CORNEILLE DE LYON

Corneille de Lyon’s exquisite, very small portraits have a Holbein-like precision, but a far greater chic. The equivalent of the society photographs of later centuries, most of these little panels employ a dark green background, and they tend to stop just above the waist.

Fran�ois de Montmorency served as a military officer under King Henri II of France and as governor of Paris for a time. Of several known portraits, this is the only one that shows him as a young man. Though small in scale, Corneille’s painting records the sitter’s face and costume with remarkable precision.

Corneille de Lyon was author of a series of small, intimate portraits which recreate for us the people who made up French 16th-century society, amongst them poets and scholars and courtiers.

In the absence of any signed work by his hand the safest starting point for his oeuvre is the portrait of Pierre Aymeric which has on the back an inscription in the hand of the sitter, saying that it was painted by ‘Corneille de la Haye’ in 1534. This portrait confirms the attribution to him a number of portraits characterized by their small size, their sensitive naturalistic modeling in a northern manner, and usually by a green background.

Pierre Aymeric was a merchant in the town of Saint-Flour in the Auvergne.

While its attribution is not undisputed, this portrait is closely related to a group of miniature-like portraits ascribed to Corneille. Typical features include the neutral, somewhat iridescent grey-green background and the slight turn in the upper body and head, whose connection to the plane is re-established by the fall of the veil.

The cool, distanced expression on the noblewoman’s face, the precise drawing of her eyes, nose and lips, and the smooth planes of her forehead and cheeks assign this panel to the sphere of French court painting. Yet there is a contradiction in the loving execution of the details of her clothes. Are we seeing here a reflection of the artist’s Netherlandish heritage (Corneille de Lyon was born in The Hague)? This tendency towards “detail realism” nevertheless draws upon new technical means. The pale, puffy elements protruding from the sleeves of the dark dress are daubed on in an “Impressionistic” style, richly modulated and without clear boundaries.

Was the artist, whose work is still surrounded by many unanswered questions, familiar with Venetian painting? Whatever the case, a contemporary source tells us that Corneille painted the entire court and that he rose to become “Peintre et Valet de Chambre du Roi”, the highest post that a painter could attain at court.

Corneille apparently studied either in his native city of The Hague or in Antwerp. He is not documented until 1533, when he was recorded in Lyon. He is best known for his small, naturalistic portraits with the sitter set against a plain green or blue background.

This early work by Corneille de Lyon represents the portrait of an unidentified gentleman, wearing a black coat and cap, with a green background. Judging from his clothing he could be a member of the legal profession, perhaps a town magistrate.

The sitter of this portrait, depicted half length, wearing black with white sleeves and a black bonnet, is said to be Marie de Batarnay, the wife of Ren� de Batarnay, Count of Bouchage. However, compared with other existing portraits of this couple, this identification is doubtful.

The unknown sitter of this portrait is depicted in bust length, and set against a blue background. The brown garment could identify the sitter as a member of the Franciscan order, or an academic, since university dress grew out of clerical garb and in the sixteenth century the two are at times quite similar. The portrait is one of is Corneille’s finest paintings from his best period.

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. The miniature portraits of Corneille de Lyon, a native of The Hague, illustrate this tendency.

The sitter of this portrait was probably Marquise de Rothelin or Fran�oise de Longwy-Givry.