Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/201

 FOUNTAINS

161

FOUQUET

Fountains Abbey, a monastery of the Cistercian Order situated on the banks of the Skell about two and a half miles from Ripon in Yorkshire, was established by thirteen Benedictine monks of 8t. Mary's Abbey, York. Wishing to observe a more strict discipline, they obtained in 1132 from Thurstan, Archbishop of York, a grant of land near Ripon. Richard, the prior of St. Mary's, was the leader of the party. Leaving St. Mary's on 9 October, they reached Foun- tains on 26 December, 1132, and immediately placed themselves under St. Bernard, who sent Geoffrey of Clairvaux to teach them the Cistercian Rule. After two years of privation and poverty they decided to leave England and seek a home among their brethren abroad. This step was rendered unnecessary when Hugh, Dean of York, joined them, bringing with liim money and property. He was followed by two canons of York, Serlo and Tosti, who brought still more wealth by means of which the suffering community was relieved and enabled to carry on the new founda- tion. In 1135 all their possessions were confirmed to them by King Stephen. The earliest buildings erected there were destroyed in 1146 by the followers of William, .Archbishop of York, who thus wreaked their vengeance on Abbot Murdac, whom they con- sidered the chief opponent of their master. The arch- bishop in after years made amends for the excesses of his adherents and expressed his deep sorrow for what had occurred. This loss did not check a rapid development; new buildings were immediately begun and that immense pile, the ruins of which still stand, was finished before the year 1250. In 1146 a colony of monks was sent to Bergen in Norway, ani.i the monas- teries of Sawlcy, Roche, Woburn, ^leaux, Kirkstall, and Vandy were founded from Fountains. This period of prosperity was followed by one of want, caused by the constant inroads of the Scots. On ac- count of this Edward II exempted the monks from all taxation (1319). Among the worthies of Foun- tains should be numbered Henry Murdac, its abbot, and afterwards Archbishop of York (1147-1153), John de Pherd (de Fontibus) another abbot, one of the greatest architects of his day, who became Bishop of Ely in 1220, and John de Cancia, another renowned builder, who ruled over the abbey from 1220 to 1247. The names of thirty-eight abbots are known; the last but one was William Thirsk, executed at Tyburn for refusing the Oath of Supremacy (1536); the last ab- bot was Marmaduke Bradley who surrenderetl the abbey to the king in 1540. At the Dissolution there were thirty-one monks with the abbot, and the rev- enue was estimated at about £1000. Richard Gresham purchased the site for £1163; in 1596 Sir Stephen Proctor acquired it for £4500; the family of Messenger next held it; in 1786 Sir W. Aislabie bought it for £1S,- 000; it is now owned by the Marquess of Ripon. The abbey with its offices stood in an enclosure of twelve acres, and the present ruins occupy two acres. The walls of the church, with one tower, still stand, and there are very substantial remains of the chapter house, cloister, refectory, and calefactory. These ruins are most carefully preserved. Some idea of the abbey's great- ness may be gained from the fact that the church was 351 feet in length with a nave 65 feet wide; the refec- tory was lOS feet by 45, and the cloister 300 feet by 42.

Rajne, Fasti Eboracenses (London. 1863), 210-217; W'al- BRAN, Memorials of Fountains Abbey (Surtees Society, London, 1863), I, pp. v-lxx; Fletcher, A Picturesque History of York- shire (London); Dugdale, Sfonast. Anglic-anutn (London, 1846), V. 286 sqq.; Burton, Monasticon Eboracense (York,

1758), 141. G. E. Hind.

Pouquet, Jehan (or Jean), French painter and miniaturist, b. at Tours, c. 1415; d. about 1480. He was perhaps the son of Huguet Fouquet, who about 1400 worked for the Dukes of Orleans at Paris. At the end of the fourteenth century Frenclipainting had reached a period of incomparable brilliancy. Every- VI— ii

thing heralded the Renaissance (see Eyck, Hubert AND Jan van), and little was wanting to make it a dis- tinctively French movement, which, however, the disasters of the monarchy prevented. Paris ceased to be the centre of the new intellectual life. Art, driven from its centre, retreated to the outlying provinces in the North, the East, and the Soiith-East, to the Duchy of Burgundy. The principal centre was Bruges, while secondary centres were established at Dijon in Provence. Each of these had its masters and its school. The only remnant of truly French life found refuge in the valley of the Loire, in the neigh- bourhood of Tours, since the time of St. Martin the true heart of the nation in every crisis of French his- tory. Here grew up the first of our painters who pos- sesses not only a definite personality but a French physiognomy. Fouquet was the contemporary of Joan of Arc, and his character is as national as that of the heroine herself. For the basis of his style we must look to the School of Burgundy, itself simply a variant of that of Bruges. Tours "is not far from Bourges and Dijon, and in Fouquet's work there is always something reminiscent of Claux Sluter and of the Van Eycks. To this mu.st be added some Italian mannerisms. It is not known on what occasion Fou- quet went to Italy, but it was certainly about 1445, for while there he painted the portrait of 'Pope Eugene IV between two secretaries. This famous work, long pre- served at the Minerva gallery, is now known only from a sixteenth-century engraving. Filarete and Vasari speak admiringly of it, while Raphael paid it the honour of recalling it m his "Leo X" of the Pitti Palace.

Fouquet remained under the charm of the early Italian Renaissance. The influence of the bas-reUefs of Ghiberti and Delia Robbia, the paintings of Masac- cio, Paolo Uccello, Filippo Lippi, and Gentile da Far briano which he saw at Florence and at Rome may always be traced in his work. He appears to have been in France in 1450. Some critics are inclined to believe that he made a second journey, for they find it hard to believe that Fouquet never saw the "Lives of St. Lawrence and St. Stephen " by Fra Angelico in the chapel of Nicholas V. It is these Italian works which most closely resemble his own. The harmonizing of the two Renaissance movements (North and South), the intimate and natural fusion of the genius of both in the creative soul of one French artist, without any effort or shadow of pedantry, narrowness, or system, constitutes Fouquet's charm and originality. If French character consists in a certain effacement of all racial characteristics, in the power of assimilation (cf. Michelet, Introduction a la philosophic tie I'his- toire), no artist has ever been more "French" than Fouquet. Withal he does not lack the savour of his country. Without poetry or depth of thought, his style has at least two striking characteristics. In de- picting the human countenance, he possessed to a rare degree the gift of taking life, as it were, by surprise, and not even Benozzo could tell a story as he could.

We know through a contemporary that Fouquet painted pictures in the church of Notre-Dame la Riche at 'Tours, but it is not known whether they were mural or altar-pieces. He is known to have been charged with the preparations for Louis XI 's entry into the city in 1461. Of all his works, however, there remain to-day a half-dozen portraits and about a hun- dred miniatures. The oldest of these portraits ap- pears to be the " Charles VII " in the Louvre, a portrait striking for its sadness, its fretful expression, and the force of its ugliness and veracity. At the Louvre also is the portrait of "Guillaume Juvenal des Ur.sins", magnificently obese and bloated, radiant with gold. Another portrait has a curious history. It is that of Etienne Chevalier, the great patron of the painter, and was formerly to be seen in the church of Melun. The work is charming in breadth of style. The figure of St. Stephen presentuighis clientrecalls Giorgione by its