the back of the picture. Many other works in a similar style go under his name. They are mostly small in scale and sharply naturalistic in manner, with the sitter usually set against a plain green or blue background.

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