AIC's 53rd Annual Meeting

Corneille de Lyon was one of the most prolific painters of 16th-century France, and yet very little is known about his life and oeuvre. Early references called him Corneille de La Haye (from The Hague, Netherlands), but he is documented already settled in Lyon by 1533. There, he established a successful workshop specializing in portraits of the noble, religious and bourgeois classes. As official painter to King Henri II of France (1519-1559), he maintained his workshop until his death in 1573, producing a wide corpus characterized by a naturalistic approach and the small format.

Though it is evident that there is a range of painting styles that falls under the attribution of Corneille, there are no extant signed works by the artist. Only one painting, Pierre Aymeric at the Louvre, has been firmly attributed to the artist thanks to an original inscription, but documentary evidence tells us that at least four people, including his daughter, painted in his workshop. Because of the subtle stylistic differences, it has thus far been impossible to understand which works belong to the painter himself and which belong to his assistants, students, or followers. This veil of mystery further prevents us from understanding the broader cultural context surrounding this artist, his patronage, workshop practice, and how his early life and artistic training in the Netherlands may have influenced French painting more broadly. 

 In her catalogue raisonné, Anne Dubois de Groër divides the oeuvre into what she calls “dark” and “light” paintings but states that without technical study, it is impossible to discern which artworks belong to each category. Very few technical studies of the artist have been conducted since De Groër’s publication in 1997. However, in the last few years, several works by Corneille have been treated and scientifically studied, providing an opportunity to start understanding the artistic process used by this artist and his workshop. This talk will share the early findings from such collaborations by comparing  Corneille’s technique and materials, across a number of paintings, including the Portrait of a Man from the National Gallery of Art of Washington DC and four portraits from the Indianapolis Museum of Art. 

Microscopy, X radiography, Infrared Reflectography, FORS, Infrared Spectroscopy, Reflectance Imaging Spectroscopy, GC-MS, XRF mapping and cross sections are the base for technical discoveries of this subject. The scientific analysis and historical reproduction underpinning this research consider the artworks’ materiality and allowed for the comprehensive study that will help art historians to better categorize the numerous portraits in the many collections in US and Europe. The presentation will also frame the painting production by Corneille in a larger artistic environment, related to Jean Clouet (about 1485/90- about 1540/41), Francois Clouet (before 1520 – 1572) and Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/1498 – 1543). This collaborative project addresses the gap in scholarship, defines whether the distinction between master’s and assistant’s hand is a meaningful metric of quality, and explores how broader workshop production tells a story of equal importance to that of the master.