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There are many singular elements in this famous portrait: the refined taste for the sumptuous dress, the precision of the colours (characteristically Flemish), the clearness of the outlines, the precision of the details (characteristically Mannerist); all aspects which do not distance the portrait-painting art of François Clouet (son of the similarly well-known Jean) from that of the Fontainebleau school. Clouet's Mannerism is not derived from an imitation of Florentine painters, such as Bronzino, but is rather a spontaneous Mannerism, and therefore fresher and more vital, assimilated from some great master of the north, faithful to a great realism and the precision of the modelling.
The identification of the person portrayed as Francis I of France is relatively recent (1769). It is based mainly on the concrete possibility that the painting arrived in Florence with the rich dowry of Christine of Lorraine, grand-daughter and heir of Catherine de' Medici, the queen of France.
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