Fontainebleau is a royal palace of Francis I. It was begun in 1528 and added to for the next 200 years. The Galerie François I (1533-40) introduces the so-called "Fontainebleau style" of interior decoration, a combination of sculpture, metalwork, painting, stucco and woodwork. It was evolved by Italian artists Niccolò dell'Abbate, Primaticcio and Rosso, who worked for Francis I from 1530 to 1560. The first School of Fontainebleau introduced Mannerism to France.
Henry IV devoted considerable energy to the decoration of the royal palaces, but unfortunately few of the paintings which he commissioned survive, and we are therefore badly informed about the so-called Second School of Fontainebleau, which was responsible for them. The name is generally applied to three painters: Ambroise Dubois, Toussaint Dubreuil and Martin Fréminet, who may be said to have revived the function of their predecessors at Fontainebleau after the Wars of Religion interrupted large-scale painting in France. However, the second School of Fontainebleau was less important.