spiring Foscari to ask permission to resign
his office. The Council refused.
Foscari’s reign was tainted by the trial
of his son Jacopo Foscari on charges of
corruption by the Council of Ten, the gov-
erning council of Venice. The charges were
first made in 1444; Jacopo was finally ban-
ished to the island of Crete, a Venetian
possession. There he negotiated with Mi-
lan and the sultan of the Ottoman Em-
pire; accused of treason, he was brought
back to Venice and made to face another
trial. Foscari refused to pardon his son,
and Jacopo was shipped back to Crete,
where he died in 1457. The Council of Ten
forced Foscari out of office, soon after
which he died. The story of Francesco and
Jacopo Foscari inspired poetry, plays, and
an opera by the nineteenth-century Italian
composer Giuseppe Verdi.
Fouquet, Jean ..................................
(1420–1481)
French painter born in Tours, known best
for his miniatures and his manuscript illu-
minations (illustrations). As a young man
Fouquet trained in Paris and traveled in
Italy, where he studied the works of
Masaccio and Fra Angelico and completed
a portrait of Pope Eugenius IV in 1437.
The new science of perspective in Italian
art influenced his work. On his return he
created a new painting style that combined
elements of monumental Italian and ex-
tremely detailed and precise Flemish paint-
ing. Fouquet left the idealized poses and
stock expressions of medieval painting be-
hind; he depicted his subjects in bold
poses and with very individualistic fea-
tures that remind the viewer of monumen-
tal, three-dimensional sculpture. About
1447 Fouquet completed a magnificent
portrait of King Charles VII, a work that
has become one of the most famous
French paintings of the Renaissance. His
patron Etienne de Chevalier, a secretary to
the king, commissioned Fouquet to paint
a series of miniatures for The Book of
Hours. These famous illustrations exhibit
precise lines and astonishing detail. Fou-
quet rewarded his patron’s support by
painting him in the company of Saint
Stephen, one half of the Melun Diptych,
in which the other panel depicts Agnes
Sorel, a mistress of the king, as the Virgin
Mary. His illustrations for a French trans-
lation of the ancient Roman writer Jose-
phus made ingenious use of perspective to
unify the figures and structures in a clearly
defined space. In 1475 Fouquet was ap-
pointed as the royal painter to King Louis
XI. In this influential position, he had a
lasting effect on French painting of the
Renaissance.Fra Angelico ....................................
(1395–1455)
Painter of Florence whose works depict a
simple, fervent religious devotion. Born as
Guido di Pietro in the town of Vicchio,
near Florence, he lived in monasteries all
his life and devoted himself to the decora-
tion of churches, monastic chapels, clois-
ters, and the simple cells inhabited by his
brother monks. After his death, he was
given the nickname of Fra Angelico
(“Angelic Brother”).
Early in his life Fra Angelico lived in
San Domenico, a monastery in the town
of Fiesole, where he took the monastic
name of Fra Giovanni da Fiesole. At the
age of thirty, in 1425, he took his vows as
a full member of the Dominican order.
His earliest works were illuminated manu-
scripts and altarpieces, in which his paint-
ing style was influenced by Masaccio and
the new science of visual perspective. As
his fame spread outside the walls of theFouquet, Jean