Anne de Pisseleu, Duchesse d’Étampes

Renowned for her brilliance and beauty, Anne de Pisseleu d’Heilly was the favored mistress of King Francis I of France, introduced to the court in 1526 at the age of seventeen. This intimate portrait, attributed to Corneille de Lyon, captures her in the elaborate dress of the 1530s: a tight bodice with a lowered square neckline, an inverted V-shaped overskirt revealing the underskirt beneath, and a French hood headdress. Corneille, a Dutch-born painter who settled in Lyon, was prized for his small-scale portraits that combined the meticulous detail of Netherlandish painting with a warmth and immediacy that set his work apart from the more formal court portraiture of the era. The painting resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.