François I (1494–1547), King of France

Girolamo della Robbia|Luca della Robbia ("Young Luca")

1529 · Glazed terracotta · European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Portrayed here at age thirty-five, François I sports a faint smile and a beard, which he is said to have adopted a few years earlier to hide scars from an accident. The king also wears a shirt adorned with double knots shaped like figure eights—an emblem of the House of Savoie, from which he descended through his mother, Louise, duchesse d’Angoulême. Modeled on roundels of ancient rulers that decorated François’s now-destroyed château de Madrid, the bust was commissioned by a courtier, Louis Prévost de Sansac (1496–1576), to hang above the entrance to the château de Sansac in Loches, Indre-et-Loire.

Artist

Girolamo della Robbia|Luca della Robbia ("Young Luca")

Date

1529

Medium

Glazed terracotta

Culture

French

Department

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Credit line

Gift of George Blumenthal, 1941