Perréal, Jean (c. 1457–1530)

French painter, illustrator, and poet. Active from 1485, he was court painter to successive French kings – Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I – and was also employed by Margaret of Austria. He gained a high reputation for his portraits; those which survive – for example, of Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. lat. 1190) – are manuscript minatures.

He worked in Lyon but was often sent elsewhere on various commissions, visiting Italy, where Franco Gonzaga, Marchese of Mantua, commissioned a portrait from him, and England. As well as his artistic achievements, Perréal was known in literary circles; one of his sitters, Pierre Sala, dedicated to him a treatise on friendship.

He was once identified with the Master of Moulins, but this is now rejected on stylistic grounds.