Colart de Laon

Almost everything known about Colart de Laon comes out of account books. He appears in 1377 in the service of Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, and from 1391 he was painter and valet de chambre to Louis, duke of Orléans, the brother of the French king. The accounts credit him with large works for Chartres cathedral in 1395, a reliquary chest for the queen, and decorations for court festivities. None of it survives, and no painting can be given to him with certainty.

One panel comes close. In 2012 the Prado bought a small Agony in the Garden with a kneeling donor who is Louis of Orléans, the only likeness of him known to have been made in his lifetime. Specialists think it is probably Colart's. Louis was killed in a Paris street in 1407 by men in the pay of his cousin the duke of Burgundy, and Colart stayed on in the household of Louis's son until at least 1411. A document shows he was dead by May 1417. Neither the year he was born nor the year he died is recorded.