FRANÇOIS, Guy

French painter. He was known to be in Rome as early as 1608 and to be back in his native Puy-de-Dôme by 1613. He seems to have spent the rest of his long career in and around Le Puy, with an undocumented visit to Toulouse at an indeterminate date, probably in the 1620s. Most of the artist's pictures remain in the obscurity of the parish churches for which they were painted, and it is clear that he had ceased to experiment by about 1630. One of his most important pictures is at Bourg-en-Brese, the large altarpieceGLOSSARYA picture or sculpture that stands on or is set up behind an altar. The term reredos is used for an ornamental screen or partition, not directly attached to the altar table but affixed to the wall behind it. A diptych is an altarpiece consisting of two panels, a triptych one of three panels, and a polyptych one of four or more panels. From the 14th to 16th century, the altarpiece was one of the most important commissions in European art; it was through the altarpiece that some of the most decisive developments in painting and sculpture came about. The Holy Family with St Bruno and St Elisabeth of 1626, which shows the artist's careful assimilation of the style of the Roman painter Carlo Saraceni.

There is now a dispute as to whether some pictures are by Saraceni or Guy François, notably the Holy Family in the Wadsworth Athenaeum Hartford, which seems characteristic of both artists. Unlike Tournier, François never showed any passionGLOSSARYThe events leading up to Good Friday, beginning with Christ's arrest and ending with his burial. Portrayals of the Passion, which focus on the Suffering Christ, include depictions of Judas betraying Christ with a kiss, Peter cutting off Malchus's ear, the crown of thorns, and so on. in his art; his pictures always retained a Saracenesque smoothness and elegance.