BOOKS.

FRENCH SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PORTRAITS.* THESE two handsome volumes in folio contain a collection of portraits of many royal and noble persons, court ladies, and ecclesiastics, whose names are familiar to us in the history of France during the middle of the sixteenth century. They are drawings by Francois Clouet, called " Janet," the once justly cele- brated, though now little known, " liolbein of France." This Clouet and his father, Jean, from whom he inherited the sobriquet of "Janet," are both remarkable and interesting figures in the history of art, not only on account of the actual merit of their work, which is considerable, but also because they preserved unchanged the realistic style of the early Flemish school of the Van Eycks, in successful opposition to the more idealist fol- lowers of the Italian masters, the power and charm of whose work was, at that time, making itself felt in Europe, and specially in France, where the King, Francis I., a real lover of art, welcomed all Italian artists, and even prevailed on Lionardo da Vinci and Andrea del Sarto to reside at his Court. However much the Clouets maybave admired the great works of Italian genius, they pursued their old course ; wisely considering that what might be good and great in the work of a Da Vinci or a Del Sarto, might not necessarily be equally so if merely imitated by a French artist " not to the manner born," whose strength lay in quite another "manner." Jehan or Jean Clouet, the grandfather of Francois, first came to France under the patronage of the Duke of Burgundy, towards the end of the fifteenth century, and settled at Tours, at a time when the followers of the Van Eycks were received with joy in Germany and France, where they soon spread far and wide the loving and laborious realistic style of their great master. One of these ardent disciples was Clouet, and his son Jean, who was born in 1485, and was gifted with much more power than his father, carried further the same kind of work, winning so much renown that he was made official Court painter and " varlet de chainbre" to Francis L,

* Three Hundred French Portraits, representing Personages of the Courts ofPrancis 1., Henry IL, and Francis .11. By Clouet. Autolithographed from the Originals at Castle Howard, Yorkshire, by Lord Ronald Gower. London: Sampson Low and Co. ' in the year 1528, and soon became known by the friendly diminu- tive of Jehannet, Jehannot, Jannet, or Janet. In spite of the predominating influence of the (to France) new Italian painters, Janet retained his popularity, and bad a conaiderable following, both of town and provincial painters, who maintained the old school, at least in portrait-painting, against the new comers. It is strange, when we reflect that the same strife is going on in an altered, nay, reversed, form, at the present day. Then, the Italian idealists (if we may use the word in a limited sense) were the living power, who carried art to the greatest height it has ever reached, by uniting the best qualities of both schools, idealism in conception and realism in execution ; -while the Janets would paint nothing that was not actually before their eyes, so that their saints and martyrs were priests and bishops ; and as they could not get the actual Jerusalem, they 'would copy exactly the nearest city or palace. Now, the parties . are reversed. The degenerate and almost dead remnant of what was once the great Italian school, is opposed by the young and living, so-called, pre-Raphaelite movement, which began with the cry for the return to nature and minute correctness of detail. May we not hope that from these will again spring a new life for Art ? We bare amongst us a few individuals; striving, and not unsuccessfully, to unite high conception with perfect -execution ; who do not think that mere exact copying of anything in nature constitutes an artist, on the one hand, or that mere exaggeration and theatrical impossibility constitute "ideal high art," on the other. These men are the direct or indirect followers of the pre-Raphaelite movement, and are doing the best work that we see, or, alas ! do not see (such is Academic prejudice) in our exhibitions. The higher realism, which selects the best view - of a subject and copies it exactly, is best fitted to portrait- .painting ; and so thought Clouet and his son Francois, who sue-

• seeded, on his father's death, to his office and to his sobriquet of

• 4' Janet," in 1541. The Janets delighted to paint their sitters with -minute exactness and delicate finish ; a certain silvery tone and tender refinement of treatment seem to be the great characteristic -of Janet, by which his works may chiefly be distinguished from those of Holbein, which in some respects they greatly resemble, Holbeins being not nnfrequently attributed to Janet, and vice versa.

The office of Court painter included many kinds of work be- sides portraits. He was there "pour faire tout," and so we find him at one time painting the doors of a coach for Henry II. On the death of Francis I., he was employed to make a drawing of the face of the dead king (which forms the frontispiece to the -first volume), and also to model the head and hands in wax, be- sides painting the flaw de lys for the banners and other decora- tions for the funeral ceremonies. But the greater part of his

• time must have been spent in portrait-painting, enlivened, we • may suppose, by the amusements of Court society, for we hear of him as "admire de thus, recherché par nos Rois, chants de Ronsard et son Pleiade." The high opinion entertained of him is well shown by an appeal from his contemporary Ronsard, in a long and elaborate elegy, commencing :—

" Peins moy, Janet, pains moy, je to supplie, Sur ce tableau lea beantez de m'ataie, Do la facon qua je to le diray,"&e.

The poet, after describing the various beauties which Janet alone is worthy to represent, concludes his melodious verse :—

"Pais pour lo fin portray lay de Thetis, Lee pieds &rolls et les talons petite; Ha I je la voy, elle est presque portraits. Encore un trait, encore un, elle est faits LtSve lea mains ; ha, mon Dieu, je la voy Bien pen e'en fact, qu'elle ne parle a moy."

And again, in a charming sonnet, Ronsard pays high tribute to Janet :—

" Je seas portrait dedans ma sonvenance, Tes longs oheveux, et ta honcho, et tea yeux, Ton doux regard, ton parlor gracieux, Ton deux maintient, ta donee contenance. Un soul Janet honneur de nostre France, De ses crayons ne lea portrairoit miens Quo d'un archer Is trait ingenieux, M'a paint an cceur lour vire remembrance.

Dans le cceur doneque, an fond d'un diamant, J'ay son portrait, qne je anis plus aimant Quo mon cmur meame. Oh, viva portraiture I De ce Janet l'artifice mourra Dedans mon scan le Liens me de mourra, Pour datre vif apres ma stSpultare."

It is strange that a man who deservedly possessed so much con- temporary fame should be so soon forgotten, his works and those of his father confused together, and all kinds of sixteenth-century portraits attributed vaguely to " Janet," without consideration

of the appropriateness of person or date. Real "Clonets" are now- rare, but we possess some good specimens in England, especially one at Castle Howard, representing Catharine de' Medici, with her children, afterwards the Kings, Francis IL, Charles IX., and Henry HI, of which Dr. Waagen says :—"A more important picture by this, the beat French portrait-painter of that age, than any the Louvre possesses." There are several "Clouets" also at Hampton Court, Windsor, and in some of the private English collections.

The drawings in these volumes, edited by Lord Ronald Gower, are reproductions in red chalk, by means of autolithography, of the originals in black, yellow, and red chalk, considered by the• editor to be studies made by Clouet himself from the noble and celebrated persons whom they represent. He acknowledges im the preface that many of the drawings are unavoidably somewhat weakened by the double process of transference which they have to go through, but making all allowance for this enfeebling, there is so great a difference in technical power between the best and the worst specimens of the collection, that one is- inclined to doubt whether they can be all by the same hand. The editor can tell us little of the history of the collection, except that it is mentioned by the critic M. Lenoir as having been purchased in Flanders by the then Earl of Carlisle, towards the close of the last century. M. de Laborde (the great admirer of the Clouets and reviver of their fame), in speaking of it, as. mentioned by Dr. Waagen in his account of English Art Treasures, says :—" Quant aux quatre-vingt-huit crayons, c'est probable- meat une de sea nombreuses series dont j'ai parle h propos des• crayons." "Apropos des crayons," it appears that the Court ladies- of the sixteenth century were as fond of albums as those of later- periods. The fashion was set by Mme. de Boissy, and it became- quite the rage to have portraits of celebrated persons copied from their pictures, if not from life. In consequence, crayon-drawings. increased and multiplied ; and copies were made in coloured chalks, sometimes by the artists themselves, but more frequently by inferior copyists, from all the best portraits that existed. De- Laborde does not believe that Clouet worked much, if at all, in crayon, and his remark upon the Castle Howard collection seems to indicate that he doubted its authenticity. He, how- ever, had not himself seen them, and Dr. Waagen, who, had, considers them genuine, though he only speaks of "eighty- eight," and we have here three hundred. We suppose the present editor has good internal, if little historical, evidence to support his opinion of them. Of course, it is difficult to judge of the• technical qualities of drawings in red, black, and yellow, when reproduced (after tracing) in red monochrome. Whether these drawings are all, or only in part, from the pencil of Clouet, some of them, at least, are worthy of their author in point of execution, especially the heads of Claude de Guise, Duke of Lorraine, and the Cardinal de Lorraine ; the great Admiral Coligny, and his brother, D'Andelot, with his. wife ; all of which show accurate drawing and vigorous- grasp of character. There are many more drawings of great technical excellence, and the whole collection, even those that fail in this respect, are interesting on account of the persons they represent, —and this is, after all, the great value of the work. Nothing is more remarkable than the individual character of all the faces, even where there is a family likeness of blood as well as- that of epoch, which is always to be observed in any collection of portraits of the same period. Well drawn, or slightly sketched, we have here at various ages the kings Francis L, Henry IL, Francis II., and Charles IX. ; an infant Henry IV., with great, character, for a baby ; Jeanne d'Albret, and her father, the King of Navarre ; Margaret de Navarre, of Heptanteron celebrity Diane de Poitiers, rather old, and no beauty ; and many more royal children and Court ladies. There is a sketch of Marie Stuart, aged nine years and six months, faint, but in- teresting to the student of that Queen's character ; a very. vigorous head of the Constable de Montmorency, and two more not so good, and taken at an earlier age, of the same important person. A Cardinal de Baroys has a fine, keen face, and is also a good study, as indeed are most of the ecclesiastics in the book- It is unnecessary to mention more names, suffice it to say that most of the important persons of French history who could be " portrayed " between the years 1541 and 1572, when Clouet died, are to be found in this work, which is therefore of great interest to any student of that active period. There are also at the end sixty- four drawings to which no names are assigned ; amongst these are severalvery interesting faces, some of them, like Nos. 175, 257, 264, repetitions of the same person. It might be an amusing task to a person of leisure and learning to provide some of these persons

with the names and histories which must somewhere exist for them in the "great unknown " of biographical research. With the book itself we have only two faults to find. The English part of the preface is a slovenly piece of writing or translation ; and why could not the name of the person have been printed under each drawing ? In a book of this size it is no small labour constantly to turn to the numbered contents at the beginning, and the names written on most of the drawings, being fac-similes of old hand- writing and old French spelling, are not always legible or intelli- gible. Fortunately, this does not injure the main value of the book, which is historical rather than literary or artistic.