Corneille de Lyon was one of the most highly regarded portraitists in sixteenth-century France. Born in The Hague around 1500, Corneille arrived in the thriving city of Lyon, southeast of Paris, in 1533. He brought a knowledge of Netherlandish portrait traditions with him to France, where the life-like realism and delicacy of his technique made him immediately popular with the French court. Political interests in Italy frequently brought the royal court to Lyon. By 1534 he had become painter to Eleonore of Austria (1498–1558), the wife of François I (r. 1515–1547), and by 1541 was painter to the dauphin, later Henry II. Upon ascending to the throne in 1547, Henry granted Corneille letters of naturalization and named him peintre et premier valet de chambre. Corneille continued painting until at least the mid-1560s, and died in 1575.¹

In addition to his royal contacts, Corneille was well connected to the wealthy bourgeois of Lyon thanks to his marriage to Marguerite Fradin, the daughter of one Lyon’s most prominent printers. Corneille owned several properties in Lyon and the surrounding countryside, and ran a large studio. Contemporary accounts describe a large gallery where Corneille’s portraits of the members of the French court were displayed. Whether the exhibited portraits were meant to be merely representative of Corneille’s skill and style, were available for purchase, or were models from which patrons ordered copies, remains unknown.²

Nothing is known of Corneille’s training. The illusionistic shadows in his portraits—see for example how the frame appears to cast a shadow on the upper and left edges of the Straus panels—reveal Corneille’s debt to the northern portrait tradition of artists like Jan Gossaert (c. 1478–1532). Scholars also know little about Corneille’s workshop practice. He did not sign or date any of his works, and no securely attributed drawings by his hand survive. All three of his children, two sons and a daughter, as well as a son-in-law, were painters and presumably worked for at least a time in Corneille’s workshop. In addition, the painter and print designer Jan van der Straet (1523–1605), known as Stradanus, spent about six months in Corneille’s workshop on his way from his native Bruges to Italy. Corneille’s oeuvre comprises small-scale portraits, usually on green backgrounds but sometimes, as in two of the Straus panels, with blue backgrounds. Many portraits survive in multiple copies, complicating the identification of autograph works.³

Our understanding of Corneille’s oeuvre is based on a portrait in the Louvre which is inscribed, apparently by the sitter, and identifies the artist as “Corneille de La Haye,” or Corneille from The Hague.⁴ Works are attributed to Corneille or rejected largely on the basis of their similarity in style and technique to this work. Corneille’s best portraits of male sitters are characterized by a meticulous attention to the detail of their faces, especially their beards. Often multiple portraits of the same sitter are of comparable quality, suggesting Corneille painted at least significant portions, if not the entire panels, himself.

The three portraits in the Straus collection are believed to represent René de Batarnay, Comte de Bouchage (d. 1587), his wife Isabelle of Savoy, and their daughter, Marie de Batarnay, later Comtesse de Joyeuse (1539–1595). It has repeatedly, and incorrectly, been stated in the literature that the identification of René is based on the resemblance of the Straus portrait to a drawing in St. Petersburg that is labeled “Comte du Bouchage” (fig. 37.1).⁵ The sitter in the Hermitage drawing bears little resemblance to the Straus panel. The identification of the sitter in the Straus portrait is in fact based upon an inscription in a sixteenth-century hand on the back of the panel that reads "de batarnay / Comte du bouchage." This portrait exists in at least two other versions: one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and one recently on the art market.⁶ The Straus panel is the only one of the three that bears an inscription.

The Straus panel had a second inscription, in an eighteenth-century hand, written on parchment and attached to the back of the panel.⁷ This inscription also identifies the sitter as René de Batarnay and records further information about the family. The Straus portrait of René de Batarnay is exceptionally finely painted, especially around the face. A hint of a shadow from the center of the forehead and from nose to mouth describes the sitter’s bone structure. The hairs of the beard and those emerging from under the cap are individually painted in delicate strokes of red, orange, yellow, brown, black, and gray over golden-brown. The modeling of the nose and eyes are particularly fine; the sitter’s right eye is depicted with at least five tiny strokes. On the far right side of the panel an eyebrow catches the light in a brilliant orange. Similar attention was lavished on the costume. Traces of the original gilding remain on the buttons, and although somewhat darkened, the embroidery of the jacket, modeled in black, blue, gray, and sketched in charcoal, are still just visible. The shadows at the upper and left edges of this panel are the most finely painted of the three Straus Corneille portraits and blend delicately into the olive-green background.⁸

The portraits thought to represent Isabelle of Savoy and Marie de Batarnay are less finely painted. Details of Isabelle’s face and costume, for example the subtle creases around her eyes and the delicate black line suggesting the embroidered edge of her shift, as well as the background shadows, are skillfully painted, but overall the modeling and handling of the paint are coarser than in the portrait of René. The composition is strikingly similar to Corneille’s portraits of Marie de Lorraine, Queen of Scotland. Although the face is different, Isabelle’s pose, costume, and expression are very like those in the portraits of Marie de Lorraine. It is possible that a sitter may have viewed the portraits in Corneille’s studio and requested a similar composition, or that Corneille painted Isabelle’s face, leaving the remainder of the portrait to assistants who relied on familiar compositional formulae.⁹

The third portrait, thought to represent Marie de Batarnay, is still less skillfully painted.¹⁰ The shadows around the jaw are quite heavy, and the modeling of the costume more cursory. A strip along the right side of the panel, just over an inch in width, has clearly been overpainted, and the awkward details of her costume suggest it, too, was later retouched. Marie de Batarnay was born in 1539 and appears to be in her teens in the portrait. If she is the sitter in this portrait, it must date from the 1550s, rather than 1535–40, as previously thought.¹¹

Although Percy Straus purchased the panels in 1930 as portraits of René de Batarnay, Isabelle of Savoy, and Marie de Batarnay, it seems likely that the identification of Marie, at least, is suspect. All three portraits were in the collection of Marcus Kappel in Berlin in the early twentieth century and identified in the catalogue, written by Wilhelm von Bode in 1914, as they are presently. One of the dealers from whom Percy Straus often purchased works of art, Robert Langton Douglas, repeatedly wrote to Straus that the three portraits had been in the Lord Boston collection, suggesting a common provenance for the paintings dating back as early as the eighteenth century.¹² The portrait of the young woman, however, was never in the Lord Boston collection.¹³ The 1914 catalogue of the Kappel collection gives as the earliest known owner of the Straus Marie de Batarnay. “Miβ Chancy Blair aus New York in Paris,” who must be Mrs. Chauncey Blair, née Mary A. I. Mitchell (1855–1940). Kappel, or perhaps his advisor, Wilhelm von Bode, may have been the first to identify the young woman as Marie de Batarnay. In any case, Percy Straus was not one to let such details slip his attention. The collection books that document all the information Straus had about the paintings include the provenances as given here, correcting Langton Douglas’s mistake.¹⁴