Francesco Primaticcio

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"Primaticcio" redirects here. For the Italian wine grape also known as Primaticcio, see Sangiovese.

For another Italian wine grape that is also known as Primaticcio, see Montepulciano (grape).

1648 woodcut portrait of Francesco Primaticcio

Odysseus and Penelope, 1563

Francesco Primaticcio (April 30, 1504 – 1570) was an Italian Mannerist painter, architect and sculptor
who spent most of his career in France.

Contents

1 Biography

2 Gallery

3 Notes

4 References

5 External links

Biography

Born in Bologna, he trained under Giulio Romano in Mantua and became a pupil of Innocenzo da Imola,
executing decorations at the Palazzo Te before securing a position in the court of Francis I of France in
1532.

Holy Family with St Elizabeth and John the Baptist, now in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg,
Russia.

Together with Rosso Fiorentino he was one of the leading artists to work at the Chateau Fontainebleau
(where he is grouped with the so-called "First School of Fontainebleau") spending much of his life there.
Following Rosso's death in 1540, Primaticcio took control of the artistic direction at Fontainebleau,
furnishing the painters and stuccators of his team, such as Nicolò dell'Abate, with designs. He made
cartoons for tapestry-weavers and, like all 16th-century court artists, was called upon to design
elaborate ephemeral decorations for masques and fêtes, which survive only in preparatory drawings
and, sometimes, engravings. Francis I trusted his eye and sent him back to Italy on buying trips in 1540
and again in 1545.

In Rome, part of Primaticcio's commission was to take casts of the best Roman sculptures in the papal
collections, some of which were cast in bronze to decorate the parterres at Fontainebleau.[1]

Primaticcio retained his position as court painter to Francis' heirs, Henry II and Francis II. His
masterpiece, the Salle d'Hercule at Fontainebleau, occupied him and his team from the 1530s to 1559.

Primaticcio's crowded Mannerist compositions and his long-legged canon of beauty influenced French
art for the rest of the century.

Primaticcio turned to architecture towards the end of his life, his greatest work being the Valois Chapel
at the Abbey of Saint-Denis, although this was not completed until after his death and was destroyed in
1719.

Gallery

Alexander tames Bucephalus

The rape of Helena, 1530-1539

Ceiling at Chaalis Abbey

Annunciation at Chaalis

Apollo, Pan, and a putto blowing a horn, from a series of eight compositions after Francesco
Primaticcio's designs for the ceiling of the Ulysses Gallery (destroyed 1738-39) at Fontainebleau.

Three Muses and a Gesturing Putto, from a series of eight compositions after Francesco Primaticcio's
designs for the ceiling of the Ulysses Gallery (destroyed 1738-39) at Fontainebleau

Three Muses and a Putto with a Lyre, a cruciform composition, from a series of eight compositions after
Francesco Primaticcio's designs for the ceiling of the Gallery of Ulysses (destroyed 1738-39) at
Fontainebleau

Three Muses and a Putto with Cymbals, from a series of eight compositions after Francesco Primaticcio's
designs for the ceiling of the Ulysses Gallery (destroyed 1738-39) at Fontainebleau

Hercules, Bacchus, Pan, and Saturn(?), from a series of eight compositions after Francesco Primaticcio's
designs for the ceiling of the Ulysses Gallery (destroyed 1738-39) at Fontainebleau

Ceres Seated on Clouds with Two Goddesses and Two Putti, from a series of eight compositions after
Francesco Primaticcio's designs for the ceiling of the Ulysses Gallery (destroyed 1738-39) at
Fontainebleau
Pluto, Neptune, Minerva and Apollo, from a series of eight compositions after Francesco Primaticcio's
designs for the ceiling of the Ulysses Gallery (destroyed 1738-39) at Fontainebleau

Venus and Cupid, Two Other Goddesses, and a Putto, from a series of eight compositions after
Francesco Primaticcio's designs for the ceiling of the Ulysses Gallery (destroyed 1738-39) at
Fontainebleau

Ulysses and His Companions Fighting the Cicones Before the City of Ismaros, Study for a Destroyed
Fresco in the Galerie d'Ulysee, Chateau de Fontainebleau

Notes

The project, which brought a first virtual confrontation with Roman sculpture to French patrons and
artists, is surveyed in detail by S. Pressouyre, "Les fontes de Primatice à Fontainebleau", Bulletin
monumental 127 (1969), pp. 223-38. See also Thomas Clouet, "Fontainebleau de 1541 à 1547. Pour une
relecture des Comptes des Bâtiments du roi", Bulletin monumental 170 (2012), pp. 195-234, in which
article a precise chronology of the casting of these famous bronzes is established (english summary). The
precious moulds, at the instigation of Leone Leoni were sent to the Habsburg court in the Spanish
Netherland in 1550 and, after serving to make a set of stucco casts for Charles V's daughter Mary of
Hungary, Queen-governess of the Netherlands at Binche (where they were destroyed by Henry II's
troops in 1554) they were probably forwarded to Leoni in Milan (Bruce Boucher, "Leone Leoni and
Primaticcio's Moulds of Antique Sculpture", The Burlington Magazine 123 No. 934 (January 1981), pp.
23-26).