He worked at the court of the last kings of the Valois dynasty and produced highly-valued portraits of them and other nobility in Paris, dying in that city on 13 September 1581, a date he had himself predicted.
[3] Grude makes no reference to Marc Duval's religion, though the predominance of paintings of Huguenots in his work has led art historian Louis Dimier to argue that he too was a Protestant and to suggest that he spent a long period in Italy, identifying him as the "Master Marco from France" commissioned at the Palazzo Sacchetti in Rome by Cardinal Ricci in May 1553.
[5] Karel Van Mander also mentions an artist in the court of the Queen Mother from Paris named "Marco" as teaching Bartholomeus Spranger drawing in 1565.
[3] In 1575 an anonymous author probably belonging to Margaret of Navarre's court dedicated a poem to Duval entitled "Le pourtraict de mon âme" ("Portrait of my friend").
Some researchers attribute other paintings and prints to him, including the Italian-style one of a blind flautist (1566, Louvre[7]) and individual portraits from the studio of François Clouet such as those of Jean Babou de La Bourdesière (Louvre), admiral Coligny (Musée Condé) Jacques, Duke of Nemours (Musée Condé)[8] and Sébastien, Viscount of Luxembourg-Mortigue (Bemberg Foundation, Toulouse),[9] Dimier also attributed a sketch of Coligny's head to him.