Jean Duvet

Jean Duvet (1485 – after 1562) was a French Renaissance goldsmith and engraver, now best known for his engravings. He was the first significant French printmaker. He produced about seventy-three known plates, that convey a highly personal style, often compared to that of William Blake, with very crowded compositions, a certain naive quality, and intense religious feeling. According to Henri Zerner, his work has a "freedom and immediacy that have no equivalent in Renaissance printmaking". A degree of mystery surrounds his biography, as there is disagreement as to whether or not he was the Jean Duvet from Dijon who spent sixteen years in the militantly Calvinist city-state of Geneva.

He was born to a Dijon goldsmith in 1485, presumably in Dijon itself, which until a decade before had been part of the independent state of the Duchy of Burgundy. He became a master of the Dijon Goldsmiths' guild in 1509, and may have travelled to Italy in about 1519; this is purely an inference from his prints, which show considerable Italian influence. His first dated print is The Annunciation from 1520 (left), although others are probably earlier. A misunderstanding of the nature of a pilaster in this print, which shows a putto wrapped round one as though it were a thin sheet, unattached to the wall behind, perhaps suggests that his understanding of the Italian style was derived purely from prints, books and other objects brought back to France. Although he remained in the provinces, he was appointed goldsmith to both Francis I and Henry II. The first of these appointments was on the occasion of the King's visit to Langres, where he was already living, in 1521; he had been involved in the decorations for the Royal Entry. By the next royal visit, in 1533, he was in charge of the festivities and decoration. The influence of pageant tableaus and scenery has been detected in his prints. No identified examples of his goldsmithing survive, though commissions for Francis I and others are documented.

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