Panel with the Arms of Constable Anne de Montmorency and the Cypher of Henri II
Unknown · After 1547
A heraldic window more than a metre tall, made for the château of Écouen north of Paris. At its centre are the arms of Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France, gold with a red cross between sixteen small blue eagles, the badge of one of the oldest families of the kingdom. Around and above them appears the cypher of King Henri the Second, whose reign began in fifteen forty-seven and to whom Montmorency owed his return to power. The combination is a statement: the master of the house proclaims both his lineage and his loyalty to the new king. Look at the crisp painting of the heraldic charges and at the way the glazier used coloured glass for the blazon and painted detail for the ornament.
Anne de Montmorency, who despite his first name was a soldier and the most powerful nobleman in France, rebuilt Écouen from the fifteen thirties onward as a showcase of Renaissance art, filling it with stained glass, painted fireplaces and pavements. Much of that decoration was dispersed after the Revolution, and the museum bought this panel in eighteen twenty-five. Écouen itself is now the National Museum of the Renaissance.
Did You Know? The man whose arms these are was called Anne, a name given to boys in his family, and he was the top soldier of France.
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