Member-only story
The True Story Behind This Famous Painting
And it has nothing to do with what you think
Presumed portrait of Gabrielle d’Estrées and her sister the Duchess of Villars, Fontainebleau school, circa 1594, Louvre museum.
This painting is one of the most famous French artworks, and yet a great mystery still hovers over its head: we know neither its author, nor its commissioner, nor even the circumstances of its realization. Although its artist remains anonymous, this painting is characteristic of the Fontainebleau school.
What is the Fontainebleau School?
This name designates an artistic movement born in France during the 16th century. The School of Fontainebleau is the name given to a period in the history of French art, which dominated French artistic creation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and which are among the most accomplished examples of Renaissance art in France. It appeared under the influence of Italian artists who traveled to France, notably invited by King Francis I of France, to decorate his new Château de Fontainebleau, starting in the 1530s.
Although it is a movement developed mainly in the 16th…
