Портретная галерея двора Франциска I (по рукописи из РНБ)

Abstract

The Manuscripts Department of the Russian National Library has an album of pencil portraits of Francis I, members of his family, and his court. The majority of this collection represents a range of replications of Clouet’s school drawings and contains the signature identification that reflects a title or a family name of the depicted characters. Such portrait galleries were created during the 16th century; they were collected, descended,and, finally, included into library holdings and museum collections. This album of pencil portraits was brought from France by P. Dubrovsky who was a Russian statesman and a bibliophile. The authors have performed palaeographicand codicological analysis of this manuscript and identified the depicted characters. As a result, the research of this album allowed us to conclude that the corpus facing us isn’t just a miscellaneous collection; it is the album whose contents were intended by a customer. Many of extant albums came down to us fragmented.The manuscript of P. Dubrovsky was bound during the regency of Catherine de Médicis, though the drawings were probably executed under the reign of Francis I. This album is not only a pictorial source, but also part of Renaissance bookbinding culture.