Jean Mignon - The Transformation of Actaeon - Google Art Project

Jean Mignon was a French artist in painting and

printmaking Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proces ...

in the 16th century, active from 1537 to the mid-1550s. He worked in

etching Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other type ...

, sometimes supplemented by

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design on a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a Burin (engraving), burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or Glass engraving, glass ar ...

, and was one of the first group of artists in France to use etching for prints. He was part of the burst of activity in the 1540s associated with the First School of Fontainebleau. At least half of his prints, over thirty, use compositions by the Italian painter

Luca Penni Luca Penni (c.1500/1504–1556) was an Italian painter of the 16th century, best known for his work in France as part of the First School of Fontainebleau. He was nicknamed ''Le Romain'' (the Roman). Life Penni was born in Florence, into a fam ...

, who was also at the palace from 1537 through to the 1540s. Others use designs by

Francesco Primaticcio Francesco Primaticcio (; April 30, 1504 – 1570) was an Italian Mannerism, Mannerist Painting, painter, architect and sculpture, sculptor who spent most of his career in France. Biography Born in Bologna, he trained under Giulio Romano ( ...

, the leader of the school after the suicide of

Rosso Fiorentino Giovanni Battista di Jacopo (8 March 1495 – 14 November 1540), known as Rosso Fiorentino (meaning "Florentine Redhead" in Italian) or Il Rosso ("The Redhead"), was an Italian Mannerist painter who worked in oil and fresco Fresco ( or ...

in 1540. Mignon's prints number around sixty, with some uncertainty over the authorship of a number. The Death of Adonis MET DP822147

Nothing is known about his origins or early life. His first documentary appearance is in 1537 in the royal accounts, as a painter at the

Palace of Fontainebleau Palace of Fontainebleau ( , ; ), located southeast of the center of Paris, in the commune of Fontainebleau, is one of the largest French royal châteaux. It served as a hunting lodge and summer residence for many of the List of French monarchs ...

, continuing until 1540; no painting identifiable as his is known, and his etchings form his known oeuvre. His only dated prints are one of 1543, and "five or six" dated 1544; only two prints are signed, one also dated 1544. At some point, like Penni, he moved to Paris, where he is recorded from 1550 until his death in the winter of 1556 to 1557.

Prints

His prints cover a range of subjects, including classical mythology and literature, religious subjects, and

ornament print In architecture and decorative art, ornament is decoration used to embellish parts of a building or object. Large figurative elements such as monumental sculpture and their equivalents in decorative art are excluded from the term; most ornamen ...

s. Many are crowded scenes, and relatively large for the period, with the largest dimensions over 600 mm.Boorsch, 90 There seems to have been a gap in his printmaking in the late 1540s, perhaps coinciding with a period when Penni seems to have been absent in Germany, probably with Leon Davent. The putative later group is relatively small in number, but larger in size, and demonstrates a more developed technique, with a "much greater variety of etching strokes ...creating an extraordinary range of textures". Most of the latter group have elaborate frames. Like other School of Fontainebleau etchings, many have very elaborate frames, and may have been of interest to buyers as models for craftsmen in other media. But with one partial exception, none of the frames seem to exactly copy the elaborate

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and ...

frames in the palace. The exception is a print purely of a frame, with an empty oval in the centre, two full length female nudes and various smaller figures of

putti A putto (; plural putti ) is a figure in a work of art depicted as a chubby male child, usually naked and very often winged. Originally limited to profane passions in symbolism,Dempsey, Charles. ''Inventing the Renaissance Putto''. University ...

and

herms Herms is a surname and given name. Notable people with the name include: *George Herms (born 1935), American artist *René Herms (1982-2009), German middle-distance runner *Herms Niel (1888-1954), German composer of military songs and marches See ...

. This is the only one of his etchings to be both signed and dated,1544. The frame is very similar to four stucco frames still in the palace on the "Staircase of the King", but not exactly the same as any of them; a drawing (of unclear authorship) the print probably copies is in the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...

. The etching technique is confident and effective, although it is probably relatively early in his etching career. There is an early series of 20

s of very fanciful terms or terminal figures. These are now normally given to Mignon, though the variety of styles used suggests they were a collaborative effort by the Fontainebleau group. These were very popular, and reprinted for over a century. There are six large prints (around 320 x 440 mm) with the story of the

Trojan War The Trojan War was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around the twelfth or thirteenth century BC. The war was waged by the Achaeans (Homer), Achaeans (Ancient Greece, Greeks) against the city of Troy after Paris (mytho ...

, regarded as coming from 1544 or 1545. Three drawings for them by Penni survive (

), in the reverse direction, to which Mignon has added vegetation. These do not have frames. They show a characteristic of Penni and Mignon's images, with most figures having their mouths open. Another early series shows four standard scenes from the

Passion of Jesus The Passion (from Latin , "to suffer, bear, endure") is the short final period before the death of Jesus, described in the four canonical gospels. It is commemorated in Christianity every year during Holy Week. The ''Passion'' may include, amo ...

, beginning with a ''Deposition''; these are in vertical format, with frames.''Pietà''
,

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

, Cat: 1850,0527.61 File:Terminal Figure - Sphinx with crescent in her hair.jpeg, Terminal Figure: Sphinx with crescent in her hair File:Deposition of the Cross MET DP855155.jpg, ''

Deposition of Christ The Descent from the Cross (, ''Apokathelosis''), or Deposition of Christ, is the scene, as depicted in art, from the Gospels' accounts of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus taking Christ down from the cross after his crucifixion (John 19, ). I ...

'' File:The Trojans Bring the Wooden Horse into Their City MET DP854948.jpg, ''The Trojans Bring the Wooden Horse into Their City'' File:Cleopatra Bitten By an Asp MET DP855160.jpg, ''

Cleopatra Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (; The name Cleopatra is pronounced , or sometimes in both British and American English, see and respectively. Her name was pronounced in the Greek dialect of Egypt (see Koine Greek phonology). She was ...

Bitten By an Asp'' File:Women Bathing MET DP-1152-001.jpg, ''Women Bathing'', late period. A typical Fontainbleau subject, to which no classical incident seems to be attached.

Notes

References

*Boorsch, Suzanne, in Jacobson, Karen (ed), (often wrongly cat. as

Georg Baselitz Georg Baselitz (born 23 January 1938) is a German Painting, painter, Sculpture, sculptor and Graphic arts, graphic artist. In the 1960s he became well known for his Figurative art, figurative, expressive paintings. In 1969 he began painting his ...

), ''The French Renaissance in Prints'', 1994, Grunwald Center, UCLA, *Jacobson, Karen – see "Boorsch", used for the biography with no given author *Jenkins, Catherine, in ''The Renaissance of Etching'', By Catherine Jenkins, Nadine Orenstein, Freyda Spira, Peter Fuhring, 2019, Metropolitan Museum of Art, ISBN 9781588396495
google books
*Landau, David, in Landau, David, and Parshall, Peter, ''The Renaissance Print'', Yale, 1996, *Reed, Sue Welsh, in: Reed, Sue Welsh & Wallace, Richard (eds), ''Italian Etchers of the Renaissance and Baroque'', Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 1989, or 304-4 (pb)

Prints

Notes

References

Further reading