Diane de Poitiers Visiting the Workshop of Jean Goujon

This painting by Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard, executed around 1830 and held at the Musée du Louvre, depicts Diane de Poitiers visiting the workshop of the sculptor Jean Goujon in the company of King Henry II. Goujon executed, after designs by the architect Pierre Lescot, most of the Renaissance decorative programme at the Louvre under Henry II's reign, including the famous Caryatids gallery completed in 1551. The scene, imagined by a nineteenth-century painter fond of historical reconstructions, highlights the joint patronage exercised by the king and his favourite over the artists tasked with transforming the royal palace. It illustrates, in the Romantic taste for the French Renaissance, the interest shown by Henry II's court in the great artistic projects of the reign.