Rabelais and Francois I
1876 to 1900
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
woodcut
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Rosenwald Collection
Accession Number
1980.45.1183
Art Historical Context
**Rabelais and François I is a striking woodcut print created by Bernard Reder between 1876 and 1900, now housed in the National Gallery Art's Rosenwald Collection This work captures an imagined encounter between the Renaissance writer François Rabelais (c. 1494–1553) and King François I of France (1494–1547), two towering figures of 16th-century France. Rabelais, for his satirical *Gargantua and Pantagruel*, embodied the humanist spirit of the era, while the king was a lavish patron of the arts, fostering talents like Leonardo da Vinci. Reder's depiction likely evokes this vibrant cultural cr...
About the Artist
Bernard Reder
Bernard Reder (1897–1963), born in Czernowitz, Bukovina—then part of Austria-Hungary and a vibrant center of Jewish and Hasidic culture—was the son of a Jewish innkeeper. At age four, he began drawing, but World War I interrupted his youth when, at 17, he was conscripted into the Austrian army and served in the trenches. After the war, Reder enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, studying...