This is one of the more baffling paintings in the collection. It is recorded in the collection of Henry VIII in 1542 (no 734) as the ‘French King and Queen with a fool standing behind'. The French King is Francis I (1494-1557) and his Queen, Eleanor of Austria (1498-1557), their marriage in 1530 providing a probable date for the image. The fool is presumably the famous Triboulet (Nicolas Ferial, 1479-1536), jester to Louis XII and Francis I and mentioned in Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel (Book 3 of 1546). Triboulet was also the jester in Victor Hugo’s Le roi s’amuse of 1832 and its operatic version, Verdi’s Rigoletto of 1851 (transposed from royal France to ducal Mantua to appease the censor).

Subsequent references to this painting in the Royal Collection confuse the identifications and authorship. During Commonwealth it was sold on 23 October 1651 from St James’s Palace to G. Greene for £50 as ‘Francis of France and the Duchess of Valentinois’ (no 248). After its recovery at the Restoration it continued to be called Frances I with the ‘Duchess of Valentia’ ‘Valentino’ or simply ‘his mistress’ (at Hampton Court in 1666 and 1688, Somerset House in 1714 and Kensington Palace in 1790). At Kensington Palace in 1818 it was attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, identified as the Duchess of Valentinois and described (not unreasonably) as a ‘very curious picture’. Diane de Poitiers (1500-1566) was made Duchess of Valentinois in 1548; she was Lady in Waiting to Queen Eleanor and subsequently the mistress of Francis’s son, Henry II (1519-59). Presumably it was felt that this comic and louche painting should be depicting a mistress rather than a Queen, even if associated with the wrong king. In fact the identification of 1542 is the correct one: the features of Queen Eleanor can be recognized from her portrait by Joos van Cleve painted at the same time (RCIN 403369).

As a monarch might hold an orb, Queen Eleanor holds a bronze or enameled artichoke surmounted by a caduceus. A similar ornament is held by the bride in the double portrait celebrating the secret marriage in 1515 of Louis XII’s widow, Mary Tudor (1496-1533), and Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk (1484-1545), the courtier sent by Henry VIII to bring his sister home. Versions of the composition at Woburn Abbey and Brocklesby Park may record the appearance of a lost original of 1515 by a French court artist (perhaps Jean Clouet or Jean Peréal). We must assume that this is an emblem of love and betrothal – the artichoke is heart-shaped, the caduceus is a symbol of peace associated with Mercury, the messenger god who brought the golden apple for the most beautiful goddess. Both couples link hands, Francis to the right of his bride, Brandon to the left (in deference to the fact that she is a Queen); both brides hold or perhaps offer their artichokes. Both grooms wear orders (of Saint Michel and of the Garter); both brides wear richly bejeweled dresses. Only Brandon appears to be undertaking his marriage ‘reverently, discreetly, advisedly and soberly’ while Francis I seems to be leering. And what is the jester doing? The composition is surely intended to echo the theme of the ‘Ill-Matched Lovers’, seen in Quentin Massy painting of c. 1520-5 (National Gallery of Art, Washington), where a young woman and her jester-accomplice fleece a lustful old fool.

The most likely explanation of this work is that it is a satire at the expense of his French rival executed in England for Henry VIII. It is possible that it is a copy of a lost French painting executed for Francis I; the painter having been offered the same ‘jester’s license’ that Triboulet enjoyed. Either way it is a rarity.