Léonard Limousin

Who was Léonard Limousin?

Leonard Limousin was a French painter, the most famous of a family of seven Limoges enamel painters, the son of a Limoges innkeeper.

He is supposed to have studied under Nardon Pénicaud. He was certainly at the beginning of his career influenced by the German school indeed, his earliest authenticated work, signed L. L. and dated 1532, is a series of eighteen plaques of the Passion of the Lord, after Albrecht Dürer, but this influence was counterbalanced by that of the Italian masters of the school of Fontainebleau, Primaticcio, Rosso, Giulio Romano and Andrea Solari, from whom he acquired his taste for arabesque ornament and for mythological subjects. Nevertheless the French tradition was sufficiently ingrained in him to save him from becoming an imitator and from losing his personal style.

In 1530 he entered the service of Francis I as painter and varlet de cliambre, a position which he retained under Henry II.