Jean Perréal–Grand rhétoriqueur?

"Grands rhétoriqueurs"–the term immediately problematizes itself. While Henri Guy speaks in 1910 of an "école des rhétoriqueurs,"¹ it is clear that the poets associated with this group belong, properly speaking, to no such school at all. Paul Zumthor traces the origin of the term to a reading error committed in 1861 by Charles D'Héricault, who should have recognized in the appellation a reference to "les gens de justice" (7). However, one cannot categorically cast this term grands rhétoriqueurs aside as an anachronism or a misnomer without taking into account what François Rigolot has referred to as the "corporatisme artistique" binding this class of poets together and which Florian Preisig explores in his book on Marot and the emergence of the author at the dawn of the sixteenth century.² That these poets refer to each other and to their common art consciously throughout their works implies, if not a "school," at least an association, a corporatisme, which merits our attention and reduces some of the problematics of the term grands rhétoriqueurs, allowing us to consider without hesitation the question of who may or may not be classed among this group of poets, mislabeled as they might be.

That Jean Perréal should belong to this association is not, at first blush, entirely clear. A painter known today primarily for his miniature portraits and not for his poetry, Perréal was during his lifetime considered the greatest French painter of his day, and served as the official court painter of Charles VIII, Louis XII, and François I. He was also likely the private painting tutor of the young Margaret of Austria, daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and adoptive mother of the future Charles V, an association that placed Perréal in her service from 1504 to 1512. It was during this period that he interacted frequently with Jean Lemaire de Belges, who is often considered the greatest and the most canonical of the so-called rhétoriqueurs, and who classes Perréal in his 1504 Plainte du Désiré among the great artists of the day, placing him in the company of Leonardo da Vinci and comparing him elsewhere to Apelles.³ Lemaire's evidently intimate knowledge of painting in the Plainte du Désiré likely stems from his close association with Perréal, to whom he was grateful for his constant encouragement and support: "Tout ce peu et tant que j'ay de bien procède de ton amitié, bénévolence et avancement" Lemaire would write to Perréal (Ring 259). In a letter he writes to Claude Thomassin, a prominent citizen of Lyon, Lemaire further praises Perréal, their mutual friend: "Et se les ymaiges et painctures sont muettes, [Perréal] les fera parler ou par sa tres elegante escripture, ou par la sienne propre langue bien exprimant et suaviloquente; parquoy, a son prouchain retour, nous, en voyant ses belles oeuvres ou escoutant sa vive voix, ferons accroire a nous mesmes avoir esté presens a tout" (Légende des Vénitiens 39).

Stecher interprets this citation to mean "Il les fera parler par sa peinture vivante, ou bien racontera lui-même," (3: 406) emphasizing Lemaire's aesthetic vision of an art of painting so vivid it actually seems to speak, the very notion Lemaire develops in the personage of Paincture in his poem, La Plainte du Désiré. While Lemaire indeed refers here to the way in which Perréal's painting "speaks," his stated admiration for Perréal's "tres elegante escripture" and "sienne propre langue bien exprimant et suaviloquente" refers also to an elegance in Perréal's rhetorical, and thus poetic, capabilities. Lemaire, furthermore, attributes his own desire for writing his maiden literary poem, his 1503 Temple d'Honneur et de Vertus to "l'impulsion exhortatoire de Jean [Perréal]," thus effectively shifting the burden of intentionality outward by subscribing to the familiar topos of the unwilling author and according himself, at this early stage of his career, a measure of authority as he seeks association with this renowned...