Francesco Primaticcio, a Bolognese from Fontainebleau to Rome

SERIES: Travels and stays of artists in Rome
SPEAKER: Dominique Cordellier
DATE: Thursday, December 12, 6 p.m.

Born in Bologna in 1503 and educated in his hometown, Francesco Primaticcio, an exact contemporary of Parmigianino, worked first in Mantua and then for forty years at the French court, spending most of his life as a painter, sculptor and architect away from Rome. It was to him, however, that the King of France Francis I, driven by his imperial ambitions, asked to transform his castle at Fontainebleau into “a new Rome.” This desire for prestige, as sincere as it was impossible, a true ideal dream, led the artist to make several trips to Rome. But he did more than that. This lecture will examine how an “Italian abroad” used all his virtuosity to leave a profound, and sometimes hidden, mark on the antiquities of Rome and their recomposition by Renaissance artists in this apogee of the “ modern manner” that is now known as the “School of Fontainebleau”.

Dominique Cordellier is Conservateur du Patrimoine honoraire and has spent his entire career at the Louvre Museum in Paris. There he has studied and exhibited drawings by Italian and French artists of the 15th and 16th centuries and curated major exhibitions, devoting particular attention to Raphael and his disciples (Polidoro da Caravaggio, Giulio Romano), as well as to the great protagonists of the more elaborate “ maniera moderna ” in Italy (Beccafumi, Parmigianino) and France (Rosso Fiorentino, Luca Penni, Francesco Primaticccio). He is currently continuing his research on the artists of the Fontainebleau school and their French satellites (Jean Cousin, Charles Carmoy, Geoffroy Dumonstier, etc.).

Free admission while seats last.

Reservations at the link.