The Italian painter, sculptor, and architect Francesco Primaticcio (1504-1570) was instrumental in transplanting mannerist palace decoration from Italy to France and in giving French mannerist art its individual character.

Francesco Primaticcio was born in Bologna on April 30, 1504. He worked in Mantua from 1525 or 1526 until 1532 under Giulio Romano. In the Palazzo del Te, Giulio carried out one of the most elaborate programs of mannerist art in all Italy. He represented a series of mythological scenes and motifs in frescoes and stucco reliefs in a decorative style that his teacher, Raphael, had created only a few years earlier.

In 1532 Primaticcio was called to France to work on the decorations of the royal palace of Francis I at Fontainebleau. He came equipped with all the things Giulio Romano had taught him: a rich vocabulary of classical nymphs and satyrs and Roman gods and goddesses plus the fashionable new mode of paintings...