Jean Cousin the Elder

Jean Cousin the Elder was one of the most important French artists of the sixteenth century, a painter, designer of stained glass, engraver and author of books on perspective and geometry. His style belongs to the French Renaissance: elegant, long-limbed figures, cool colour and a strong sense of design.

He came from Sens in Burgundy, where he worked on windows for the cathedral before moving to Paris. He designed stained glass for the Sainte-Chapelle at Vincennes and published a treatise on perspective in 1560. Very few paintings can be securely given to him.

The best known is Eva Prima Pandora, in the Louvre, one of the first large reclining nudes in French painting. It shows a woman in a cave who is both Eve and Pandora, with a skull under her arm and a jar beside her. Look at the long, pale body and the calm landscape seen through the cave’s opening.