was genuine: he was able to maintain control over Maine in the face of attacks by the
Norman duke William the Conqueror and his sons; and by marrying his second son,
Foulques le Jeune, to the heiress of Maine, he prepared the definitive union of Maine and
Anjou.
This second son, Foulques V (r. 1109–29), began the restoration of Angevin fortunes
by bringing the barons to heel and reasserting comital control over all castles. His
marriage to the heiress of Maine effectively united the two counties, while his greatest
coup was marrying his son Geoffroi Plantagenêt to Matilda, daughter of King Henry I of
England. In 1129, Foulques abdicated in favor of Geoffroi to become king of Jerusalem.
Geoffroi would use the solid base left to him by his Fulconian ancestors to lay the
foundation of the 12th-century Angevin empire.
Scott Jessee
[See also: ANJOU (genealogical table); ANJOU, HOUSES OF; GEOFFROI;
MATILDA]
Bachrach, Bernard S. Fulk Nerra, the Neo-Roman Consul 987–1040. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993.
——. “The Idea of the Angevin Empire.” Albion 10(1978): 293–99.
Dunbabin, Jean. France in the Making, 843–1180. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Guillot, Olivier. Le comte d’Anjou et son entourage au XIe siècle. 2 vols. Paris: Picard, 1972.
Hallam, Elizabeth, ed. The Plantagenet Chronicles. New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986.
Halphen, Louis. Le comté d’Anjou au XIe siècle. Paris: Picard, 1906.
FOUQUET, JEAN
(ca. 1420–1481). The most influential painter of the mid-15th century in France, Jean
Fouquet infused elements of Italian Renaissance art with his own native French style. He
painted a portrait of Pope Eugenius IV (now lost) in Rome before 1447. By 1448, he was
working for Charles VII at Tours, and he was appointed as court painter to Louis XI in
- He is best known for a book of hours that he illuminated for Étienne Chevalier ca.
1452, fragments of which survive in the Musée Condé at Chantilly. Among the panel
paintings that have been attributed to Fouquet are portraits of Charles VII (ca. 1445) and
Juvenal des Ursins (ca. 1455), both in the Louvre. Recently, it has been shown that
Fouquet was probably not the head of a large, prolific atelier but worked as an
independent artist who contributed sporadically to manuscripts from a variety of sources.
Robert G.Calkins
[See also: MANUSCRIPTS, PRODUCTION AND ILLUMINATION]
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 692