The death of Perréal and Bourdichon a few years after the accession
of François I. had left France without any artists of note, save
the few foreign portrait painters employed by the Court. François
I., an enthusiastic art lover, who had seen and admired the great
Italian masters in their own country, spared no effort to attract the
leading masters to France. We have seen that he actually succeeded
in securing the services of the aged Leonardo da Vinci, and that
for a brief span Andrea del Sarto worked at his Court. When, about
1530, that art-loving king turned his attention to the decoration
of his palace at Fontainebleau, there was not a single painter of
French nationality, or artist living in France, who could have been
entrusted with so formidable a task, and François I. was again forced
to enlist the best Italian painters available for the purpose. Having
first engaged Pellegrino and other third-rate artists, he succeeded,
in 1531, in inducing the Florentine Rosso to undertake the execution
and supervision of the decorative work at Fontainebleau; and in the
following year the Bolognese Primaticcio entered his service. Both
belong to the Italian eclectic schools, and only concern us here in so
far as their example led to the founding of what has been called the
“School of Fontainebleau,” which was really an offshoot of the Italian
eclectic school.
In the early years of Rosso’s and Primaticcio’s activity at
Fontainebleau practically all the work was done by these two painters
and their Italian assistants, whose band was joined by Niccolò dell’
Abbate. It was only after the death of François I. that the teaching
of the Italian eclectics at Fontainebleau produced a generation of
French artists capable of doing justice to the decorative tasks
for which an ever-increasing demand had meanwhile arisen. That the
Louvre is singularly poor in works by these painters may partly be
accounted for by the comparative scarcity of easel pictures painted by
artists who were chiefly employed for interior decoration. There is
no reason for crediting any Frenchmen with the three anonymous school
of Fontainebleau pictures in Gallery XI.: _Diana_ (No. 1013), _The
Chastity of Scipio_ (No. 1014), and _The Toilet of Venus_ (No. 1014A).
_The Chastity of Scipio_ in particular would appear to be the work of
Niccolò dell’ Abbate.