Jean Cousin the Elder (c.1490 – before 1593)

• Was a French painter, sculptor, etcher, engraver, and geometrician.
• He is known as "Jean Cousin the Elder" to distinguish him from his son Jean Cousin the Younger, also an artist.
• Cousin was born at Soucy, near Sens.

• He began his career in his native town with the study of glass-painting under Jean Hympe and Grassot.

• In 1530 Cousin finished the windows for Sens Cathedral, the subject chosen being the "Legend of St. Eutropius". 

• The latest date on any of his Sens work, 1530, points to this as the year he went to Paris, where he began work as a goldsmith.

• In Paris Cousin continued his career as a glass-painter, and created his best-known work, the windows of the Sainte-Chapelle in Vincennes.

• He subsequently devoted himself to painting in oil.

• He was also an illustrator of books, making many designs for woodcuts and often executed them himself.

• The "Bible", published in 1596 by Le Clerc, and the Metamorphoses and Epistles of Ovid (1566 and 1571 respectively) contain his most noted work as an illustrator.

• He died at Sens, but the date of his death is uncertain.

• Next