Fouquet was born in 1415, and was already famous when Louis XI ascended the Throne of France, and made him his Court-Painter. He was, moreover, well known in Italy before 1443; for he was commissioned whilst in Rome to paint a portrait of _Pope Eugenius IV_ which is known to have been long preserved in the Sacristy of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, but which has only come down to us in a mediocre engraving. Filarete in his _Treatise on Architecture_, dedicated to Francesco Sforza, speaks of Fouquet as famous for portraits from life, and mentions this very portrait of the Pope, together with those of two members of his family. His name was still remembered in Italy in the sixteenth century (he died before 1480), for Vasari mentions him as _Giovanni Fochet assai lodato pitor_. And Jean de Maire of Belgium, who lived at the Court of that highly cultured patroness of the Arts, Margaret of Austria, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian, recalls Fouquet with highest commendation. Indeed this princess, according to an _Inventory_ of 1516, seems to have owned a small _Madonna_ painted by this master: "_Un petit tableau de Notre Dame bien vieux de la main de Fouquet ayant etuy et couverture_." [Illustration: Plate XLI. Photo. Giraudon. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD RECEIVING HOMAGE Jean Fouquet. Musée Condé. _To face page 180._] We know that Fouquet painted the portraits of _Charles VII_ and of _Juvenal des Ursins_ in the Louvre, and also a recently acquired portrait of a _Man with a Glass of Wine_. The life-sized portraits of _Etienne Chevalier attended by his Patron Saint_ at Berlin and the powerful likeness of an _Unknown Personage_ in the Lichtenstein Gallery are by his hand. But although he won great fame as a portrait-painter during his lifetime it is upon his achievements as a worker in miniature that his highest reputation is based. [Illustration: Plate XLII. Photo. Giraudon. THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN. Jean Fouquet. Musée Condé. _To face page 182._]