Portrait of Clément Marot (Cahors 1496–1544 Turin),
inscribed upper centre: CLEM. MAROT.,
oil on panel, 50 x 35 cm, framed

The present panel portrays the celebrated French Renaissance poet Clément Marot. Born at Cahors in the province of Quercy to Jean Marot, one of grands rhétoriqueurs of Renaissance France. Clement spent most of his life at various courts. From 1519 to 1526 he was in the service of Marguerite d’Angoulême, future Queen of Navarra, and in 1527 he became valet de chambre to François I, a post which he occupied for nearly all the rest of his life. Suspected of favouring Lutheranism and forced to flee to Italy in October 1534 after the Affaire des Placards, he took refuge at the court of Renée, the French duchess of Ferrara, and sister-in-law and cousin of François I. He remained in Ferrara until he fled to Venice in June 1536; at the end of that year he travelled back to France, reaching the French court in March 1537. Five years later Marot was again forced to flee and this time he never returned to France. By way of Geneva and Savoy he reached Piedmont and died in Turin in September 1544.

In the Musée Historique de la Reformation, Geneva, there is a portrait which shows the poet in the later years of his life, turned almost three-quarters to the left and looking directly at the spectator. This portrait appears to be a later version after the present painting which is precisely executed, especially the rendering of the face and the fur collar. The physiognomic type of Marot seen the present painting appears to have been the model also for a picture of Marot formerly in the collection of the sixteenth century art collector, Thomas Rhediger, today in the Museum Slaskie in Wroclaw. None of these known portraits achieve the high quality of the present painting.