Antoine Caron
French, 1521-1599
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Antoine Caron was a French master glassmaker, illustrator, Northern Mannerist painter and a product of the School of Fontainebleau.
He is one of the few French painters of his time who had a pronounced artistic personality. His work reflects the refined, although highly unstable, atmosphere at the court of the House of Valois during the French Wars of Religion of 1560 to 1598.
Caron was born in Beauvais.
He began painting in his teens doing frescos for a number of churches. Between 1540 and 1550 he worked under Primaticcio and Niccolò dell'Abbate at the School of Fontainebleau. In 1561, he was appointed the court painter by Catherine de' Medici and Henry II of France. As court painter he also had the duties of organizing the court pageants. In this way he was involved in organizing the ceremony and royal entry for the coronation of Charles IX in Paris and the wedding of Henry IV of France with Marguerite de Valois. Some of his surviving illustrations are from these pageants.
His drawings of festivities at the court of Charles IX are likely sources for the depiction of the court in the Valois Tapestries. He died in Paris in 1599.