Juste de Juste

Who is Juste de Juste?

Juste de Juste was a Franco-Italian sculptor and printmaker in etching, a member of the Betti family of sculptors from near Florence, who became known as the Juste family in France, where Juste de Juste's father Antonio and his two brothers emigrated and spent most of their careers. Juste de Juste has been widely accepted as the author of seventeen etchings of naked or écorché male figures signed with a complicated monogram. He also worked as a stuccoist of the School of Fontainebleau under Rosso Fiorentino.

Juste de Juste was born in Tours, and trained by his uncle Jean Juste, his father having died in 1519. He worked with Jean on the mausoleum of Louis XII of France at St-Denis, which occupied his uncle for almost fifteen years from 1516–1531, being especially responsible for the four seated Virtues. In 1529 he was still living in Tours when Francis I commissioned him to make marble sculptures of Hercules and Leda, now lost, and in 1533 he was appointed Sculpteur du Roi as his father and uncles had been before him. The year 1531 marked the beginning of the "First School of Fontainebleau", where Juste de Juste spent most of the period 1531-37, before rejoining the family workshop.