Sacrifice at the Tomb of Neoptolemus

1610 · Musée National du Château, Fontainebleau

mythological

Henry IV devoted considerable energy to the decoration of the royal palaces, but unfortunately few of the paintings which he commissioned survive, and we are therefore badly informed about the so-called Second School of Fontainebleau, which was responsible for them. The name is generally applied to three painters: Ambroise Dubois (c. 1542-c.

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About the Artist

Ambroise Dubois

1542 – 1614

Flemish painter, active in France. He was one of the painters of the Second Fontainebleau school. By 1595 (and possibly earlier) he was established at Fontainebleau, where he contributed to the decoration of the Galerie d'Ulysse (destroyed) and the Galerie de Diane (constructed 1600, destroyed 1810); fragments of the latter have been incorporated into the Galerie des Assiettes. In 1606 he embarked on the decoration of the Queen's apartment (destroyed) for Marie de' Medici. The first book that the Queen was said to have read in French was a version of the story of Tancredi and Clorinda from Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberate, and the apartment was decorated with episodes from this romance; the heroic portrayal of the warrior woman Clorinda must have been congenial to the Queen. The surviving pictures are now divided between Fontainebleau and the Musée du Louvre. Dubois also decorated the Oval Chamber (now the Salon Louis XIII) with scenes from the story of Theagenes and Chariclea from the Aethiopica of Heliodorus.

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