Pirre de Ronsard (1524-1585), the leading French poet of the Renaissance.

Ronsard was the most fashionable court poet of his time. His patron for many years was the Queen Regent of France, Catherine de'Medici. His work was very influential in England where he claimed to have lived. In fact when Madeleine of France was married to James V of Scotland, Ronsard was attached as a page in the Scottish court, where he was encouraged in the idea of making French vernacular translations of classical authors. A year after the death of the queen, he returned to France, traveling back through England. Echoes of his poems can be found in Donne and Shakespeare (see Hugh M. Richmond, "Ronsard and the English Poets" in his "Puritans and Libertines", pp. 223-96, Princeton U. P., 1981). See image at Gallery 10.g.6. Picture and data courtesy of the Yorck Project, under Creative Commons Attribution-Share- Alike License (Wikipedia).