Studio of François Clouet

Anonymous sale, Sotheby's, Paris, 10 November 2021, lot 34.

This portrait of Jacqueline de Rohan Gié, famed for her great beauty, joins the substantial corpus of works that represent her. Jean Clouet was the first to make her portrait when she was twenty years old in a drawing, a version of which is in the Gallerie degli Uffizi in Florence (inv. 14911F). Corneille de Lyon also portrayed her in 1540, in a painting now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (inv. 2165).

Born in 1520, Jacqueline de Rohan was lady-in-waiting to both Queen Eleanor and Catherine de Medici. At the age of sixteen, she married François d’Orléans, Marquis de Rothelin, Comte de Neuchâtel (1513–1548). In this panel, the Marquise wears a black dress and the headdress known as an attifet, obvious attributes of widowhood. She lost her husband at the age of twenty-eight and François Clouet had already portrayed her as a widow in a painting that Alexandra Zvereva dates to about 1558 (Musée Condé, Chantilly, inv. MN 222). Zvereva also suggests that the present portrait dates to 1563: it could then have been painted while Jacqueline de Rohan was in Paris for her son’s wedding. A first drawing by François Clouet, dating to about 1540, has also survived and is in the Musée Condé in Chantilly, where François also copied a composition by his father (inv. MN 221).

The present work is very finely executed, with traces of the underlying drawing visible in places, testifying to a desire for accuracy on the part of the painter, who was close to François Clouet. A copy of the present painting is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen (inv. 1907.1.111).