Corneille de Lyon

Lyons Marie de Guise , Queen of Scotland

Corneille de Lyon , also Corneille de la Haye called ( Dutch Cornelis van Den Haag ) (* 1500-1510 in The Hague , † 1575 in Lyon ) was a Flemish - French painter of the Renaissance .

Life

Although he, like his sons, was known under the name "de la Haye" during his lifetime, nothing is known about his youth in Holland. His full name is also unknown. The name "de Lyon" was first used by Bouchot in the 19th century .

Corneille settled in Lyon in 1533 and became famous for his portraits . From 1536 he began to paint portraits of the members of the royal family and of people from the vicinity of the court when they were in Lyon. From 1541 at the latest he was house painter ("peintre de la maison") of the French heir to the throne, later King Henry II , after his accession to the throne in 1547 court painter, also under his successors King Franz II and King Charles IX. of France . Despite being appointed court painter, he spent the rest of his life in Lyon and also painted citizens.

He married the daughter of a famous printer, and through this and by moving to the printers' quarter near Notre-Dame-de-Confort, he secured a stable and respected position in society. This also enabled him to make a living from his job and to work with other artists in the neighborhood. Corneille had the ability to make copies of his works (probably mostly from employees) in order to be able to react to later requests from clients or new customers. Until the outbreak of the Huguenot Wars , his business was good. Although he was a Protestant and was spared from attacks, he was forced to convert to Catholicism in 1569 .

Only small portraits (10 × 12 cm to 20 × 25 cm) with a monochrome, green or blue background are known by Corneille. They show the body at most to the waist. All of them are unsigned, only one, a portrait of Pierre Aymeric in the Louvre , inscribed and dated on the reverse by the first owner (1534, Corneille is named there as the painter of Queen Éléonore). The quality is very different, the distinction between hand-made and workshop work is uncertain. The heads are usually executed with great care and accuracy, some expressive and lively, other parts mostly without individual features. The heads are also partially highlighted by the lighting; from around 1540 onwards there was a tendency to shorten the shadows. The portraits were immediately painted in oil on wood without any preparatory drawings. There is no evidence for the earlier assumption that they were largely based on drawings or paintings by other artists; it also contradicts contemporary reports.

His works are u. a. represented in Boston , London , New York City , Paris , Versailles and Vienna .

literature

• Anne Dubois de Groer: Corneille de La Haye dit Corneille de Lyon , Paris 1996

Web links

Commons : Corneille de Lyon  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Artcylopedia (English)