Luca Penni

Luca Penni was an Italian painter of the 16th century best known for his work in France as part of the First School of Fontainebleau. He was nicknamed Le Romain (the Roman).

Penni was born in Florence. He and his painter brothers Gianfrancesco and Bartolommeo were born into a family of weavers. He seems to have trained under Raphael in Florence and Rome. In the late 1520s, Penni worked with his brother-in-law Perino del Vaga in Genoa, settling into his own style before his stay at Fontainebleau.

Luca Penni, Rosso Fiorentino and Francesco Primaticcio were summoned by Francis I of France to France. They gave his Palace of Fontainebleau a daring, delicate and sophisticated Italian Renaissance style. Penni formed part of Primaticcio's team decorating the pavillon des Poêles and the galerie d'Ulysse and also drew cartoons for tapestries - he is cited in French royal accounts between 1537 and 1540 as one of the French court's top artists.

Meanwhile Gianfrancesco stayed in Rome and became a leading assistant to Raphael, while Bartolommeo moved to work on Nonsuch Palace for Henry VIII of England, and stayed as one of the foreign artists of the Tudor court.

In about 1546 Luca may have left France in the company of Léon Davent, as a number of Davent's prints dated 1546 or 1547 are based on designs by Penni, and printed on paper from Germany (as it then was). Davent made many etchings of designs by Penni, through the 1540s and early 1550s.

After Francis's death, in 1547, Penni moved to rue de la Cerisaie in Paris and continued working with printmakers, continuing his Fontainebleau style in works for new aristocratic and middle-class clients. He also publicised his style via engravings of his secular, religious and mythological works by Jean Mignon and Léon Davent - René Boyvin also engraved Penni's oil portrait of Henry II of France, though Penni's original painting for The Resurrection of Lazarus (engraved by Nicolas Houël in 1555) is now lost. Penni died in Paris.

Penni's work has its roots in the legacy of Raphael and the esthetic of Fontainebleau. While his compositions often found their origins in Raphael's work, the lines are pure and simple. This was a legacy of the years he spent in Fontainebleau executing projects alongside Rosso and Primaticcio. The evolution of his style paradoxically made him the inventor of French classicism derived from Italian mannerism.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023