Duvet, Jean

Jean Duvet (1485 – after 1562) was a French Renaissance goldsmith and engraver, now best known for his engravings. He was the first significant French printmaker. He produced about seventy-three known plates, that convey a highly personal style, often compared to that of William Blake, with very crowded compositions, a certain naive quality, and intense religious feeling. According to Henri Zerner, his work has a "freedom and immediacy that have no equivalent in Renaissance printmaking". A degree of mystery surrounds his biography, as there is disagreement as to whether or not he was the Jean Duvet from Dijon who spent sixteen years in the militantly Calvinist city-state of Geneva.