(b ?Florence, c. 1463; d ?Tours, after 1540). Italian sculptor, active in France. He is first recorded as a master mason working at the château of Amboise (Indre-et-Loire) in a list of Italian craftsmen employed by Charles VIII in 1498. In 1503 he was living in Tours, as was Michel Colombe, a circumstance that led Vitry to suggest that Pacherot may have contributed to the marble tombs of Francis II, Duke of Brittany (1435–88) (Nantes Cathedral) and of the Children of Charles VIII (Tours Cathedral), both carved in 1502–7 by Colombe and his workshop (the hypothesis was rejected by Lesueur). In 1508 and 1509 Pacherot was employed by Cardinal Georges I d’Amboise on the building works at the château of Gaillon (see GAILLON), Eure, where he seems to have played an important part in the sculptural decoration and thus in the diffusion of Italian Renaissance ornament in France in the first quarter of the 16th century. In 1508 he participated with Bertrand de Meynal in the assembly of the well-known and influential marble courtyard fountain, carved in Italy in 1506 by Pace Gaggini and Antonio della Porta (fragment at La Rochefoucauld, Château). He also worked on the decoration of the upper chapel, providing marble soffits and pilasters carved with grotesque ornament (fragments Paris, Louvre) and carving the delicately ornamented marble frame for Michel Colombe’s relief altarpiece St George and the Dragon (1509; Paris, Louvre). The latter work may also have been a collaboration with de Meynal. In addition, a large part of the sculptured stone ornament of the entrance portal of the château (in situ) and a free-standing marble fountain (Paris, Louvre) have been attributed to Pacherot (Chirol). He was named ‘Canonnier ordinaire’ to the king in 1514 and is documented in Tours until 1540.

• Pacherot, Jérôme
  • collaboration
    • Bertrand de Meynal
    • Colombe: (1) Michel Colombe
  • patrons and collectors
    • Amboise, d’: (1) Georges I d’Amboise
    • Frame, §III, 2: France: Late Gothic and early Renaissance