Jean Fouquet and the Invention of France. Art and Nation after the Hundred Years War. By Erik Inglis. 280 pp. incl. 106 col. + 114 b. & w. ills. (Yale University Press, London and New Haven, 2011), $75. ISBN 978–0–300–13443–8.

Reviewed by PATRICIA STIRNEMANN

Although the extant œuvre of Jean Fouquet is relatively small and largely confined to manuscripts, it is somewhat surprising that no scholar has previously undertaken a book-length study in English of an artist who in France has a stature equal to that of Van Eyck in Flanders or Masaccio in Italy. If for this reason alone, Erik Inglis’s beautifully illustrated Jean Fouquet and the Invention of France deserves a warm welcome.

The book, however, is neither a monograph nor an offering of new research, but rather an inductive, thematic study growing out of the author’s thesis on Fouquet as a painter of history (1998). It draws upon the wealth of material assembled recently in the exhibition of 2003 organised by François Avril in Paris and in the monograph on the Hours of Etienne Chevalier by Nicole Reynaud (2006), as well as a host of earlier sources. It is also an analogical study that invokes a wide range of visual and verbal parallels, the latter from contemporary histories, accounts, letters and diplomatic reports, in support of its hypotheses. The style is leisurely and shifting in tone, by turns expository, analytical, conversational or academic.

Carefully couching his objectives in the introduction, Inglis gives an apology for his title, which could also be styled as ‘an invention of France’ or ‘a discovery of France’ (reflecting the Latin inventio), and describes his quest as an attempt to show how Fouquet’s art defines national identity.

The journey begins with a discussion of the social position of Fouquet’s clients and the artist’s place at court, but ends with the admission that the persona of the medieval illum­inator largely remains a mystery. The author then pursues his quarry indirectly, asking what might have been found in Fouquet’s model-book. He starts with the three extant portrait drawings attributed to Fouquet, noting the usefulness of these finished sketches to a court artist (as witnessed by the portrait of Agnes Sorel which was used posthumously as a model for the Virgin in the diptych painted for Etienne Chevalier). He then isolates the motif of a genuflecting man, quite possibly inspired by the figure of Adam in the Très Riches Heures, which Fouquet pivots and redeploys in various settings. Many specific borrowings noted by earlier scholars, such as those from the Bellini sketchbooks (Otto Pächt), the Cavalcanti altarpiece (Mark Evans), the interiors of the Pantheon and Old St Peter’s (Paul Durrieu), are carefully collected and spark the reader’s imagination.

Turning to the central theme, chapter 2 develops the ‘historicity’ of the miniatures in the Grandes Chroniques. Indeed among the fifty-four images in the manuscript, fourteen have recognisable buildings or cityscapes that are used as appropriate historical backdrops – Rome, Paris, Tours, Orléans, Amiens, Gisors – to which we can add the elevation of the cathedral at Reims, which is recognisable as the place of Lothaire’s coronation (fol.163). Among the many stimulating arguments, the author develops a fine case for the inclusion of crusading miniatures, which reflect current concerns over the fall of Constantinople (pp.86–91), and another for the detail of the deadly arrow striking the eye of the cruel King of England, William Rufus (pp.90–91). Less convincing is the received reading of the secondary scene in the miniature of Lothaire’s coronation (fol.163), which is said to illustrate a cordial meeting between Duke Richard of Normandy and Lothaire, thus contradicting the text but attesting ‘political harmony’. According to the text, Count Thibaud of Chartres slandered Richard and convinced Lothaire to set a trap for him near Gisors. Richard foresaw the ambush and retreated to Rouen. If Richard were pictured in the tent, some heraldic identification would be visible, whereas the crowned figure speaking with Lothaire is surely Thibaud, who was count of Chartres and Champagne, and who is also the figure wearing a coronet and holding the crown at the coronation in Reims Cathedral, on the left side of the image.

The intention, meaning and reception of the portraits of Charles VII, ‘not the most beautiful of nature’s work’, dominate much of the third chapter. Charles, as pictured in the Louvre portrait (Fig.45), and despite the contemporary sobriquet of ‘very victorious’ king painted on the frame, has been described by modern commentators as ‘spineless and weary’ (Charles Sterling), a ‘man of sorrows’ (Daniel Arasse) with ‘the eyes of a small-town usurer’ (J.K. Huysmans). The outsized jacket overwhelms his scrawny form, and his fidgety hands retreat into the accordion sleeves. His arms are posed on an incomprehensible brocaded pillow, which is neither cushioning a prie-dieu nor a window sill and appears to be on his lap. Asymmetrically gathered curtains of thin white sheeting under a red fringed valence frame the figure against a background of green creased satin or velvet. Through a verbal sleight of hand, Inglis seeks out positive readings and analogies in historical texts and princely mirrors (pp.113–22), suggesting, moreover, that the pictorial citation of the  Louvre portrait in the Romuleon, made around 1465 for the king’s son, Charles of France, equates Charles VII with the founder of Rome. The miniature in the Romuleon, however, depicts Charles/Romulus surveying the rape of the Sabine women, hardly a glorious moment; it might equally refer to the king’s sexual appetite: four mistresses, four illegit­imate children by Agnes Sorel, and twelve children by his wife. One might even wonder for what purpose the portrait was made, since it was painted seemingly in haste on re-used boards, over a portrait of Agnes Sorel, as Nicole Reynaud reported in the Revue du Louvre in 1983.1 The portrait is dated to the early 1450s for reasons of style (more Flemish than Italian) and because of the subject it overpaints, but is it possible that Charles never saw the Louvre portrait, that Fouquet might have been working from an earlier drawing and that this might be a posthumous or intimate and comprehending view of the king commissioned by a family member, such as Marie d’Anjou? Such a suggestion may be going too far, but the painting is so enigmatic that it would seem more useful to explore the problems than to propose a somewhat partial solution using analogical texts.

The chapter ends with a finely layered discussion of Charles VII as magus in the Hours of Etienne Chevalier and the antecedents for the portrayal of a contemporary king at the Epiphany. The analysis could probably be taken one step further, because the precise inspiration for the quid pro quo here may well be the Très Riches Heures, which was most probably owned by Charles VII at the time. At the Adoration, the youngest magus is identifiable as Charles VI, the nephew of Jean de Berry, for he is wearing a black costume decorated with his device of May leaves. The magus looks directly at the Virgin and the two haloed ladies standing behind her. These are the Virgin’s two sisters, Mary Jacobé and Mary Salomé, who have come to see their new-born nephew, Jesus. In 1367 Charles V and Jeanne de Bourbon, who had been unable to conceive an heir, made a pilgrimage to Chartres to pray to the Virgin, at which time they founded an altar dedicated to the Three Marys. A year later Charles VI was born and the cult of the Three Marys was durably ensconced in royal circles.

In the fourth chapter, Fouquet’s architectural portraits are considered as contemporary emblems of French identity, as an encomium of national patrimony. The history of architectural portraiture in France is traced back essentially to the Boucicaut Master and the Limbourg brothers, but curiously the calendar pictures in the Très Riches Heures are dated to the 1440s (pp.153 and 164–72), whereas only the month of September showing Saumur is from that decade. In the discussion of ‘inter­ior views’ (p.154), no reference is made to the demonstrable influence of Van Eyck on Fouquet. But these are minor quibbles, for in all fairness, the study of sources and chronology is not the main concern of the argument. It is rather the way the monuments were seen and appreciated for their beauty and political importance that fascinates the author, and he has laced this chapter with a magnificent selection of contemporary descriptions – textual and visual – of French cities and buildings by historians, diplomats and artists. Fouquet, of course, plays a prominent role, and a good case is made for the occasional use of architecture as propaganda by the ruling class.

The concluding pages gather together earlier threads and study the impact of Fouquet’s highly original and measured style on patrons and artists of contemporary France. Also examined is the prolongation of his style at court through the Munich Boccaccio Master (probably Fouquet’s son) and other imitators, his posthumous reputation and the diplomatic dimension of the great artist’s life and trade.

Inglis’s book is a useful introduction to Fouquet for medievalists in the English-speaking world, presenting many of the latest findings on the artist, a plethora of sources and background material that should excite inquiring minds, and a personal view of a selection of Fouquet’s work that will surely arouse discussion and reflection.

1    N. Reynaud: ‘La radiographie du portrait de Charles VII par Fouquet’, Revue du Louvre 2 (1983), pp.97–99.