Jean de Vauzelles

Jean de Vauzelles was a French humanist active in Lyon in the first half of the 16th century. Modern scholarship describes him as a central figure in the city’s political, religious, and intellectual life, and places his life roughly around 1495 to 1563.

He is often presented as a Catholic humanist whose work linked Lyon with wider networks in France, Italy, and the German-speaking world. Research on his career also connects him with Marguerite de Navarre and with major ceremonial and literary activity in Lyon during the 1520s to 1550s.

Readers may also know his name from The Dance of Death, a 1538 publication associated with Gilles Corrozet, Hans Holbein, and Jean de Vauzelles. For many modern audiences, that striking book remains the easiest doorway into a writer whose life sat at the crossroads of Renaissance faith, letters, and image-making.