Editing Jean Clouet (section)

==Biography==
Little is known about the early life of Clouet. Art historians have generally assumed that he was a native of the [[Burgundian Netherlands]], either in French speaking [[Valenciennes]], [[County of Hainaut]] or Flemish speaking [[Brussels]], [[Duchy of Brabant]]. He may have been the Jehan Cloet from Brussels mentioned in the accounts of the [[Duke of Burgundy]]. His father may have been Michel Clauwet or Clauet, a painter from Valenciennes who had settled in Brussels. In a document regarding the succession of his uncle, the painter Simon Marmion, dated 6 May 1499, Michel's two minor children, Janet and Polet, are mentioned, but there is no evidence that this Janet Clauwet was indeed Jean Clouet. Born around 1485 and trained in Flanders, Clouet spent most of his career in France.<ref name=vie>[https://www.portrait-renaissance.fr/Actualites/Expositions/DP_Clouet_2011.pdf ''Biographies de Jean et François Clouet'' in: Dossier de Presse. Les Clouet de Catherine de Médicis. Portraits dessinés de la cour des Valois. Exposition du 23 mars au 27 juin 2011 au Musée Condé, Domaine de Chantilly], pp. 15-16</ref>
[[File:François Ier Louvre.jpg|thumb|left|260px|Jean Clouet with possibly assistance of François Clouet, ''[[François I of France]]'', c. 1530, oil on panel, [[Louvre]].]]

His connection with the Paris court of the French King [[Francis I of France|Francis I]] is attested in the court accounts from 1516 until 1537. Originally he was appointed as painter and wardrobe valet at wages of 180 livres tournois. He was promoted to extraordinary valet in 1519 and finally to the new position of painter and gentleman in 1524. In 1522, on the death of the court painter [[Jean Bourdichon]] his wages were increased to 240 livres, equal to those received by the official portrait painter [[Jean Perréal]].<ref name=mor>[https://archive.org/details/lesclouetpeintre00moreuoft Moreau-Nélaton, Étienne, ''Les Clouet, peintres officiels des rois de France. A propos d'une peinture signée de François Clouet''], 1908, Paris, É. Lévy</ref> Perréal's departure in 1527 made Clouet the highest paid ordinary painter, confirming his status as the almost exclusive creator of portraits for the royal family and the court. His title of master painter, likely received in Flanders, also allowed him to work for private patrons, such as the notary of the King Jacques Thiboust, whose portrait he painted in 1516, and his uncle by marriage Pierre Fichepain, who commissioned a ''Saint Jerome'' from him in 1522.<ref name=vie/>

He lived in the 1520s in [[Tours]], where he met and married his wife Jeanne Boucault, who was the daughter of a goldsmith. The couple had two children, [[François Clouet|François]] who would succeed him as a court painter, and Catherine. Catherine married [[Abel Foullon]]. Their son [[Benjamin Foullon]] (or Foulon) also became a portrait painter and miniaturist.  The painter [[Simon Bélot]] worked in Jean's workshop in Tours. At the end of the 1520s, the family moved to Paris, where they lived in the rue Sainte-Avoye.  From 1540, Clouet, perhaps ill, was replaced in the king's service by his son François. In July 1540, he was godfather to a child of Mathurin Régnier. He died shortly afterwards, in late 1540 or early 1541, and was buried in the [[Holy Innocents' Cemetery]].  An act in the [[Trésor des Chartes]], the ancient archives of the French crown, states that Clouet's son Jean would succeed his father as painter and valet from November 1541 and that Jean Clouet was born outside France and never became a naturalized Frenchman.  The act also allows François to inherit his father's estate, which otherwise under French law would have [[escheat]]ed to the French crown as Jean was a foreigner.<ref name=mor/>
[[File:Marguerite d'Angoulême by Jean Clouet.jpg|thumb|260px|Jean Clouet, ''Portrait of Marguerite d'Angoulême'', ca. 1530]]

His brother Paul, known as Clouet de Navarre, was in the service of Marguerite d'Angoulême, sister of Francis I, and is referred to in a letter written by Marguerite about 1529.{{sfn|Williamson|1911}}