Antoine Caron

Antoine Caron (1521–1599) was a French master glassmaker, illustrator, Northern Mannerist painter and a product of the School of Fontainebleau.

[1] His work reflects the refined, although highly unstable, atmosphere at the court of the House of Valois during the French Wars of Religion of 1560 to 1598.

In 1561, he was appointed the court painter by Catherine de' Medici and Henry II of France.

In this way he was involved in organizing the ceremony and royal entry for the coronation of Charles IX in Paris and the wedding of Henry IV of France with Marguerite de Valois.

Not many of Caron's works survive, but they include historical and allegorical subjects, court ceremonies, astrological scenes, and his massacres, done in the mid-1560s.

The Lion of Barbarossa by Antoine Caron, circa 1562, thought to depict the lion given to Francis I during the Ottoman embassy to France (1533)