Georges d'Armagnac

Georges d'Armagnac (c. 1501 – July 1585) was a French humanist, patron of arts, Cardinal and diplomat deeply embroiled in the Italian Wars and in the French Wars of Religion.

He was born at Avignon, the legitimized son of Pierre d'Armagnac, sire de Caussade and of a certain Fleurette, and thus he was a grandson of Catherine de Foix, and so a highly connected member of the powerful house of Foix d'Armagnac. In his youth he was the protégé of his kinsman Cardinal Georges d'Amboise. His uncle Charles, duc d'Alençon introduced him to Francis I. Though there is no record of his ecclesiastical training or his sacred orders, he was approved by the king's sister Marguerite d'Angoulême and swiftly provided with sinecures: dean of the cathedral chapter of Meaux, honorary abbot (in commendatario) of Saint-Ambroise de Bourges, and nearer to home, a canon of the cathedral chapter of Rodez.

In 1529 he was appointed bishop of Rodez, and he was soon joined by his secretary and life companion, the humanist Guillaume Philandrier, who provided, under Armagnac's patronage, the design for the new cathedral façade at Rodez and catalogued the Bishop's increasing library.

He was ambassador to Venice from 1536 to 1539; here he took the opportunity to sit to Titian for a highly personal and evocative double portrait with the attentive Philandrier, whose commentary on Vituvius, the first in French, was completed in 1544. Armgnac's brief was to secure Venetian neutrality in the north Italian military conflicts between Francis I and Charles V, an episode of the Italian Wars. The emperor's failure to take Avignon led him to retreat from the south of France (1538). With the temporary truce of 1539 the king sent him as ambassador to the Holy See, where he was made a Cardinal in December 1544, remaining as ever the agent of French policy. He participated in the conclave (November 1550) that elected his friend, the worldly humanist and patron Pope Julius III.

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