French Renaissance Painting. The French Renaissance was the cultural and artistic movement in France between the 15th and early 17th centuries. The period is associated with the pan-European Renaissance, a word first used by the French historian Jules Michelet to define the artistic and cultural rebirth of Europe. Notable developments during the French Renaissance include the spread of humanism, early exploration of the New World; the development of new techniques and artistic forms in the fields of printing, architecture, painting, sculpture, music, the sciences and literature; and the elaboration of new codes of sociability, etiquette and discourse. The French Renaissance traditionally extends from the French invasion of Italy in 1494 during the reign of Charles VIII until the death of Henry IV in 1610. This chronology notwithstanding, certain artistic, technological or literary developments associated with the Renaissance arrived in France earlier; however, the Black Death of the 14th century and the Hundred Years' War kept France economically and politically weak until the late 15th century. The reigns of Francis I of France and his son Henry II are generally considered the apex of the French Renaissance. The word Renaissance is a French word, whose literal translation into English is Rebirth. The term was first used and defined by French historian Jules Michelet in his 1855 work Histoire de France. Jules Michelet defined the 16th-century Renaissance in France as a period in Europe's cultural history that represented a break from the Middle Ages, creating a modern understanding of humanity and its place in the world. As a French citizen and historian, Michelet also claimed the Renaissance as a French movement. His work is at the origin of the use of the French word Renaissance in other languages. For a chronological list of French Renaissance artists, see List of French Renaissance artists. In the late 15th century, the French invasion of Italy and the proximity of the vibrant Burgundy court brought the French into contact with the goods, paintings, and the creative spirit of the Northern and Italian Renaissance, and the initial artistic changes in France were often carried out by Italian and Flemish artists, such as Jean Clouet and his son Francois Clouet and the Italians Rosso Fiorentino, Francesco Primaticcio and Niccolo dell'Abbate of the first School of Fontainebleau. In 1516, Francis I of France invited Leonardo da Vinci to the Chateau d'Amboise and provided him with the Chateau du Clos Luce, then called Chateau de Cloux, as a place to stay and work. Leonardo, a famous painter and inventor, arrived with three of his paintings, namely the Mona Lisa, Sainte Anne, and Saint Jean Baptiste, today owned by the Louvre museum of Paris. The art of the period from Francis I through Henry IV is often inspired by late Italian pictorial and sculptural developments commonly referred to as Mannerism, characterized by figures which are elongated and graceful and a reliance on visual rhetoric, including the elaborate use of allegory and mythology. There are a number of French artists in this period including the painter Jean Fouquet of Tours and the sculptors Jean Goujon and Germain Pilon. Late Mannerism and early Baroque Henry IV invited the artists Toussaint Dubreuil, Martin Freminet and Ambroise Dubois to work on the chateau of Fontainebleau and they are typically called the second School of Fontainebleau. Marie de' Medici, Henry IV's queen, invited the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens to France, and the artist painted a number of large-scale works for the queen's Luxembourg Palace in Paris. Another Flemish artist working for the court was Frans Pourbus the younger. Outside France, working for the dukes of Lorraine, one finds a very different late mannerist style in the artists Jacques Bellange, Claude Deruet and Jacques Callot. Having little contact with the French artists of the period, they developed a heightened, extreme, and often erotic mannerism, and excellent skill in etching. French Renaissance architecture One of the greatest accomplishments of the French Renaissance was the construction of the Chateaux of the Loire Valley: no longer conceived of as fortresses, these pleasure palaces took advantage of the richness of the rivers and lands of the Loire region and they show remarkable architectural skill.