# QUESNEL, François [View the canonical artist record]() ## Artist - Lifespan: 1543–1619 - Profession: painter - School: French ## Biography French painter and designer. He was the son of Pierre Quesnel \(d. ca. 1574\), a French painter in the service of James V of Scotland. His brothers, Nicolas Quesnel \(d. 1632\) and Jacques Quesnel \(d. 1629\), and his son, Augustin Quesnel \(1595-1661\), were also painters. Documentary sources reveal that François was active in France as a decorator, designer of tapestries, coins and medals, as a map-maker and as a painter of altarpieces, but above all as a portrait painter. A number of portrait drawings have been attributed to Quesnel on the basis of a signed Portrait of a Child \(private collection\). A painted portrait of Mary Anne Waltham \(1572; Althorp House, Northamptonshire\) signed with a monogram is the basis for the attribution of portraits such as that of Henry III \(Musée du Louvre, Paris\). His style is typical of late 16th-century French portraiture, in which the naturalism of François Clouet was stylised to such a degree that there is an almost complete absence of modelling and the picture is dominated by flat, linear pattern. Several of Quesnel's works were engraved by Isaac Briot \(1585-1670\) and Thomas de Leu \(c. 1555-c. 1612\). ## Related artworks - [Henri III, King of France]() - [Henri III, King of France]() - [Mary Ann Waltham]() - [Portrait of a Bearded Man]() - [Portrait of a Lady in a Black Robe.]() - [Portrait of Jeanne de Bourdeille]() - [Young Man with a Beard]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()