Juste de Juste
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Juste de Juste (ca. 1505 – ca. 1559) was a Franco-Italian sculptor and
printmaker Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proce ...
in
etching Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types ...
, a member of the Betti family of sculptors from near
Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...
, who became known as the Juste family in France, where Juste de Juste's father Antonio and his two brothers emigrated and spent most of their careers. Juste de Juste has been widely accepted as the author of seventeen etchings of naked or ''écorché'' (flayed) male figures signed with a complicated monogram. He also worked as a
stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...
ist of the
School of Fontainebleau The School of Fontainbleau (french: École de Fontainebleau) (c. 1530 – c. 1610) refers to two periods of artistic production in France during the late Renaissance centered on the royal Palace of Fontainebleau that were crucial in forming the No ...
under
Rosso Fiorentino Giovanni Battista di Jacopo (8 March 1495 in Gregorian style, or 1494 according to the calculation of times in Florence where the year began on 25 March – 14 November 1540), known as Rosso Fiorentino (meaning "Red Florentine" in Italian) ...
. Juste de Juste was born in
Tours Tours ( , ) is one of the largest cities in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Indre-et-Loire. The Communes of France, commune of Tours had 136,463 ...
, and trained by his uncle Jean Juste, his father having died in 1519. He worked with Jean on the mausoleum of
Louis XII of France Louis XII (27 June 14621 January 1515), was King of France from 1498 to 1515 and King of Naples from 1501 to 1504. The son of Charles, Duke of Orléans, and Maria of Cleves, he succeeded his 2nd cousin once removed and brother in law at the tim ...
at St-Denis, which occupied his uncle for almost fifteen years from 1516–1531, being especially responsible for the four seated ''Virtues''. In 1529 he was still living in Tours when
Francis I Francis I or Francis the First may refer to: * Francesco I Gonzaga (1366–1407) * Francis I, Duke of Brittany (1414–1450), reigned 1442–1450 * Francis I of France (1494–1547), King of France, reigned 1515–1547 * Francis I, Duke of Saxe-Lau ...
commissioned him to make marble sculptures of
Hercules Hercules (, ) is the Roman equivalent of the Greek divine hero Heracles, son of Jupiter and the mortal Alcmena. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures. The Romans adapted the Gr ...
and
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, now lost, and in 1533 he was appointed ''Sculpteur du Roi'' (a non-exclusive appointment) as his father and uncles had been before him. The year 1531 marked the beginning of the "First School of Fontainebleau", where Juste de Juste spent most of the period 1531-37, before rejoining the family workshop. Juste de Juste left a set of twelve small single etched figures (about 195 x 83 mm each; Zerner 6-17) and another set of five larger prints each showing five or six naked male figures forming improbable human pyramids (these about 267 x 205 mm; Zerner 1-5). All the figures are elongated and muscular and many of their faces have anguished grimaces; over much of their bodies the musculature is so exposed they seem flayed, but they have hair and faces. They are usually interpreted as academic exercises in drawing the male figure, perhaps related to the art student's game of marking a number of dots on a piece of paper and then constructing a figure to incorporate them - it is typical of such exercises that the figures touch the frame of the image at several points. The etching technique is personal and direct, but probably not that of a practised printmaker. Like many Fontainbleau prints, the technical finish of the etching is poor, with many unintended marks and variations in the strength of lines, but the images have an intriguing impact. In the case of both sets there is some evidence that there were other members which have not survived. Only the larger set have the monogram, now agreed to read ''IVSTE''-"Juste" (in reverse). An alternative interpretation has been that they refer to an obscure engraver, Jean Viset, about whom little is known except that he worked at Fontainebleau in 1536. All the prints are rare - again like most School of Fontainebleau prints. The larger set is often mentioned in the context of works by
Henri Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known prima ...
culminating in his
The Dance (second version) ''Dance'' (''La Danse'') is a painting made by Henri Matisse in 1910, at the request of Russian businessman and art collector Sergei Shchukin, who bequeathed the large decorative panel to the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The c ...
in the Hermitage in
St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
. He was apparently still living in Tours, where the family workshop continued, at his death about 1559.


Notes


References

*Fuhring, Peter, in Karen Jacobson, ed (often wrongly cat. as Georg Baselitz), ''The French Renaissance in Prints'', 1994, pp. 282–286; Grunwald Center, UCLA,


External links


Zerner 1 from the British MuseumPyramid of Five Men from ClevelandZerner 4 from ChicagoHuman pyramid from Spamula
{{DEFAULTSORT:Juste 16th-century Italian sculptors Italian male sculptors 16th-century French sculptors French male sculptors French printmakers Artists from Tours, France 1500s births 1550s deaths