JEAN

See also:

• COUSIN (Fr. cousin, Ital. cugino, Late Lat. cosinus, perhaps a popular and familiar abbreviation of consobrinus, which has the same sense in classical Latin)
• JEAN COUSIN (1500-1590)
• COUSIN, VICTOR (1792–1867)

COUSIN (1500-1590)  , French painter, was born at Soucy, near Sens, and began as a glass-painter, his windows in the Sainte Chapelle at Vincennes being considered the finest in France . As a painter of subject pictures he is ranked as the founder of the French school, as having first departed from the practice of portraits . His " Last Judgment," influenced by Parmigiano, is in the Louvre, and a " Descent from the Cross " (1523) in the museum at Mainz is attributed to him . He was known also as a sculptor, and an engraver, both in etching and on wood, his wood-cuts for Jean le Clerc's Bible (1596) and other books being his best-known work . He also wrote a Livre de perspective (156o), and a Livre de portraiture (1571) . See Ambroise Firmin-Didot, Etude sur J . Cousin (1872), and Recueil des teuvres choisies de J . Cousin (1873) .