Jérôme Pacherot et Antoine Juste : artistes italiens à la cour de France

Jérôme Pacherot and Antoine Juste : Italian Artists at the French Court ; Among the artists that Charles VIII recruited in Naples in 1495 was Jérôme Pacherot, an Italian sculptor and master-stonemason. About ten years later, the Florentine sculptor Antoine Juste burst on the French scene, along with his brother Jean. Highly esteemed by Anne de Bretagne and later François I, they executed, among other works, the tombs of the children of Charles VIII in Tours, of the Dukes of Brittany in Nantes and of Louis XII and Anne de Bretagne at Saint-Denis. However, their early training and the motivations behind their emigration from Italy have not been examined. Thanks to new documents and the analysis of two of their works, this essay places their training within the orbit and influence of Benedetto da Maiano and Andrea Ferrucci. It focuses most especially on assessing the importance of Pacherot’s experience in Naples, on investigating the circumstances of the Juste’s relocation to France and on better understanding their contribution to the creative development of the first French Renaissance.