ABSTRACT

This chapter traces the development over four decades of antiques collections formed by the Valois and their courtiers, starting from the uncorroborated list attributed to Florimond Robertet in the late 1520s, to the profusion of chambresdes merveilles recorded in the 1560s by Hubert Goltzius, some two hundred in France, a significant proportion associated with the court. An antiquarian twist was given to a mediæval custom when, in 1539, the king required a noble at Beaucaire to make annual payment of feudal dues with an ancient coin. One cardinal in French service was an avid collector: by 1535 Ippolito d'Este, archbishop of Milan, already owned a number of antique bronzes and vases, as well as over two hundred antique silver medals, which he gave as a New Year present to François I in 1537. The traveller and naturalist Pierre Belon, in his description of the antiquities of the Levant, makes two allusions in 1553 to the Fontainebleau casts.