depicts
Etienne Chevalier with his patron saint
St. Stephen, () , Berlin. Fouquet's excellence as an
illuminator, his precision in the rendering of the finest detail, and his power of clear characterization in work on this minute scale secured his eminent position in French art. His importance as a painter was demonstrated when his portraits and
altarpieces were for the first time brought together from various parts of Europe for the exhibition of the "French Primitives" held at the in Paris. His self-portrait miniature would be the earliest sole self-portrait surviving in Western art, if the 1433 portrait by
Jan van Eyck—usually called
Portrait of a Man or
Portrait of a Man in a Turban—is not in fact a self-portrait, as some art historians believe. ;
Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels, showing Charles VII's mistress
Agnès Sorel (), oil on wood, 93 x 85 cm,
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Antwerp. Far more numerous are his illuminated books and miniatures. The in
Chantilly contains forty of the forty-seven remaining miniatures from the
Hours of Étienne Chevalier, painted in 1461 for Chevalier. Fouquet also illuminated a copy of the
Grandes Chroniques de France, for an unknown patron, thought to be either
Charles VII or someone else at the royal court. Also from Fouquet's hand are a few miniatures from five other books and eleven of the fourteen miniatures illustrating the
Antiquities of the Jews by
Flavius Josephus at the
Bibliothèque Nationale. The second volume of this manuscript, with only one of the original thirteen miniatures, was discovered and bought in 1903 by
Henry Yates Thompson at a London sale, and restored by him to France. Only three drawings are attributed to Fouquet: Guillaume_Jouvenel.jpg|Portrait of Guillaume Jouvenel,
Kupferstichkabinett Berlin Päpstlicher_Legat.jpg|Portrait of a papal legate,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City L'homme_au_chapeau.jpg|Portrait of a man with a hat,
Hermitage Museum,
Saint Petersburg One of Fouquet's most important paintings is the
Melun Diptych (), formerly in the
Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame, Melun. The left wing of the
diptych depicts Étienne Chevalier with his patron saint
St. Stephen and is now in the . The right wing shows a pale Virgin and Child surrounded by red and blue angels and is now at the
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. Since at least the seventeenth century, the Virgin has been recognized as a portrait of
Agnès Sorel. Besides his self-portrait miniature, the
Louvre has his oil portraits of
Charles VII and
Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins and six illuminated manuscript miniatures from the
Hours of Étienne Chevalier, the ''
Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César and the Faits des Romains''. ==Gallery==