The Collection of Francis I: Royal Treasures.

Janet Cox-Rearick has been working on the collection of Francis I since 1972 when she was guest curator of the exhibition La Collection de Francois [I.sup.er] at the Louvre. The present book, the first full-scale study of the collection, is the splendid result of this staggering scholarly project. She has pursued and here discusses individual works of art in the collection that can be identified, whether they are extant or lost. Among these works are Italian Renaissance paintings and sculptures, ancient sculptures, tapestries, and decorative art objects. During the king's lifetime, the collection was housed in his newly expanded chateau at Fontainebleau. Today many works are in the Louvre.

Beginning with a prologue devoted to portraits of the king and an account of his personal imagery, Cox-Rearick proceeds through eleven chapters which clearly illuminate Francis I as one of the greatest patrons of his age, and as the facilitator of a new French Renaissance style that drew its vital inspiration from Italian Renaissance art and artists. The book ends with an epilogue that traces the critical fortunes of the king's reputation as Pere des Arts et Lettres from his death in 1547 through the Second Empire period (1852-70). The richly informative text is written in a clear prose, and the book is profusely illustrated with good quality black-and-white and color illustrations. There are also plentiful footnotes and a large bibliography of works cited.

Francis I was long enamored of things Italian. He continued military campaigns into Italy that had begun in 1494 when Charles VIII conquered Naples. The king's dynastic claims to Milan and Naples, however, suffered a stinging reversal when the French were defeated by imperial troops at Pavia in 1525, and he was a prisoner in Spain for over a year. Nevertheless, it was the Italian Wars that opened the French court to Italian cultural influences and thereby changed its nature, engendering greater sophistication, refinement and, at times, rank extravagance.

Francis's collection grew in various ways, in part through diplomatic gifts. He also employed a number of agents to buy works of art in Italy. Among the most important agents were Guillaume du Bellay, one of the king's ambassadors; Ippolito d'Este, Cardinal of Ferrara and brother of Duke Ercole II d'Este; and Battista della Palla, the Florentine emissary to France who became the king's personal art agent. Significantly, Francis also collected Italian artists, inviting them to France and usually putting them to work there. The most famous was certainly the aging Leonardo da Vinci, who arrived in 1516 and died at Cloux in 1519. The most productive were Rosso Fiorentino (1495-1540) and Francesco Primaticcio (1504/5-70), who left at Fontainebleau the wonderful legacy of their paintings and stucco decorations, particularly in the Galerie Francois Ier. Primaticcio's elegant, courtly, and mannerist style, whether in painting, stucco or architecture, made a strong impact on later sixteenth-century French artists who have sometimes been called "School of Fontainebleau" artists. Andrea del Sarto also went to France, and so did Benvenuto Cellini, but not Michelangelo, although the king tried to persuade him to make the trip for some twenty years.

Cox-Rearick deals in detail with the entire remarkable scope of the king's activities as patron and collector, including his architectural projects. These include the large, impressive chateau at Chambord, where the king took to the surrounding forests to indulge his passion for the hunt, and his additions to the chateau at Blois. She naturally focuses special attention on Fontainebleau, where he made many changes and where there was so much artistic activity; it was indeed the king's favorite residence.

A distinguished historian of Italian Renaissance art, Cox-Rearick here never fails to maintain her sharp focus on the French king and the palpable Frenchness of his cultural interests and accomplishments and distinctive court environment. Her book is bound to be the standard reference on the collection for many years.

H. DIANE RUSSELL National Gallery of Art