This, however, did not prevent him, as soon as he became King, from
taking up François Clouet, whom he commissioned not only to make a
_post-mortem_ effigy of the late King, but also to prepare an official
representation of himself. His own portrait bears a note upon it,
apparently in the artist's own handwriting, "_Le Roy Henry 2_"[116]:
handwriting which bears close similarity to an existing quittance signed
_F. Clouet_. This drawing, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris,
became very popular. A version completed in colours, is now in the
Louvre: it was reproduced in miniature; and many copies were
subsequently made by lesser hands.
Contemporary with this portrait is a powerful likeness of the _Grand
Connétable, Anne de Montmorency_,[117] evidently taken from life. In
this drawing the individuality of the artist is very marked: more
realistic in his tendencies than his father, he is on that account more
French. This great warrior, the Lord of Chantilly, is shown here when at
the height of his fame, in high favour with the King and with _l'amie du
roi_, Diane de Poitiers.[118] This famous lady herself sat to François
Clouet, and so apparently about the same time did Catherine de Medicis,
and also Jeanne d'Albret,[119] Queen of Navarre. It is interesting to
compare the likeness of this latter princess, so eloquent of a noble
mind and a frank disposition, with that of Catherine de Medicis, past
mistress in the art of dissimulation.
[Illustration: Plate LXIII.
_Photo. Hanfstaengl._
CHARLES IX.
François Clouet. About 1569.
Vienna Gallery.
_To face page 230._]
Drawings and portraits of Catherine as Dauphine and as Queen of France
are comparatively rare. It is as a Queen-Dowager, growing old and well
away on her career of dangerous intrigue, that we chiefly meet her in
the Galleries of Europe. No small value can therefore be attached to the
drawing in the British Museum which came to the nation through the
Salting Bequest, inasmuch as it brings her before us at the period when
her husband had just ascended the throne of France; and to another
likeness at Chantilly, attributed to Corneille de Lyon, which is
supposed to be the one executed when she passed through Lyons with Henri
II in 1564. Brantôme relates that upon this occasion the great Diane de
Poitiers received more homage than the Queen herself, and that portraits
were drawn of all the royal ladies, amongst whom was the King's sister
Marguerite (soon to become Duchess of Savoy). The writer further tells
us how Catherine, when fifteen years later she revisited Lyons as
Queen-Mother, displayed much amusement at the old-fashioned attire in
which she and her Court ladies had then been portrayed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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