^0F-CAIIF(% , 5»E-UNIVER% <^130NVS01^ v^LOS-ANGELFj] I (7C VVt'LID It Alt Ti* VA«:\ %aaMNfl-3ft 6>AWH8I ^ilBRARY^ ^ftn-imn-icv^ ■CALIF(%, ^avaainv^ NVSOV^ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/architectureofre01wardiala THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE I. SOUTH WEST ANGLE OF THE COURT OF THE LOUVRE, PARIS. THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE A HISTORY OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE ARTS OF BUILDING, DECORATION AND GARDEN DESIGN UNDER CLASSICAL INFLUENCE FROM 1495 TO 1830 BY W. H. WARD, m.a. ARCHITECT. ASSOCIATE OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF BRITISH ARCHITECTS. AUTHOR OF "FRENCH CHATEAUX AND GARDENS IN THE XVI. CENTURY': VOLUME I LONDON B. T. BATSFORD, 94 HIGH HOLBORN NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 153-7 FIFTH AVENUE iLibrary Nff Vtu a v, / PREFACE IN the title of these volumes the words " Architecture of the Renaissance" are intended to be understood as embracing all those styles, whether of building or decoration, which are ultimately based on Classical Architecture, from the re-intro- duction of classical forms at the Renaissance to the revival of Gothic in the nineteenth century, and the word " France," a geographical term of more varied import than is always realised, as corresponding roughly with the Continental possessions of the French State immediately before or after the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, i.e., in 1791 or 181 5. It is not a little remarkable that among the mass of literature on the subject (for which the reader is referred to the Biblio- graphical Note, p. 495), no work exists, so far as I know, in English, or even in French, dealing exclusively with the whole Renaissance architecture of France. Monographs abound in various languages, especially French, on particular phases of style, buildings, or groups of buildings, often admirable and exhaustive. But the student has not always easy access to them, time to peruse them, or sufficient familiarity with any tongue but his own to be able to use them with full profit. For a general survey of the subject he is compelled to fall back on the necessarily scanty and condensed sections devoted to it in general histories of European or French architecture. Among these Fergusson, owing to the mass of material which has become available since his day, is now out of date, while his peculiar point of view — one scarcely shared by any one without reserve at the present day — contri- butes to diminish the value of his criticism. English or American histories still in progress have not as yet reached the period in question, nor is it to be expected that their treatment of Renais- sance architecture in any one country can be a detailed one. The present work is an attempt to supply a student who has at least a bowing acquaintance with Classic Architecture and its influence in Italy at the Renaissance, such as might be acquired by reading Anderson and Spiers' "Architecture of Greece and Rome " C89341 VI PREFACE and of Anderson's " Architecture of the Renaissance in Italy," with an account of the main trend of architectural thought and practice in France during the period defined, and of the principal facts connected with important buildings and architects, set forth in their relation to political, social, and literary history. The execution of the task has been greatly facilitated by the late Baron Heinrich von Geymuller's " Baukunst der Renaissance in Frankreich." Although forming part of a so-called " Hand- buch," this somewhat unreadable and confusingly arranged work would be better described as a collection of materials for a history interspersed with essays on special topics. It is, how- ever, a monument of minute and painstaking research, my indebtedness to which it would be difficult to exaggerate ; and I avail myself of this opportunity to pay a tribute of admiration to the erudition and usually sound judgment of the author, who, unfortunately, did not live to complete the concluding volume. Even Geymiiller does not profess to carry his narrative beyond 1755, and therefore stops short of some very interesting phenomena still in the direct line of Renaissance descent. While this somewhat arbitrary selection of a date is particularly unfor- tunate, it is obvious that no year can be pointed to as coinciding with a complete solution of continuity in the process of develop- ment, and it is only after much hesitation that I have fixed upon the year 1830 as the terminus ad quern of this history. An unbroken, if varied, sequence of styles, each in turn paramount throughout the greater part of France, came to an end with that of the Empire, whose existence, feebly prolonged in the midst of new and disturbing influences, may be said to have died out about the time of the fall of the elder Bourbons. On the other hand the work resulting from these influences in the succeeding period is too eclectic to possess the recognisable characteristics of a style, and at the same time perhaps too near our own day to be seen as yet in its true perspective. Any conceivable subdivision of the subject is open to some serious objection, and I am fully conscious that the system adopted in the following pages, of a classification by reigns, is by no means an exception. Its inevitable drawbacks will, how- ever, be reduced to a minimum, if it be remembered that each chapter deals, not so much with the architecture produced during the actual reign of the sovereign named, as with a stylistic development culminating in that reign, and extending between PREFACE vii two approximately assigned dates, and secondly that, chrono- logically, these periods of development usually overlap, some- times to a considerable extent. The system has this advantage, that the names of sovereigns have acquired a distinct meaning in trade and conversational diction, and call up in the mind a certain historical background fraught with suggestions of con- temporary events, manners, and costume. It is also justified by the fact that, in France, the Court and Government have exerted a more sensible influence on the evolution of design than in less centralised states. In the matter of illustration it has been my aim to place before the reader in the first place, of course, photographs and modern drawings of buildings, now, or till recently standing, but also the vanished buildings and unexecuted projects which throw an equally strong light on the ideas which inspired the work of successive ages. That this must generally be done by reproducing the drawings of by-gone generations of designers, so variously different in character from those of our own day, is in itself a gain, since the graphic method of presentment adopted by a du Cerceau, or a Marot, a Neufforge or a Fontaine is one element in his conception of design, and should be taken into consideration in the study and appreciation of the style in which he worked. The subject of this history is so wide that it necessarily includes much matter of a controversial nature. This turns principally on the dates and authorship of buildings anterior to the seventeenth century, whose records are fragmentary or non-existent. The limits of these volumes have obliged me in many cases to assert facts or probabilities, without supporting such assertions by arguments or reference to authorities. Those who wish to investigate such matters further will, in most cases, find the points fully discussed in the serried pages of Geymiiller, who, if his conclusions occasionally appear to go beyond the point which his argument warrants, never fails to set forth with the utmost candour all the available evidence, together with the opinions of other writers. One of his most notable contributions to scholarship has been finally to dispel the mists introduced into the subject by Chauvinistic French writers of the last century, with the late M. Leon Palustre at their head. The aim of this school was to reduce the influence of Italy on the French Renaissance to the Vlll PREFACE vanishing point. Their arguments were chiefly based on the fact that building accounts of the period, which are extant in an admittedly incomplete state, seldom mention the names of eminent Italians, who were often paid by the grant of benefices and Court sinecures, while they do include the names of obscure Frenchmen, whose small daily salaries are often sufficient evidence of their subordinate positions. Again they laid more stress on differences of style between works in France and Italy than is found to be justified if the proved versatility of Italians working in other lands is taken into account. A reaction has since set in, and though many questions still remain unsolved, French writers of the present day are, as a rule, ready to agree with the view taken in the following pages, that from the last years of the fifteenth century, Italy intervenes in a decisive manner in the destinies of French art. W. H. WARD. 2 Bkdford Square, W.C. August 191 1. AUTHOR'S NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT I take this opportunity of acknowledging with gratitude my great and various obligations to all those who have lent me their aid in the pro- duction of these volumes. Among these the first place belongs to my friend Mr John W. Simpson, to whose suggestion the work owes its origin, and to whose unfailing good nature and unerring judgment I have frequently appealed — and never in vain — at critical junctures. To Mr Arthur Stratton I owe a deep debt for valuable advice and criticism in the revision of the work and the selection of illustrations, involving much work and considerable inconvenience to himself. My thanks are also due to Mr Arthur Tilley, of King's College, Cambridge, and to Mr R. Phene Spiers, for various suggestions, and to the latter for the loan of a number of photographs. I am greatly indebted to Mr Alan Potter for his admirable photo- graphs, many of which were taken expressly for this work, and to Messrs Lawrence Gotch and Philip Hepworth for their excellent measured drawings and sketches. I also gratefully acknowledge the permission to reproduce drawings by Messrs Louis Ambler, C. Farey, C. W. Pike, V. O. Rees, Arthur Stratton, and G. G. Wornum ; the kind assistance given me by Mr T. Honnor in photography and typewriting, and Mrs Lamont's invaluable help in compiling the Index and reading the proof. I have also to record my indebtedness to the Council of the Royal Institute of British Architects for subjects from old books and prints in the Library, and to Messrs Arnott and Wilson for Fig. 402. Thanks are due to the French publishers who have with characteristic courtesy permitted me to reproduce examples from their valuable works. Details of the subjects and their sources are given in the Index to Illustrations. Their names are as follows : — Messieurs F. Boissonas, Geneva; E. Twietmeyer, Leipzig; A. Calavas, F, Contet, Ch. Eggimann, Ch. Foulard, A. Guerinet, and E. Levy, all of Paris. I can only fitly conclude this note by expressing my gratitude to my Publishers for their kindness and valuable help in many ways throughout the long preparation of the book, and in particular to Mr Harry Batsford for his laborious work in connection with the illustrations and printing. W. H. W. CONTENTS VOLUME I. INTRODUCTION. PAGE FRANCE IN THE XVTH CENTURY — NATIONAL DISORGANISATION AND REVIVAL — FRENCH GOTHIC — ARCHITECTURAL NEEDS OF FRANCE — CHANNELS OF ITALIAN INFLUENCE ON FRENCH ART — THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY : LOMBARD, ROMAN, SCHOLASTIC, AND BAROCCO PHASES — FUSION OF ITALIAN AND NATIVE ELEMENTS IN FRENCH ARCHITECTURE — RESULT- ING STYLES --------- XV CHAPTER I.— STYLE OF LOUIS XII. (1495-1515). Beginnings of Italian Influence — Attempted Fusion between Lombard Renaissance and Flamboyant Gothic. REIGNS OF CHARLES VIII. AND LOUIS XII. — EFFECTS OF ITALIAN CAM- PAIGNS— ITALIAN DESIGNERS AND CRAFTSMEN INTRODUCED — COLONY OF AMBOISE : FRA GIOCONDO — FRENCH BUILDERS — CHARACTER OF HYBRID STYLE — CHATEAUX, HOTELS, PUBLIC BUILDINGS : GAILLON, BLOIS, ETC. — CHURCHES AND TOMBS - ... - I \ CHAPTER II.— STYLE OF FRANCIS I. (1515-45). Fusion between Native Style and Lombard Renaissance Completed. REIGN OF FRANCIS I. — BUILDING ACTIVITY— INFLUENCE OF COURT — CHAR- ACTER OF EARLY RENAISSANCE STYLE IN FRANCE — LOIRE CHATEAUX : BLOIS, CHAMBORD, ETC. — ITALIAN DESIGNERS AND CRAFTSMEN : BOCCA- DORO — FRENCH BUILDERS — OTHER CHATEAUX: MADRID, FONTAINE- BLEAU, ST GERMAIN — HOUSES — PUBLIC BUILDINGS — CHURCHES AND TOMBS: ST EUSTACHE, ETC., AMBOISE TOMB - - - - 44 xii CONTENTS CHAPTER III.— STYLE OF HENRY II. (1530-90). Influence of Roman Renaissance. PAGE END OF FRANCIS I.'s REIGN — SCHOOL OF FONTAINEBLEAU : ROSSO, PRIMA- TICCIO, SERLIO — ANCY-LE-FRANC — RISE OF NATIVE ARCHITECTS : DU CERCEAU, GOUJON, LESCOT, DE L'ORME, BULLANT — TRANSITION FROM EARLY TO ADVANCED RENAISSANCE — REIGN OF HENRY II. — INFLUENCE OF COURT— CHARACTER OF ADVANCED RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE: SEVERE AND FREE SCHOOLS — THE LOUVRE, ANET, MONCEAUX — HOTELS— DECO- RATION—REIGNS OF THE LAST VALOIS KINGS — ARCHITECTURE DURING THE CIVIL WARS — CHARACTER OF LATER RENAISSANCE — TUILERIES, VER- NEUIL, CHARLEVAL — GARDEN DESIGN — HOTELS, ETC. — ARCHITECTURAL LITERATURE — CHURCHES AND TOMBS — TRANSITIONAL TYPE : BRETON CHURCHES — CLASSIC TYPE: CHAPELS AT ANET, VALOIS MAUSOLEUM - II3 CHAPTER IV.— STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. (1590-1660). Utilitarian Architecture and Rival Tendencies of Netherlands Barocco and Roman Classicism. REIGNS OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. — EFFECTS OF POLITICAL AND RE- LIGIOUS SETTLEMENT — BOURBON ART POLICY — ADVANCE IN PLANNING — BRICK AND STONE ARCHITECTURE — RUSTICATION — DE BROSSE, LE MERCIER, LE MUET, F. MANSART — WORKS AT THE LOUVRE AND TUILERIES, FONTAINEBLEAU AND ST GERMAIN ; THE LUXEMBOURG, RICHELIEU, BLOIS, ETC. — HOTELS — TOWN PLANNING — DECORATION — CHURCHES — HUGUENOT AND JESUIT ARCHITECTS — DOMES — TOMBS - 206 VOLUME II. CHAPTER V.— STYLE OF LOUIS XIV. (1640-1710). Barocco-Palladian Compromise — "The Grand Manner." reign and art policy of louis xiv. and his ministers— the academies — architectural literature — various origins of the style its sumptuous character — early domestic architecture : f. man- sart, le vau— parisian hotels— chateaux ! maisons, vaux, etc. —decoration : le brun, le pautre, j. marot— garden design : le notre— palatial architecture : le vau, bernini, perrault, j. h. mansart— completion of louvre and tuileries; versailles, marly, etc. — public works and monuments — later domestic architecture and decoration : berain, de cotte church architecture — basilican and domical types: st sulpice, sor- bonne, val-de-grace, invalides, versailles chapel - - 267 CONTENTS xiii CHAPTER VI.— STYLE OF LOUIS XV. (1710-70). Rococo -Palladi an Compromise. PAGE REGENCY — REIGN OF LOUIS XV.— SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE — COMFORT AND ELE- GANCE—DECORATION : " REGENCE," ROCOCO, " ROCAILLE," " CHINOI- SERIES" — DECOTTE, WATTEAU — CURVILINEAR AND ASYMMETRICAL TEN- DENCIES: OPPENORDT, MEISSONN1ER — ACADEMIC TRADITION: BOFFRAND, J. J. GABRIEL — ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION— J. F. BLONDEL — DOMESTIC AND PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE— PARISIAN HOTELS— CHATEAUX— FRENCH INFLUENCE ABROAD — TOWN PLANNING : NANCY, PARIS — CHURCHES - 356 CHAPTER VII.— STYLE OF LOUIS XVI. (1730-90). Puristic Reaction — Beginnings of Archaeo- logical Tendency. end of louis xv. 's reign and reign of louis xvi. — causes of french REVOLUTION — ARCH.'EOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES — INFLUENCE OF ROUSSEAU — ANGLOMANIA — SERVANDONY, J. A. GABRIEL, SOUFFLOT — STRAIGHT LINES AND SYMMETRY RESTORED— CLASSICAL PURISM — PALATIAL AND DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE: COMPIEGNE, PETIT TRIANON— THE ENGLISH GARDEN — HOTELS— DECORATION — TOWN PLANNING — PUBLIC BUILDINGS, THEATRES— ANTOINE, LOUIS— CHURCHES : PANTHEON - - - 407 CHAPTER VIII.— STYLE OF THE EMPIRE (1790-1830). Archaeological Classicism. the revolution and napoleon — break up of institutions and tra- ditions— increased interest in classical antiquity — percier and fontaine — public works and monuments: arches, columns: madeleine, bourse— town planning — tombs — churches — charac- ter of restoration period — revivals — decline of classicism - 466 Bibliographical Note ........ 495 Index to Illustrations - - - - - - - 501 Index to Text ........ 508 2. The Chateau of Tanlay. THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE INTRODUCTION During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the peoples of Europe, led by Italy, passed from their mediaeval to their modern stage of development, with all that those expressions imply. The great transforming process, which brought this about, and. was to a great extent inspired by the New Learning, or recovered lore of Classical Antiquity, is known as the Renaissance. The value of its character and work has been variously estimated at different periods, but we have now emerged from the controversial era, and with the growth of the historical spirit it can be viewed dispassionately, as an inevitable step in the advance of civilisation, not more exempt from defect than others. The twentieth century may, in fact, be content to strike a balance between the abuse with which the nineteenth attacked the Renaissance and the indiscriminate admiration with which it was previously regarded. Its history has been told, and told exhaustively, from almost every point of view. The task attempted in these pages is to trace its effects, both immediate and secondary, on the art of architecture in France, a country which for a thousand years has played so commanding a part b xv xvi INTRODUCTION. in European civilisation that no aspect of its own civilisation can fail to be of importance for its neighbours. All Renaissance architecture must in some degree be of a hybrid character, the resultant of an endeavour to clothe structures adapted to the requirements of a later age in a code of forms and proportions derived from the architecture of classical antiquity — to recast a national style in a classical mould. The character of the outcome of such a process of assimilation naturally varies in proportion to the force of resistance exerted by the national style. But it is not less interesting or valuable to study it when, as in the case of France, that resistance is strong, than when, as in the case of Italy, it hardly existed. In Italy the distance traversed by the national styles from the common classical starting point was but small. And nothing is more striking in her mediaeval architecture than the persistence in it of classical traditions of wall and space composition, of horizontality and dead-weight construction, as well as of detail and features, and the influence they exerted upon exotic styles of diverse origin imported into the peninsula from time to time. At first, in Tuscany at least, the difference between the later Romanesque buildings and those affected by that study of ancient monuments which Brunelleschi revived, is principally manifested by a closer systematisation of design and increased refinement of detail. In France, where the national style had reached a stage of development which constituted the almost direct antithesis of its remote classical origin, the fusion was effected with far less ease ; and, if for that reason its results but seldom rival the best works of the Italian Renaissance in ideal charm, they yet possess a haunting interest, and offer perhaps even more suggestion for the modern world by reason of the traces of struggle which they bear upon them. Gaul had been almost as thoroughly permeated with Latin civilisation as Italy herself, but the proportion of the northern invaders — Visigoths, Burgundians, Franks, and Northmen — to the Romanised population had been greater, and the influence of Germanic institutions more powerful. In the new state which emerged there after centuries of obscure conflicts, the civilisation of mediaeval Europe reached its fullest, its most characteristic, expression. From the twelfth to the fourteenth century, and especially in the reigns of Philip Augustus and Saint Louis, this state was gaining in consistency, power, and territory, and France took a leading part not only in the political, but also in the spiritual, intellectual, and artistic life of Europe. This was the heroic age of crusading and chivalry, of the religious orders and the guilds, of scholastic theology and cathedral building. It was followed by one of growing prosperity and refinement, but declining vigour, which ended in the disasters of the Hundred Years' War (i 337-1 453). INTRODUCTION. Xvii After suffering the miseries and degradation consequent on foreign invasion and internal strife, the country was gradually restored to inde- pendence and unity by the heroism of Joan of Arc and the astute policy of the reigns of Charles VII. (1422-61) and Louis XL (1461-83). A new France then arose from her ashes with the feudal and ecclesi- astical ideals of the Middle Ages greatly shaken. A successful struggle against the invader had awakened a new sense of nationality and of solidarity with the crown, the one mediaeval institution which emerged unweakened from the anarchy. The kings set on foot a work of reorganisation, by developing the central administrative, judicial, fiscal, and military system at the expense of the local and feudal ones. They made themselves paramount over all conflicting powers : they controlled the Church and the municipalities, and deprived the nobles of their independent authority, absorbing their territories and enrolling their persons in the royal armies. They fostered industry and trade ; and the restoration of order and prosperity, which permitted the rise of an influential middle class of lawyers, bankers, and manufacturers, was accompanied by the growth of the capitalist principle in commerce. The newly invented printing press favoured the spread of education. Literary activity and classical studies revived, and the growth of Humanism went hand in hand with that of individualism. This national history had been accompanied by a highly char- acteristic architectural development, culminating, when the mediaeval monarchy was at its height, in a noble austere style with simple structural forms and symbolic sculpture, architectonic in its character. In the ensuing era of material progress, the structural problems being already solved, the builders devoted themselves to elaboration and embellishment ; while losing in virility, architectural forms grew richer and more graceful, sculpture more purely decorative. With the national disorganisation and impoverishment during the Hundred Years' War, came a moral and artistic decline. Architecture was reduced to embroidery on old themes, and lost itself in ingenuities of design and dexterities of execution, while sculpture fell into an ex- travagant naturalism. This was the state of affairs in the second half of the fifteenth century when the national revival and renewed prosperity called for a new outburst of architectural activity. France under Louis XL produced work of considerable magnifi- cence, but the Dukes of Burgundy, the last of the great vassals to be subdued, were far more liberal patrons of art than the French king. In their territories, which included a large part of the present Belgium as well as the eastern provinces of France, and which had to a great extent escaped the devastation of the English wars, architecture had entered upon a phase of exceptional splendour, in which all the characteristics of contemporary Gothic, virtuosity, exuberance and naturalism, were XV111 INTRODUCTION. pushed to extremes. It might have seemed as if the national style was about to enter upon a new cycle of evolution. But it contained in itself the germs of decay, and many causes contributed to render it unsuitable to meet the requirements of a civilisation which was being transformed by powerful agencies, unless it were itself transmuted in like manner. It was an inevitable condition of mediaeval art to be moulded by the Church. The Church was the all-embracing medium of human activity : and the strenuous life of mediaeval Europe naturally found its artistic expression in the building and decoration of churches, whether the immediate motive were spiritual fervour, local patriotism, or family pride. Such was the splendour of the results, that all contemporary building was moulded to the ecclesiastical style, even in the case of military architecture, which in the main was the outcome of the utilitarian considerations of warfare. But in the late fifteenth century the Church had lost her moral and intellectual superiority. Gorgeous ceremonial and a multiplicity of observances took the place of zeal and faith. The lives of the clergy were often worldly, if not scandalous, and they not infrequently ranged themselves on the side of obscurantism, while the spread of culture and classical studies was weakening their hold on men's minds. The ascetic conception of life of the Middle Ages had already broken down in practice ; the humanistic gospel of self-cultivation and the joy of life now swept away the embargo which the Church had laid on the free exercise of all bodily and mental powers. Since the ideal mediaeval church consisted, as it has been said, of a stone roof, or rather ceiling, and of glass walls, the efforts of the builders had been concentrated upon the carrying of rib vaults on the minimum of direct support by a nicely calculated system of thrust and counter- thrust. But this system had outlived its raison d'etre. France was well equipped with places of worship ; and the mysteries of vaulting held no secrets for the maitres d'ceuvres. No further progress was possible in that direction, and the need was for systems of wider adaptability. In so far as Gothic architecture was military it had also survived its use and efficiency. The knell of feudalism and private warfare had rung, and the towered stone-built castle could not resist artillery. Since fortification was now controlled by the central government and applied almost exclusively to cities and frontier fortresses, and since it consisted more and more of earthworks, its design provided an ever- diminishing scope for architecture proper, whose mission was increas- ingly the housing of peaceful citizens. Then mediaeval architecture was in large measure the result of corporate energies, the outcome of a period when the State was a mere aggregation of corporations. Gothic INTRODUCTION. xix edifices were often built by, or at the expense of, corporations, ecclesiastical, social, or industrial. The guilds, which so largely reared and decorated them, had grown prosperous and oligarchic. The capitalism and individualism, which were sapping their foundations, were forces which would have to be reckoned with in a new architectural development. Again, though the French people is of composite origin, their mediaeval architecture was, in the main, the product of the Teutonic genius of the North expressing its subjective, analytic, realistic bent — all, in fact, that was most opposed to the classical spirit. ■ But French society was now again coming under the sway of classical thought, and it was natural that the Southern or Gallo-Roman element should exert a more decisive influence on the national art. This could not, however, proceed from the southern provinces of France, where classical culture had been a power in the twelfth century, for the life was crushed out of them by the Albigensian crusades (1208-18), and they had been obliged to adopt the art of the victorious North with her language and political supremacy. Lastly, Gothic architecture was of purely native growth. Originating in the He de France, the nucleus of the later kingdom, it had spread with it, and beyond it, to all western Europe. A nation cannot go on indefinitely creating and exporting ideas. French art in the late fifteenth century had exhausted, not indeed its skill or vigour, but its stock of creative ideas. It was time that the debt should be repaid by the importation of a new inspiration from abroad. The architecture of the future, then, would be mainly secular and peaceful : it would have to house the Royal Court, the symbol of the new national life, the nobility now taking their part as servants of the State, and the middle classes enriched by the newly established security. The chateau and hotel would be its standard, not the church or the keep. It would be the product of individual genius, and freed from the pre- occupation of a single structural problem. It would be tinged by humanistic ideas and give expression to the objective, synthetic, idealistic tendencies of classical civilisation ; and, since southern France was not in a condition to supply the impulse for turning the native building art into new channels, this must be sought in a foreign land. Now Italy, and Italy alone, could supply what was lacking in French architecture under the changing conditions of the times, by providing it with a fresh unexploited source of inspiration. Already a number of agencies were busy introducing the new influence, and with others, soon to come into operation, were to continue to do so for several centuries. Travellers are important agents in the spread of a foreign type of XX INTRODUCTION. culture. But in the fifteenth century those passing between Italy and France were almost confined to clergy, ambassadors, merchants, and artists. The relations between the French Church and the Holy See produced a constant interchange of visits. French clerics of standing, like Bishop Thomas James of Dol, usually journeyed at least once to Rome, and great political Churchmen, like the Cardinals of Amboise, passed frequently to and fro. Again, French benefices were a convenient provision for Italian younger sons and "nephews" of popes and cardinals; though these prelates often considered their duties discharged when they had drawn the revenues. Then, too, there were frequent embassies from Paris to the various Italian courts, such as that conducted, in 1495, to Venice by Philippe de Comines, who was greatly impressed by the beauty of that " most triumphant citie that euer I sawe." " Sure in my opinion," he exclaims, the Grand Canal "is the goodliest streete in the world and the best built." Nor was he less struck by the Certosa of Pavia. " This goodly Charterhouse Church, which in very deed is the fairest that euer I saw, for it is all of fine marble."* Meanwhile the growing power of the French drew many Italian missions to the French court, on whose equipment much money was lavished. Ambassadors and their retinues displayed Italian fashions and brought costly gifts, while Italian bankers and merchants in French towns took a not unimportant, if less ostenta- tious, share in the dissemination of their country's art. At this early stage the sight of articles of Italian workmanship, finding their way into the country in the train of any of these categories of travellers, such as goldsmiths' work, medals and cameos, books, pictures, furniture and intarsias, casts and bronze work, terra-cottas and maiolica all helped to accustom French eyes to Renaissance forms, and the very fact that Italian quarries were the source of the marble supply necessitated that such larger objects as fountains or tombs, if of marble, should be Italian made. Strangely, however, it was to soldiers that France owed the greatest impetus towards the Renaissance, for the campaigns gave thousands of Frenchmen, from the kings downwards, an opportunity of seeing and admiring Italian art. These began with the expedition of Charles VIII., through upper Italy and Tuscany, to Naples in 1495, followed by others under Louis XII., Francis I., and Henry II. up to 1559. Then after a lull there were fresh wars under Louis XIII., and again under Louis XIV. and XV., but these were of less artistic consequence since Italy was then more familiar and of diminished importance as an art centre. * "Historieof Philip de Comines,1' translated by Thos. Danett, London, 1601. Bk. vii., Chs. vii. and xv. 3. HOTEL DE VILLE, DREUX. INTRODUCTION. xxi Travel for pleasure and information is, as a general practice, a comparatively modern habit, but from the time of the Italian wars onwards it became increasingly common for French gentlemen, scholars, and men of letters to visit Italy, to mention only such well- known names as Rabelais and Montaigne. If the invasions were all on one side, Italy made a peaceful conquest of France by giving her rulers, who, with their suites, influenced French art by their Italian predilections, and by keeping up artistic intercourse with their native land. Within a century two princesses of the Florentine House of Medici ascended the French throne and became regents. Both showed Italian proclivities in their art patronage, while another regent, Anne of Austria, by putting power in the hands of an Italian Churchman, continued the same tradition. But the most important factor of all is what French artists learnt in Italy and Italian artists taught in France. During the greater part of the fifteenth century the two countries probably looked askance at each other's art, and few artists crossed the frontier in either direction. Among the exceptions were the miniaturist, Jehan Foucquet, and the stained glass worker, Guillaume de Marcillac, who both found employment at Rome. But from the early sixteenth century onwards it became the custom of French artists and architects to spend some time in Italy. Jean Perreal under Louis XII. travelled in that country, du Cerceau, de l'Orme, and Bullant followed his example under Francis I. The training of young architects in Italy, and especially at Rome — at that period the first school of architecture in Europe — consisted not only in visiting, measuring, and sketching ancient and modern buildings, but also in studying and copying the designs of the great masters, and in making compositions in which the results of their studies were embodied. The practice of Italian travel became a general one for young artists and has persisted to the present day. Under Louis XIV. it was erected into a system under State patronage by the foundation of the French Academy in Rome. Archi- tects and others were also sent on missions by several of the kings, especially Francis I. and Louis XIII. , to collect works of art, sketch and measure buildings, and take casts. Italians in France were rare in the fifteenth century ; but from its closing years onwards a continuous stream of architects and engineers, decorators and all manner of artificers poured across the Alps, beginning with Charles VIII. 's colonies at Amboise and Tours, and continued by that of Francis I. at Paris and Fontainebleau. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Italians continued to be summoned to assist in architectural work. These were mostly decorators, but included such architects as Guarini and Bernini. The last, but by no means the least important, of the agencies for xxii INTRODUCTION. spreading Renaissance principles in France was that of direct oral and literary instruction. Among Italian architects who taught in France were Fra Giocondo in the fifteenth, and Serlio in the sixteenth century. The former was the first editor of Vitruvius, the influence of whose works in their numerous editions and translations is only rivalled by that of a long series of works by French architects, beginning with du Cerceau and de l'Orme and including technical treatises, original or translated from the Italian, sketches, measured drawings and designs. The influence affecting French architecture from outside through these various channels was, broadly speaking, that of classical antiquity. But since direct study of ancient monuments was not the first nor the only means of its introduction, the character of the results was profoundly affected by the Italian interpretations through which it reached France, and this varied not only from century to century, but simultaneously in different parts of Italy. In Tuscany, the cradle of the Renaissance in the early quattro cento, architecture proper maintained a certain austerity, and the delicate and rather minute type of ornament, evolved by a race of architects of goldsmith training, was confined in large measure to single features such as doorways or tombs. But when, in the third quarter of the century, the movement spread to Upper Italy, the style assumed a richer, more fantastic, dress, and the forms of the local styles of Lombardy and Venetia — Gothic, Byzantine or Romanesque — were translated into the new language. This produced a style of exquisite charm and delicacy, and prolific in the invention of new features, but prone to seek its effects too exclusively in the profusion of ornament and the beauty of its detail and of its individual parts. In the last quarter of the century a third stage of development was reached, of which Rome was the centre, and Bramante, with Raphael and his other pupils, the chief exponent. It resulted from that more systematic study of the ancient monuments which inspired the writings of Alberti ; and received an impetus from the appearance of the first printed edition of Vitruvius (c. i486). This work, which is in the nature of a handbook containing a code of formula? by means of which engineers engaged on the public works of the Roman Empire might clothe any structure in an architectural garb, was accepted by the men of the Renaissance as giving a clue to the system they assumed to underlie classical architecture and account for its beauty. In the mature, or Roman, phase the Renaissance was pruned of its exuberances, and became bolder, surer, more balanced in its composition, gaining in calm monumentality and masculine strength what it lost in youthful vitality and variety of decorative motives. The pontificates of Julius II. (1503-13) and Leo X. (1513-21) were the "Golden Age of the Renaissance," in which the concourse of talent, INTRODUCTION. xxiii focussed upon the rebuilding of St Peter's, made Rome a centre of widespread architectural influence. But a decline soon set in, hastened by the sack of Rome (1527) and the political misfortunes of Italy, and, in the Silver Age which followed, architecture split into two schools, tending respectively to a strict and a free interpretation of antiquity. On the one hand men of strong personal genius like San Gallo, San Michele, or Peruzzi began to be succeeded by others less original in their conceptions, such as Serlio, Vignola, and Palladio, who magnified the authority of Vitruvius and based their work on an ever minuter study of antiquity. They displayed great literary activity and reduced construction and composition to an exact science, with detailed rules, not merely for the proportions of the Orders, but for designing every kind of edifice. Thus architecture passed into scholasticism, though still capable of works of considerable grandeur, dignity, and even charm. On the other hand, Michael Angelo, who succeeded in 1542 to the charge of St Peter's, headed a revolt against classical purism and the dead hand in architecture. His titanic genius, disdainful of rule, made arbitrary use of architectural forms to produce an imposing setting for sculpture, and as a means of magnificent display. His love of strong contrasts, violent effects, and exaggerated scale were insufficiently tempered by attention to structural appropriateness. The school which followed him developed the Barocco and Jesuit styles of the seventeenth century, culminating in Bernini and Borromini. It resorted to various theatrical devices and employed classical features in strange perversions, or replaced architectural by sculptural forms ; its detail was often coarse and its general character emphatic and pretentious, but these defects are often redeemed by a true, if over sumptuous, decorative and plastic instinct, and a vigour of conception, not devoid of impressiveness, picturesqueness, or even poetry. The close of the seventeenth century witnessed the rise of the Rococo style, an offshoot of the Barocco. It is marked by an almost exclusive use of curved lines, both in plan and elevation, and is seen at its best in a type of internal decoration, often of great elegance and daintiness, consisting principally in a capricious collocation of scrolls. The strict classic school meanwhile, though thrown into the shade, was not without its devotees or influence. About 1730 the pendulum began to swing back once more towards classical purism, largely helped by the impression produced by newly discovered remains of antiquity ; and architecture began to assume a more archaeological character than at any previous time. During the three and a half centuries of French architectural history, with which this volume deals, foreign influences were not confined to c xxiv INTRODUCTION. that of Italy. France frequently attracted craftsmen and designers from northern and Teutonic countries, especially Flanders, but this was often but an indirect way of absorbing Italian influence, though it reached France tinged by the medium through which it had passed, and thus tended as a rule to reinforce the freer and more naturalistic tendencies at home. Thus the growth of Barocco and Rococo schools was largely assisted by Belgian, Dutch, and German artists, while in garden design English influence was the chief factor in the revolution against the classical tradition in the eighteenth century. But, in architecture at this time, English and Dutch influence, if not very powerful, contributed something to the puristic reaction. The metaphor contained in the word Renaissance is very applicable to the architecture of France, re-born of the marriage of Gothic and Italian art at the close of the Middle Ages. But it was a blending continued and repeated through three centuries, and producing ever changing results. The first and greatest fusion took place in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The elements in this case were the Flamboyant Gothic of France and the almost equally florid Early Renaissance style of northern Italy introduced with the colony of Amboise. The result, after a period of transition whose work is known by the name of the Louis XII. Style, was the Early Renaissance of France, or Francis I. Style. It is to these first thirty or forty years that Walter Pater refers when he says:* "What is called the Renaissance in France is not so much the introduction of a wholly new taste ready-made from Italy, but rather the finest and subtlest phase of the Middle Age itself, its last fleeting splendour and temperate Saint Martin's summer"; and again : " The old Gothic manner had still one chance more, in borrowing something from the rival which was about to supplant it. In this way there was produced ... a new and peculiar phase of taste with qualities and a charm of its own, blending the somewhat attenuated grace of Italian ornament with the general lines of northern design." In the middle of the sixteenth century the break with the Middle Ages became more pronounced. A second fusion took place, this time between the Francis I. Style on the one side, and on the other the mature or Roman Renaissance of Italy introduced by the colony of Fontainebleau, and by Frenchmen who had visited Italy, produc- ing the mature Renaissance of France, or Henry II. Style. By this time the Renaissance was flowing in two parallel streams. On the one hand a French school of free Classic grew out of the school of Fontainebleau under the later Valois and developed in the early seventeenth century under the influence of Flemish Barocco into the rather coarse forms of the Style of Louis XIII. Compelled into * "The Renaissance : Studies in Art and Poetry," 2nd edition, 1877, p. 141. INTRODUCTION. XXV coalition with the strict classic school under Louis XIV., but keeping in touch with Italian Barocco, it re-emerged in his later years, gaining refinement under the Regency and culminating in the finished, though seemingly lawless, elegance of the Louis XV. Style. Thus though Gothic detail was eliminated in secular work as early as about 1540, the native, free, naturalistic spirit, which it represented, remained potent in design by coalescing with the free classic tendency of Italy. In church architecture Gothic design and even Gothic detail survived as late as the seventeenth century, while indirect Gothic influence is traceable even in the eighteenth. On the other hand, the pure classic school, after falling somewhat into abeyance in the later sixteenth century, revived in the seventeenth, when the direct study of ancient Roman art lent its aid towards the formation of an academic classicism under Richelieu and Mazarin, followed by a series of compromises with Barocco and Rococo. In the eighteenth there came a puristic reaction from the excesses of the latter, simultaneous with that in Italy, and the utilisation of material, newly become available from Roman and Greek art, brought into being the styles of Louis XVI. and the Empire. In this long architectural evolution, which resulted from the continued fusion of French and Italian, Gothic and Classic ideas, the parts played by each side are equally important, if not equally obvious. They may be compared to the stock and the graft. The native element supplies the sap, the life, without which the graft must perish. But it is by virtue of the graft, an importation from outside, yet remotely of its own kin, that the tree is saved from running to waste, and enabled to bear a crop of fragrant blossom and mellow fruit. Though the detail and typical features of the native element soon disappeared, yet the principle, which underlay them, remained. It survived in many characteristic arrangements, in the insistence on verticality, in endeavours to express actual construction and plan in the architectural treatment, and in the consequent soaring and picturesque effects The imported element brought with it the love of the horizontal line, the idealism which does not scruple to imitate or retain, for their intrinsic beauty, forms once originated by structural needs, but afterwards elaborated into objects of admiration for their own sake. Holding that utilitarian considerations of plan and construction are necessities to be subordinated to the beauty of the total design, it strove after regularity, symmetry, and repose. While the former, with its absorption in technique, favoured needless elaboration for the purpose of exhibiting clever solutions of self-set problems, the latter was inclined to the other extreme of sham construction and dull uniformity. The two elements correspond to opposite, but complementary, sides XXVI INTRODUCTION. of the human mind. Each found its counterpart in domains other than that of art. Under the aspect of its insistence on law and order the classical influence may be regarded as associated with the growth of the organised modern State. It was liable to degenerate into a despotic system of rules, even as the State developed into an absolute and cruel autocracy. The other element, the Gothic and native influence, may be regarded — and in this respect it found an ally in the individualist side of the Renaissance — as standing for freedom from rule, and thus as associated with those forces in the national life which opposed the encroachments of authority whether in Church or State. But, like them, it was liable to foster licence and anarchy. Since it is the task of the following pages to trace the interactions of these twin forces in the architectural world, and to describe the styles to which they gave birth, the narrative begins in the opening chapter at the moment when the dynastic wars of the late fifteenth century brought France into direct contact with Italy, and provided an opportunity for the Renaissance influence to burst upon French architecture like a fertilising flood. 4. Perigueux : Houses on the Quay. 5. Emblem of Louis XII. CHAPTER I. STYLE OF LOUIS XII. (1495-1515) KINGS. Charles VIII. (1483-1498). Initial — K. Motto — "Si deus pro nobis, quis contra nos ? " Louis XII. (1498-1515). Initial — L. Emblem — Porcupine. Motto — " Cominus et ei/iinns." QUEENS. Anne of Brittany. Initial — A. Emblem — (1) Ermine. Motto — " Malo m or I qnam f cedar i." (2) Rope girdle. Motto — "J'ai le corps dilii." Anne of Brittany. Mary Tudor. CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH SOVEREIGNS. Henry VII. (1485- 1509). Henry VIII. (1509-1547). HISTORICAL SKETCH. Reign of Charles VIII. — Charles VIII. succeeded his father Louis XL in 1483 at the age of thirteen. By the extinction of the House of Anjou and his marriage with Anne of Brittany, two large semi-independent fiefs were added to the Crown. He found himself on his majority at the head of a nation at one with itself, newly conscious of its power, and ripe for expansion, with a nobility eager for adventure and glory. He had at command overflowing coffers and a well-found army. In Charles' weakly frame there breathed a spirit full of romantic ambitions. His ill-balanced mind had received no better training than a course of romances of chivalry. The claim to the crown of Naples, bequeathed by his kinsman Rene of Anjou, and the invitation of Florence and other Italian states to chastise local tyrants, gave Charles an opportunity, eagerly seized by himself and his RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. people, of realising these dreams of adventure. An expedition was organised to make good his title to Naples and lord it over the cities which lay along his route. A great host, including the flower of the nobility and gentry, gathered round the king at Lyons in the spring of 1494. The Alps were crossed, and the French began a triumphal pro- gress through Italy. Within a year, and almost without striking a blow, Charles was master of his southern kingdom. But his triumph was short- lived. Before 1495 was out he was forced to retreat northward, gaining the barren victory of Fornovo, in which he lost his baggage containing the spoils of Naples and many art treas- ures valued at about half a million ster- ling. Charles did not long survive the war, dying childless at Amboise in 1498, and was succeeded by his cousin, Louis of Orleans, who in- herited hisentangle- ments in Italian affairs and married his widow in order to retain her duchy. Reign of Louis XII. — Louis XII. ("Father of the People") endeared himself to his subjects as much by his simple life and bourgeois tastes as by his interest in their welfare and the reduction of taxation, resulting from economical finance. He united his duchy of Orleans and county of Blois to the royal domains. To his predecessor's pretensions to Naples he added claims of his own to Milan, and, to enforce them, waged wars throughout Italy from 1499 to 1504. Later he attacked Venice, Chapel of St Lazarus, Marseilles. By Francesco Laurana (1479-81). THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 3 but his armies were finally driven from the Peninsula in 15 13, and his reign ended amid universal peace. These two reigns were long looked back upon as an age of gold. Stable government and immunity from invasion, internal security and prosperity were the needs most strongly felt, and, obtaining these, the nation acquiesced in the restriction of its liberties and the growing absolutism of the monarchy. Forerunners of the Renaissance. — The Renaissance, at any rate in architecture, is commonly dated from Charles VIII. 's Italian cam- paign. In a general sense this is fairly accurate. Specimens of Classic and Italian art had, however, begun to find their way across the Alps nearly a century before 1495. Jonn> Duke of Berry (1340-1416), brother of Charles V., was one of the earliest Humanists of France ; his interest in antiquity led him to collect Roman coins and cameos, and he probably employed Italian miniaturists. The House of Anjou, which ruled in Provence, followed his example. Francesco Laurana made a series of coins and medals for Duke Rene, titular King of Naples and Jerusalem, and his brother, Charles of Maine (1460-67), and with the co-operation of the sculptors, Thomas of Como and Thomas of Somoelvico, rebuilt the chapel of St Lazarus in the old cathedral at Marseilles (1479-81) (Fig. 6), and at the same time carried out a reredos (now in the church of St Didier at Avignon), in the back- ground of which buildings of Italian design occur. Among other works ascribed to him are the tomb of Charles of Maine in Le Mans Cathedral (1475), tne so-called "Niche of King Rene," and the tomb of Jean de Cossa (1476) at Tarascon. King Rene also employed Luca della Robbia, a panel by whom, with the king's arms, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington. All these works were purely Italian in character and executed by Italians; but being comparatively small, they could easily be carried out to suit the taste of patrons with a leaning to Italian art without bringing them into conflict with native prejudices or with the guilds, as more important building operations might have done. They had no immediate imitators. Effects of Italian Campaigns. — The work of transformation in the arts, hitherto sporadic, needed a more powerful impetus to bring it into general operation. This was provided by the Neapolitan expedi- tion, which gave an opportunity for large numbers of men of all classes to see with their own eyes the triumphs of an alien culture. Italy received them in her gayest mood and most festal attire. In the first few months the French army passed from fete to fete. Natural beauties and marvels of art were unrolled before them in an ever-shifting pageant as they went. What wonder that eyes accustomed to the narrow and 4 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. muddy alleys of French cities, with their crowding gables, the grim blank walls of feudal keeps, the grey stone and darkened timber of the north, should be dazzled at the sight of sun-bathed piazzas and colonnades, paved streets lined with palaces which glowed with marble and frescoes, or that airy villas among terraced gardens, set with fountains and statues, orange trees and vine pergolas, should seem of more than earthly beauty to their new northern owners ? Philippe de Commines, though used to the sumptuous court of Burgundy, was astonished at the splendour of Venice, where he went as ambassador. Bishop Briconnet, who accompanied Charles, wrote from Naples to Queen Anne : " Madame, I would that you might have seen this city, and the fair things which are therein, for it is an earthly paradise." The king himself wrote home in enthusiastic terms of the painted ceilings of Italy. It may be imagined that a sudden plunge into the central current of the world's art would also create a profound impression on the minds of country squires, who had never before crossed the bounds of their province. The material and political fruits of the campaign were lamentably small ; but one thing was effected — the idea of Italy as the source of art was implanted in French bosoms. Italy was henceforward the Promised Land, the home of all delights of mind and sense, and it became the ambition of every French gentleman to reproduce at home the palaces and gardens of Italy, and to people them with paintings, statuary, and marble fountains. The work thus begun by Charles VIII. was continued by each succeeding monarch for half a century, as expedition after expedition poured over the Alps, till the attempt to secure a footing in the Peninsula was abandoned as hopeless by Henry II. in the last year of his reign. What was it that so captivated these soldiers and statesmen in Italy ? It cannot have been merely the sumptuous appointments of Italian mansions. Their own houses were often richly decorated with colour and gilding, and fitted with carved furniture and costly hangings. Nor is it altogether true that the conception of the country seat as a pleasure house rather than as a fortress was new to them. The comparative security of Louis XL's later years had permitted the rise in France of a certain number of undefended manor houses, and gardens laid out with art were by no means unknown in mediaeval France, though they were small in scale, and designed in a somewhat utilitarian spirit. To judge from their own words the French were impressed, first by the beauty of the land and climate, then by the magnificence of the design and decoration of gardens and the richness of building materials, and finally by Italian painting and sculpture, then almost at their zenith. In addition, they no doubt found in contemporary Italian architecture THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 7. ENTRANCE OF DUCAL CASTLE, NANCY (1501-12). 6 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. the piquancy of an unfamiliar style, the charm of novelty. At a time, too, when all the world was beginning to study the classical authors, and to trace the source of all great and good things to the Golden Age of Greece and Rome, there was a vague sense abroad that Italy had rediscovered the true secret of architecture. It may be doubted, however, whether French laymen had a correct appreciation of the difference between the Gothic and Renaissance manners, or definitely preferred round arches to pointed, pediments to gables, or the acanthus and egg and dart to the cabbage leaf and the thistle ; and yet, as has been well said of them, " what they wanted was not greater luxury but luxury conceived on other lines." In fact it is difficult to escape the feeling that the new style was brought, as it were, by accident, so far as its earliest patrons were concerned. Charles and his courtiers fell in love with Italy, and when they brought her home with them the Renaissance was found in her train. The French Court turned their stay at Naples to account by taking measures to introduce the delights of Italy to their homes. Their own home-keeping masons and carvers, however skilful, could no longer satisfy them, and Italian artificers must be imported to carry out the works contemplated, and to instruct their French confreres. The king first despatched by sea a varied consignment of works of art (1495), and shortly afterwards " certain workmen, craftsmen, and other persons, to work at their craft," . . . "designers to build and make works to his bidding and pleasure in the fashion of Italy," twenty-two persons in all. This colony, to which the name " School of Amboise " has been given, from its first settlement, and which was supplemented in the following reign by further groups of Italian artists at Tours and Blois, was the first important nucleus of Italian influence in France, the seed-plot of a brilliant architectural development, whose crop of graceful and fantastic buildings still adorns the banks of the Loire and many a country-side throughout France. Thus in the last years of the fifteenth century the two forces, from whose fusion the new style of France was to be evolved, were brought face to face. The Building Profession. — In order to understand the character which this new architecture assumed, an attempt must be made to picture the conditions under which it came into being. In spite of the meagre building records of this period, this may be done to some extent. The kings, lords, and gentry were fired with enthusiasm for Italy, and eager to reproduce the things they had seen or heard of there. But how was this to be effected? They had to rely on a handful of Italian designers, few of whom were architects in the strict sense of the word — which indeed was little used till a later time— but who were masters of some art or craft — sculpture, painting, horticulture, or cabinetmaking, . 8 • — • !* 8 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. and able to make their own designs ; and on a larger, but still incon- siderable number of humbler Italian craftsmen. The bulk of the work necessarily fell on the native maitres d'mivres and their men. The French master-masons and master-carpenters held positions which approximated, according to circumstances, to those of architect, clerk of works, or contractor, and occasionally combined these functions. The race of mediaeval craftsmen who built the Gothic castles and cathedrals, originating the designs and making their own drawings, was dying out. With some brilliant exceptions, such as Martin Chambiges of Beauvais and Rouland le Roux of Rouen, the maitres d'ceuvres had sunk to the rank of working contractors and were neither able nor called upon to initiate designs. Italian Architects in France. — The co-operation of all these human factors appears eminently calculated to produce a mixed style, especially if one considers the origin and character of the designs, the methods of execution and the relations between the men who ordered, the men who designed, and the men who carried out the buildings. The architect or originator of the general design was to be found rather among the foreigners than the natives, for such maitres d'ceuvres as were capable of designing could naturally only do so on Gothic lines. The Italian architect, then, on arriving in France was confronted with the task of reconciling a number of conflicting conditions. He had the support of his patron, who had been in Italy, or at any rate admired things Italian, and he was seconded by a certain number of Italian sculptors, cabinetmakers, and painters. But he had against him the whole body of tradition and of conservative, untravelled opinion. Even the patron's enthusiasm for the Renaissance would not carry him the length of surrendering things he had always been accustomed to. The architect was in fact often called upon to effect a revolution without altering anything, and was driven to compromise, to accommodate his design to French prejudices, habits, and climate. High roofs and low storeys, towers indicative of feudal rights, traditions of planning, familiar outlines, all had to be retained. Again, his instructions were confined to a small scale model, a set of sketch-plans, a few details of mouldings, or even to verbal directions, and his authority over the Frenchmen, by whom to a great extent they were carried out, very limited. In some cases the patron, being a man of culture with some knowledge of archi- tecture, seems to have made sketches himself or employed painters to make pictures of the projected buildings, as was perhaps the case with Francis I. at Fontainebleau, and these were handed over to the con- tractor to carry out according to his lights with or without the assistance of Italian craftsmen. In important buildings, the works were subject to a " surveyor," or " superintendent," a sort of superior clerk of works, THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. IO RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. who eventually developed into the architect, and the expenditure to a " comptroller." Influence of Italians on French Builders. — Such conditions abundantly account for incoherence in design in the early stages of the French Renaissance and for the haphazard manner in which elements old and new were jumbled together. The foreign ideas were making their way from the top and from the bottom, from the inspiring architect and the executing craftsman. When it became evident that the new fashion had taken root, the obstructive attitude of the French masters and men gave place to a desire to excel in the new manner, and, while the former were studying the designs of Italian architects, the latter were rubbing shoulders with their Italian mates on all the scaffolds of France and picking up from them new types of profile and ornament. Stone-carvers and other craftsmen were thus often as influential in the spread of Renaissance ideas as architects. When once relations of comradeship and solidarity had been established between workers of the two nations, French builders gladly consulted the Italians on points of design where their own knowledge was deficient. Such conditions of collaboration appear to have obtained to some extent throughout the sixteenth century, but more especially in its early years before the rise, at the end of the reign of Francis I., of a generation of true architects of French birth and Renaissance training. CHARACTER OF TRANSITIONAL STYLE. Its Component Elements. — All architecture in V ranee showing any trace of Renaissance influence, between the years 1495 a"d I5I55 and even a little later, may be grouped under the name of Style of Louis XII. In reality it does not exhibit the true characteristics of a style, for it possesses no homogeneity, either in the principles of design or in the character of its detail. It is in a special sense transitional, forming, as it does, a link between two styles in many respects antago- nistic, and not related by natural affiliation. They were thrown into the melting-pot together, and the resulting amalgam was the style of Louis XII. Its distinguishing trait is the mixture in its buildings in varying proportions of the characters of both constituents. Late Gothic in France. — The native style was the Flamboyant Gothic of the late fifteenth century, such as is seen, for instance, in St Maclou and the Palais de Justice at Rouen, the Hotel de Cluny, Paris, the castle of Josselin in Brittany, and the timber houses of Lisieux. Its character is vertical and soaring, while a studied confusion and intricacy often replaces ordered grouping of masses and definiteness of outline. Lines aspire upward with the wavering of flames and flow with THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. II the ripple of water. Gables, windows, parapets, canopies are pierced into an exquisite stone lace. High steep roofs were, and have remained, a characteristic of most French buildings, in strong contrast to Italian practice. No greater difference can be imagined between two buildings than that one should be bounded by a bold cornice and the other run up into a broken skyline, with a large proportion of its total height above the eaves, and of a different colour and texture from the walls. The diver- sity and pictur- esqueness of these roofs were enhanced by ornamental ridges, finials, and lanterns, steep and often crocketed gables, and lofty lucarnes or dormers, which were usually on the wall face, sometimes two storeys high, break- ing up the masses of slate or tile with a splash of the wall colour. The elevations were broken by but- tresses and turrets, canopy -work and hanging arches, and finished with battle- ments, pinnacles, and machicolations. A luxuriant vegetation wreathed its tendrils in the hollows and sprouted on the skyline. Figures with supple bodies and writhing limbs peopled the labyrinthine curves, and wall surfaces were powdered with devices. In arches and openings the prevailing pointed form (which, curiously enough, survived longer in Italy) was replaced with growing frequency by the circular and elliptical, or quasi-elliptical with three or five centres, or by flat lintels, the Castle of Chateaudun : Stair Newel. 12 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. haunches of which were often rounded off. Openings were deeply recessed, often fringed with an order of hanging cusping and sheltered under a hood-mould, sometimes of ogee form, carried on corbels set below the springing. Windows were usually two lights wide, with or without transoms, a type which persisted in France till the introduction of wooden frames in the seventeenth century. Ranges of more than two lights are rare. The lights are generally wider than in England, both absolutely and in relation to the height, being sometimes wider than they are high. Bay windows are almost unknown, but oriels are frequent. Piers, where not formed of a group of wave mouldings, were square, set anglewise, or circular and with reticu- lated or spiral decora- tion. Capitals were often absent, jamb and pier mouldings running round the arch. In timber construction, many of the above char- acteristics were equally prevalent and their cor- belling, brackets, and barge-boards gave scope for further enrichment. Mouldings, like the ornament, were deeply undercut ; clear divi- sions between curves were often abandoned, leaving a series of swel- lings and sinkings, or of concave members separated by blunt arrises, presenting edges rather than surfaces to the eye. They were often elaborately interpenetrated and had complicated bases. Lombard Renaissance.— The foreign style was the early Renais- sance of North Italy— of the Cathedral of Como, the Certosa of Pavia, the Miracoli Church at Brescia, the Loggia at Verona, and the Palazzo Corner Spinelli at Venice. This northern Renaissance, itself strongly modified by Gothic traditions, had none of the austere sobriety of the earlier developments of Tuscany, while the school of Brunelleschi had ii. Timber House, Joigny. THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 1 3 little or no influence in France. Its leading characteristics are a strong feeling for order and balance, and a general horizontality of effect, produced by the emphasis on cornices and the general use of the flat lintel, while the vertical members, panelled buttresses, and straight pilasters are shallow and little insisted upon : artificial superposition rather than growth is the impression conveyed. Openings and recesses are round arched, or lintelled and framed in by architraves or pilasters. Almost the only kind of tracery in use is in windows subdivided by a slender shaft carrying arches with a pierced tympanum above them. The crowning member of a composition is either a pediment, pointed or curved, or a horizontal cornice. Domes and barrel-vaults in stone and timber are frequent. Pinnacles and lanterns became domed "tempietti" or statues, vases, candelabra. Shafts took the form of balusters or small columns. Pediments were some- times enriched on the extrados with crockets ; pilasters and jambs were panelled in circles and lozenges, or decorated with arabesques. Other typical ornaments were the volute, the medallion with its bust, the shell to crown a niche or opening, or to enrich a keystone. The mouldings were a refined form of Roman of peculiar delicacy and springiness of contour. Chief among the decorative elements were garlands, swags, and pendent knots of flowers and fruit with fluttering ribbons, human figures, especially naked children, birds, dolphins, and mythical beasts, rosettes, arms, and musical instruments. The carved ornament was generally of slight relief and was sometimes replaced by flat decoration in colour. The Hybrid Style. — The style of Louis XII., composed by a blending of these styles, comprises Gothic buildings with a sprinkling of Renaissance detail, or conceived on Gothic lines, but carried out in Renaissance forms, and the converse of each of these, as well as others at different stages of development between these extremes, in some of which the two styles are equally and inextricably interwoven. Again, Gothic and Italian forms occur in juxtaposition even in the same feature. Since the results arrived at depended in great measure on the degree in which masters and men were receptive of foreign ideas, and on the skill and number of Italian craftsmen available at a given place, no guiding principle can be traced in the combination of the two elements, but as a general rule Gothic maintains its hold on the members, which carry weight and enclose spaces, while Italian detail first invades the parts carried and enclosed. This is natural, the builders being mostly French, and the decorators Italian. Piers, shafts and jambs, plinths and bases generally retained their Gothic forms and profiles, while sunk faces and hollow mouldings, panels, and capitals were enriched with Renaissance ornament (Fig. 10). The main lines of progress during the prevalence of the Transitional Style lay first in the gradual extrusion 14 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. of Gothic detail by Italian, and secondly in the increasing skill of Frenchmen in rendering of the latter. Detail. — In character the detail remained stationary. The old was identical with that of Flamboyant Gothic, the new not less advanced than that of Francis I. At Chateaudun, for instance, the two may be seen side by side, and each perfect of its kind. Elsewhere, as in the rood-screen of the Madeleine Church at Troyes, clumsy renderings of Italian motives by French workmen often occur. "The same hand which wrought out with such skill the ribs and undulations of the cabbage leaf, unconsciously invested the Roman acanthus with the same character." Their skill and vivacity, however, once directed into new channels, soon rivalled that of their teachers. Materials. — Timber was used for the great majority of smaller houses (cf. house at Joigny, Fig. 1 1, and others at Gallardon, Lisieux, Cravant), the spaces being faced with bricks, plaster, boards, or even with glazed tiles, as in a house at Beauvais, and the timbers sometimes protected by slating. For the more important ones, brick, after being generally abandoned in the Middle Ages in favour of stone, except in some districts of the south, came into vogue again in the fifteenth cen- tury, and was then combined with stone dressings (Fig. 13), a practice almost unknown before. Patterns in brickwork, or in brick contrasted decoratively with other materials, were largely used at the time of the Renaissance to give gaiety to the wall surfaces. Terra-cotta was also considerably employed, and majolica (i.e., terra-cotta enamelled in colours with a zinc glaze) was introduced from Italy {e.g., at Gaillon and the Hotel d'Alluye at Blois, Fig. 22). The roofs were covered, according to the district, with slates, tiles, or shingles, with the addition of lead for turrets and lanterns, while the crestings, ridges, finials, gutters, and spouts, often of great elaboration, were also of lead or else of wrought iron. To all this metal work, and to such parts of the eleva- tions as loggias, doorways, niches and their sculpture, whatever their material, brilliant decoration in colour and gilding was commonly applied, both before and after the beginning of the Italian influence. Planning. — Since the planning was only very gradually modified by slight changes introduced from time to time, and in some cases the practice at the close of the Middle Ages persisted substantially unaltered for centuries, it will be well before describing particular buildings to sketch the usual arrangements of each class of building at that time. In doing so it will sometimes be more convenient to quote in illustra- tion examples from other periods. Castle Plans. — The country mansions of the aristocracy were in most cases fortified and of irregular outline, often a rough oval, as at Fontainebleau and St Germain (Figs. 61 and 68). Castles symmetrically THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 15 set out from the first like Vincennes were rare and confined to flat sites. The entire castle, and sometimes each court, when there were more than one, was defended either by a moat or escarpment, as well as by its walls and its generally circular towers. A sentry's gallery (chemin de ronde) ran round the enceinte, usually corbelled out from the top of the walls (Fig. 56). The entrance to each court was normally through a tower or gatehouse with a drawbridge, and often defended by an outwork. The more important buildings, the accommodation for the lord's immediate entourage and the garrison, were in the inner court (cour d'honneur). The keep (donjon) still survived in some cases from tradition, as at Chambord (Fig. 53) and Valencay, and formed part of the inner court, sometimes opposite the entrance, a position by this time more often occu- pied, as in the Louvre, by the hall, which was generally on an upper storey with a lower hall beneath it. The upper hall (grande salle) was the centre of the castle life, the lower or under- croft {salle basse) served as a cool retreat in sum- mer or as a guardroom (salle des gardes) ; in smaller houses it formed a kitchen or store. The chapel was usually in the heart of the castle, but sometimes relegated to a garden court, as at Bury (Fig. 42). A long closed gallery for exercise, as at Gaillon, was already a frequent adjunct of the later mediaeval castles. The other apartments, consisting of single rooms or of small suites comprising a chamber for the gentleman or lady, an antechamber for the body servant, and the wardrobe, were situated in separate towers and blocks with seldom any intercommunication, except by the stairs or by covered ways along the court. Each block was served by a turret stair (vis), while the state stair occupied a tower to itself (grand' vis). The great stair-tower of the Louvre, built by Raymond du Temple (1363), set a fashion long followed. All these were spiral and seldom, if ever, entirely enclosed. The only stairs in straight flights were the open, and generally roofless, steps to the ramparts and hall. 12. Castle of Gaillon (Remodelled 1497-1510) : Block Plan. l6 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRAN'CE. The court of honour was usually preceded, as at Gaillon, by a fore- court containing the comi/iuns, i.e., servants' quarters, stables, &c. If such was the case, it was known as the basecourt (basse-coitr), but the basecourts were sometimes at one side of, or behind, the main court, as at the Louvre and Anet, and the forecourt sometimes contained some of the better apartments, as at Fontainebleau. Renaissance Influence on Plans. — Of all aspects of a building in France planning was least affected by the Renaissance, especially in its initial stages, while throughout the sixteenth century the modifica- tions introduced were less in the actual arrangements than in the spirit in which plans were conceived. Thus there were sporadic efforts after symmetrical setting out, regular spacing, and rectangular plans. In the castles more extensive accommodation and greater cheerfulness were aimed at. Apartments were multiplied, terraces, balconies, and arched galleries (Fig. 15), giving facilities for taking the air and enjoying the prospect, were provided, and an increase took place in the number and area of the windows which now looked forth boldly from the outer walls. SECULAR ARCHITECTURE. Colony of Amboise. — No chateau built in its entirety, but several remodelled at this period, survive in being or in illustration. The most important of these, if not for its existing remains, at any rate as the starting point of the movement, is Amboise, for it was here that the Italian colony was set to work. This colony comprised two " designers of buildings" (deviseurs de bailments), but only one of these is known to have practised as an architect in France. Fra Giocondo. — Fra Giovanni Giocondo (born 1453, or earlier, probably near Verona; died 15 15, at Rome) is best known as the architect of the Loggia at Verona and as the editor and expositor of Vitruvius. Charles VIII. found him in the royal service at Naples, and retained him at a salary of 562 1. a year. He remained for ten years in France, till, in 1505, he was summoned by Pope Julius II. to compete with Bramante for the design of the new St Peter's. After a period spent in the employ of the Signory of Venice, he was associated with Raphael and Giuliano da San Gallo in the conduct of St Peter's till his death. His only works in France of which there is documentary evidence are an aqueduct to supply the royal gardens at Blois, and the Pont Notre Dame at Paris, rebuilt in stone from his designs after the collapse of the old wooden bridge in 1499. But the researches of Baron H. von Geymiiller, who elucidated his masterly, but previously obscure, design for St Peter's and brought to light over a hundred of his drawings, taken in conjunction with the high salary he received, lend a THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 17 13. Castle of Blois : Entrance Front (Louis XII. Wing, Finished 1503). strong support to the traditional attribution to him of many important contemporary buildings and to the view of him as the inspirer of the whole Loire school. Other Members of the Colony. — Another artist of the colony, Guido Mazzoni (died 15 18) of Modena, known as Modanino or Paganino, was even more highly appreciated, for he was knighted by Charles at Naples and engaged as sculptor, painter, and illuminator at a salary of 937J 1. a year. A speciality of his was terra-cotta work decorated in colours. After making his fortune in France he retired to his native city in 1516. The sculptor, Jerome Pacherot (Passerot or Pacchiariti), who received a salary of only 240 1. a year, is probably the same as the Jerome of Fiesole who later was employed by Michel Colombe at Tours. Among the woodworkers, the most prominent was Domenico Bernabei of Cortona (known as "Boccador"), with a salary of 240 1., who assumed an im- portant position in the architectural world at a later period. There were also two intarsia workers, Richard of Carpi and Bernardino of Siena, the latter at 240 1., and a garden designer, Dom Pacello (Passello or Passolo) da Mercoliano, at 375 1. a year. Amboise. — Such were the artists with whose help Charles VIII. on his return from Italy began to transform his castle of Amboise into a magnificent palace, though he had all but completely rebuilt it before the war. But his premature death prevented the full realisation of these projects, which were only partially carried out by his successors. As the sixteenth century left it, the castle must have been a magnificent, if heterogeneous, pile (Fig. 8). It has, however, suffered so much by suc- 2 RENAISSAN ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 14. Castle of Blois— Louis XII. Wing : Larger Stair Tower in Court. From a Drawing by Louis Ambler. cessive demolitions and alterations, that it isdifficult to recog- nise to-day the work of "several excel- lent craftsmen in several crafts," whom Charles had brought from Naples. Among the undoubted remains of this period the chapel of St Hubert is entirely Gothic, while the two mighty round towers show tracesof Italian influ- ence in their round- headed windows, and in their sloping ways for horse traffic leading to the castle from the town be- low, carried spirally round a hollow newel 25 feet in diameter, circular inside but octagonal outside. A pleasaunce, sur- rounded by a colon- naded cloister, was laid out within thec-'/- ^/VztebyDom Pacello da Mercoliano in the succeeding reign ( 1 498-1 505), at the same time as similar but more extensive gardens by the same artist at Blois whose central feature was a trellis pavilion by Boccadoro. THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 19 Blois— Louis XII. Wing.— Further than this the royal family did not play a very important part in promoting the Renaissance movement. Louis XII. was conservative in his tastes, and more preoccupied with war and politics than with art, while the Queen had a positive repug- nance to foreign innovations. Yet, the family tombs erected by them were almost exclusively the work of Italians and in some cases exe- cuted in Italy. Beyond a languid continuation of Charles' buildings, their chief contribution to the new architecture was the wing bearing Louis' name at Blois, finished in 1503, and closing the court on the east (Figs. 13 and 14). The dressings are in stone, while the walling *h 11 J 1 I -II. 11 MM i 15. Castle of Gaillon from N.E. From a Drawing by J. A. Du Cerceau. is of red brick patterned with black. The features are spaced out irregularly as in a mediaeval building, and the detail is, with minor exceptions, Gothic, but a close inspection reveals Renaissance elements in the elevations and internal features, such as a frame of dolphins or an arabesque panel, capitals composed of scrolls and birds, or an egg- and-dart member in a cornice. In juxtaposition to these are Gothic corbels and gargoyles, Gothic tracery, cusping, and mouldings. Gaillon. — It is, however, in the residences of ministers and nobles that the most marked manifestations of the new movement are to be found, and especially in the palace of Gaillon (Fig. 15), erected between 20 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 1497 and 1510 for George of Amboise, Cardinal-Archbishop of Rouen, and minister to Charles VIII. and Louis XII., one of the most notable buildings of the period, and the chief centre of Renaissance activity outside the Loire district. Like Amboise and Blois it was not an entirely new creation, though its new portions were more considerable. The foundations of the existing castle, rebuilt half a century before, determined the plan, which is thatof a hill- top fortress (Fig. 8), andsomeof its build- ings were retained in the new mansion. This was almost en- tirely destroyed at the Revolution, but from the few frag- ments in situ incor- porated in modern barracks, and those re-erected in the courts of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, in conjunction with engravings, an idea may be formed both of the mixed character and of the proverbial splendour of its architecture, the result of the best available French and Italian talent. Fra Giocondo very pro- bably acted as con- sulting architect, and Nicolas (Colin) Biard of Blois as inspector and general superintendent of the works ; and it is certain that the latter made the drawings for the chapel. The master-masons Guillaume Senault, Pierre Fain, and Pierre de l'Orme contracted for portions of the building work, and Pierre Valence for the installation in the court of a great fountain presented to the Cardinal by the Venetian Republic. Decorative works were contributed by artists of both nations: thus the chapel possessed an altar-piece (now in the Composite Fragment from Gaillon : In Court of Ecoi.e des Beaux Arts, Paris. THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 21 Louvre) by the most celebrated French sculptor of the day, Michel Colombe (born c. 1430, died 1512), who, after working in the naturalistic style of the Burgundian school, came under Italian influence in his later years. His studio at Tours was prolific in tombs and other works executed in marble, stone, and terra-cotta, and decorated with colour and gilding. The richly inlaid stalls (now at St Denis) (Fig. 30) were by Richard of Carpi, and the panelling of some of the rooms by Pierre Valence. The walls of the courts were adorned with medallions by Maz- zoni and reliefs by Antonio di Giusto (born 1479, died 15 19). The latter was one of the three sons of Giusto Betti of San Martino a Mensola, near Florence, who settled in France about this time, Giovanni and Andrea openingan atelierdX Tours, and the latter supplying marble from his quarry at Carrara. Their works being generally recorded under the name "Juste," it was long believed that they were Frenchmen. It seems that in the bulk of the castle, Gothic design predominated, with the introduction here and there of decorative details of a Renaissance char- acter. This was the case in the main structural portions of the chapel and in the other buildings forming the outer sides of the court of honour. Part of the north-west cloister of this court now stands on one side of the inner court of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and portions taken from the " Grant' Maison," which occupied the north-east side of the same court and contained the state apartments, now constitute the two sides of the composite fragment in the outer court of the Ecole des Beaux Arts (Fig. 16). Gothic is practically absent from the lantern of 17. Chateaudun : Stair Tower. From a Drawing by G. G. Wornum. 22 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. the chapel and from the central bay of this fragment which formed part of the cross-gallery separating the two courts and facing the entrance. The rest of the cross-gallery seems to have belonged to an intermediate stage, being mainly, but not entirely, in a Renaissance style. A portion of the cloister which ran along its inner side, with arches springing from piers and from pendents alternately, now stands in the inner court of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. The pleasaunce was laid out by Pietro da Mercoliano. Le* Verger. — Nothing is left of the castle of Le Verger in Anjou, also pro- bably built by Fra Giocondo and Colin Biard (1496-99), and known from engrav- ings. Unhampered by existing buildings, it was laid out on a regular plan, but re- tained many Gothic features mixed with others of pure Italian design. Chateaudun. — The wing added by Cardinal Francis of Orleans - Longueville to his castle of Chateaudun (begun 1502) is another superb example of the transitional style (Fig. 9). Taken as a whole, it has the characteristic appearance of a Gothic mansion, and most of its features and detail belong to that style ; yet Renaissance influence is visibly at work, notably in the setting out of the court front with its noble scheme of fenestration and balustraded cornicione, and in the finely designed stair-tower with an open loggia of coupled elliptical arches in each of its four storeys. The detail of these arches, the canopy work, and the main balustrade are pure Gothic. But the beautiful cornice shows an alterna- tion of classic and Gothic members. Pilasters and pediments of a 18. Chateau ok St Ouen, Chemaze : Stair Tower. THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 23 rudimentary type are applied to the turret windows, and the balustrades and internal treatment of the loggias are pure Italian, while the newel exhibits an inextricable mingling of the two styles (Figs. 10 and 17). Other examples of transitional stair-towers may be studied in the chateau of Meillant (restored c. 1503) and the ducal residence (now Palais de Justice) at Nevers. Other Chateaux. — A favourite device for the decoration of the principal entrance was to surmount it with a niche containing an equestrian statue of the owner. An example occurs at Blois with the effigy of Louis XII. (Fig. 13), and another in the extremely rich and characteristically transitional entrance of the palace at Nancy (Fig. 7), forming part of the works carried out for Duke Rene II. of Lorraine, probably by the mason-sculptors Mansuy Gauvain and Jacquot de Vau- couleurs (1501-12). Other examples of transitional work may be seen in the chateaux of Fontaine-Henri (the older wing), La Rochefoucauld, Oyron (the lower storey of the left wing), and Ainay-le-Vieil. Manor-Houses. — Side by side with the castles there were unforti- fied manors. Owing to the long anarchy of the English and civil wars they were less common in France than in England, but grew in numbers towards the end of the fifteenth century. Though unable to sustain a siege, such houses were generally defended against marauding parties by a moat or wall, which sometimes included the farm buildings as well. The Manoir dAngo, near Dieppe, of the time of Francis I. is a good example of such an arrangement. Since in other respects they re- sembled the castles, though on a less elaborate scale, when castles ceased to be effectively fortified, the distinction between the two classes of houses was merely one of size, and both came to be spoken of as "chateaux," a term which lost all idea of fortification and was applied to any country house of some importance, though not necessarily of great extent. The following may be mentioned as examples of the transitional phase : — The Manoir de Nollent, or Maison des Gensdarmes, and the small chateau of Lasson, both near Caen ; the stair-tower of the manor of St Ouen at Chemaze (15 15) (Fig. 18), the house itself, which is a few years earlier, showing little, if any, Renaissance influence. Town Houses: Hotels. — Town houses were either "hotels," the residences of wealthy merchants or professional men, and town mansions of the nobility, or " maisons," the dwellings of middle or lower classes. The former comprised a court with buildings on one or more sides and a screen-wall on the others. Such a screen, sometimes with a covered way behind it, often occupied the street front and contained the entrance, as in the Hotel de Cluny at Paris and the Hotel d'Assezat at Toulouse (Figs. 150 and 151). Less frequently the principal block lay on the street, an arched carriage-way leading through it to the court and the 24 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. offices beyond, as at the Hotel d'Alluye at Blois. Sometimes a second court lay behind the first, as in the house of Agnes Sorel at Orleans (Fig. 19). Smaller Town Houses. — The term "hotel" is sometimes extended to houses of the next class when of more than usual extent or richness. The smaller terrace house consisted of a single block occupying the whole frontage ; but in more important ones a second block lay at the back of a court behind it, and the two blocks were connected by a wing or gallery, or merely by a covered way, the master's apartments being in front, the servants' and appren- tices' at the back. Except in very narrow frontages where the entrance was direct into the ground -floor room, the street door wras at one side and gave into a passage with a stair- turret at the farther end. In wTider frontages it was in the centre with a room on each side (Fig. 20). The ground floor was occupied by a store, with small barred windows to the street, and a living room looking into the court. In tradesmen's houses the front room was the shop, with an arched opening closed at night with shutters hinged at top and bottom, so that the lower flap formed a counter and the upper a shelter over the goods displayed on it, as at the Maison de la Coquille at Orleans (Fig. 67). A great room, correspond- ing to the hall in the mansion, occu- pied the first floor and looked on to the street. In many cases the upper storey was set forward over the footway and carried on arches, piers, or wooden posts, as at Dol or Chalons-sur-Marne. Hotel de la Tremoille. — One of the finest examples of a transi- tional aristocratic town mansion was the Hotel de la Tremoille in Paris (begun c. 1490, destroyed 1868). Resembling in its general aspect the Hotel de Cluny, it showed Renaissance influence in the importance given to horizontal friezes and the introduction of Renaissance motives such as vases, medallions, wreaths, &c. 19. So-Called House of Agnes Sorel, Orleans : Plan. THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 25 mm X JLi ' .( i ' ->-,-. I I-'-'.. . -j'.; • I i ' • -■ ; ' _ ', ■ ■ . i ■•■ ' ' : , ^ ! , .:■ .J .'- 20. So-Cai.led House of Agnes Sorel, Orleans : Elevation to Street. House of Agnes Sorel.— A house in the Rue du Tabourg at Orleans (called the Maison dAgnes Sorel, though built long after her time) is a good example of the dwelling of a substantial burgess (Figs. 19 and 20). In the three blocks of which it consists, every detail is 26 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 21. Interior. 22. Exterior. Hotel d'Alluye, Blois : Loggia in Courtyard. of Renaissance profile, but the mouldings are recessed ; the strings terminate in ressauts of semicircular plan resting on knots of foliage, and hood-moulds return partly down the sides of windows and are carried on corbels. The beautiful galleries in the court are of the style of the following reign and appear to have been built later than the rest, possibly to replace wooden ones. Hotel d'Alluye. — The Hotel d'Alluye at Blois is a good, if some- what over-restored, specimen, built about 15 12 by Florimond Robertet, a minister of Louis XII., as his town residence when his duties claimed his presence at Court. The street front is the earlier portion and much more Gothic than the court, which has a charming arcaded loggia in two storeys, enriched with refined Italian ornament. In the parapet are set terra-cotta medallions of Italian origin (Figs. 21 and 22), and a fine painted chimney-piece within is without trace of Gothic influence. Archbishop's Palace, Sens. — That part of the Archbishop's Palace at Sens, known as the Louis XII. wing, was built by Archbishop Ponchet, whose beribboned scallop shells occur in the decoration, and completed by 152 1. The date of the lower storey can hardly have been later than 15 15. The entrance to a covered way leading from the street to the court (Fig. 24) is a charming specimen of the blending of the two styles in equal proportions ; some features in the court show a stronger leaning to Gothic, while the upper storey is almost pure Francis I. The windows (Fig. 23), which occur between pilasters, have receding mouldings of THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. V Gothic section with interpenetra- tions and Gothic bases. Other contemporary town resi- dences are the Logis Barrault at Angers (1504), the Hotel Gouin at Tours, the house now serving as Hotel de Ville at Amboise, the Hotel Cujas (15 15), and parts of the Hotel Lallemand at Bourges, the " Maison dAdam et Eve " at Montferrand, and the " Maison des Tetes " at Valence. Puj?lic Buildings. — The re- organisation of justice and finance gave rise to a number of buildings for these branches of administra- tion, while the material prosperity permitted of much municipal enterprise. The fortifications of many cities were repaired and extended : bridges, as the Pont Notre Dame in Paris, markets, as at Rethel, public fountains, as at Blois and Tours, as well as city and guild halls were built or rebuilt. Owing to the power of local lords and later of the kings, cities never acquired the same import- ance in France as in neighbouring lands, and municipal edifices were seldom of great size. The town council had for its seat a town house of more or less splendour, as at Compiegne or Beaugency, containing, mutatis mutandis, the usual accommodation of a lord's residence, with the frequent addition of a belfry, as at Riom, and of an oriel or balcony for watching the street or addressing the citizens. The "Hotel" or "Maison de Ville" was often combined with some other municipal institution, and placed in a gateway or tower of the town walls, as at Loches, or over a covered market, as at Vendome. Hotels de Ville. — The old Hotel de Ville at Orleans was built early in the reign of Louis XII. and exhibits a very complete fusion of Gothic and Renaissance elements. The general scheme is simply and boldly set out and the detail refined and appropriate. If a reconcilia- tion between the two styles be possible, it could hardly be more successfully managed than in this charming design. The architect is said to have been Charles Viart (see p. 80). 23- Archbishop's Palace, Sens Windows. 28 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. . 24. Archbishop's Palace, Sens : Entrance. The following municipal buildings also contain elements of both styles : the Hotel de Ville at Dreux (Fig. 3), the belfry of Riom, and the " Tour des Echevins " at Brive-la-Gaillarde. Law Courts, &c. — Other corporations also had their guild-halls, and those of the most important of such bodies, the corporations of THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 29 25. " Bureau des Finances," Rouen. lawyers (parkments) in cities appointed by the king as centres of royal, as distinguished from seigniorial justice, e.g., Paris, Rouen, Grenoble, were known as " Palais de Justice." That of Grenoble, partly built at this period, shows but slight Renaissance admixture. In the Cour des Comptes, built under Louis XII. within the precincts of the Paris Law Courts, west of the Ste Chapelle, and burnt down in 1737, the design, which is probably due to Fra Giocondo (see p. 16), is Gothic in its general aspect, but contained Italian elements, e.g., a frieze of dolphins and fieurs-de-lys. Its most notable feature, an external stair- case, in one straight flight in an open loggia, is not necessarily an Italian idea. The two elements are mixed in almost equal proportions in the " Bureau des Finances," a building opposite the cathedral at Rouen (Fig. 25), still charming in spite of mutilations. Interiors: Ceilings, Floors. — In the interiors of houses a great variety of more or less complicated rib-vaults were used, especially in stairs and passages, and basement and tower rooms, often enriched with pendents. In wooden ceilings the constructional timbers were usually exposed to view and only concealed during the occupation of the room by temporary cloth or tapestry testers hung to them by hooks in the same way as hangings to the walls. In upper halls the timbers were sometimes boarded in the form of a barrel vault divided by wood ribs. Panelled ceilings fixed to the underside of the joists made their appearance with the Renaissance. 30 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. \ /' - "• ! ^ II lvlviv-w~ vvv. '■ -■ KaBWMMCBM -__ j-— T- .i • 26. Palais de Justice, Rouen: Ceiling of "Grand Chambre." The splendid oak ceiling in the " Grand' Chambre," or " Chambre Doree," in the Palais de Justice in Paris was designed by Fra Giocondo with pendents and interlacing hanging arches. It was covered by a plaster ceiling at the Revolution, and destroyed by fire in 187 1. The still extant ceiling of the Grand' Chambre in the Palais de Justice at Rouen is richly panelled in hexagons with volute pendents of Renaissance detail but with a Gothic cornice (Fig. 26). Pavings were of stone slabs, bricks, and encaustic tiles. Majolica tiles and parquet floors were introduced by the Italians. Wall Coverings. — Though occasionally panelled in whole or in part, walls usually showed the stone or plaster, which were in rare cases painted, but more often clothed in movable hangings of painted cloth or tapestry. Complete schemes of permanent decoration were excep- tional, but became more common under the influence of the Italian craftsmen, Among the many arts they practised was the new one of intarsia work or inlaying in wood. The life of the upper classes was largely an open air one, and little attention was devoted to indoor comforts. It was still, and remained for over a century, the practice to carry about not only the hangings, but also the furniture and household utensils at each flitting from chateau to chateau. Windows. — Only in the best rooms were windows filled with leaded glazing — du Cerceau's drawings show that throughout the sixteenth century they were often glazed with roundels — elsewhere they were filled with the oiled linen or paper, which continued in use as late as the seventeenth century. They were fitted with shutters in small leaves, the lowest lights having an extra external set of perforated shutters instead of glass, as in the Hotel d'Alluye. Chimney-pieces. — Chimney-pieces, often of a rich and monumental character, usually left the fire open on three sides and consisted of a hood {hotte\ generally diminishing upwards with a vertical mantel (tnanteaii) at its base, carried on half-piers or corbels (Figs. 31 and 32). THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 31 27. Castle of Blois : Chimney-piece in Louis XII. Wing. This arrangement, which gives an impression of top-heaviness and inadequate support, had its origin in the fact that the earliest hoods were of wattle and plaster or some such light material. The rope with which they were tied back to the wall sometimes survives in the form of a cable moulding. All these features underwent no radical change at the Renaissance, but began to show the sporadic introduction of Italian detail. Gardens. — Gardens in the Middle Ages, though small, were often laid out in a formal manner, and subdivided by walls and trellises. But while the charm of trees, flowers, and fountains was keenly appreciated, decorative amenities were less the object in view than material purposes —fruit, vegetables, and medicinal herbs from the garden ; fish from the pond ; birds from the aviary. Some castles had 32 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 28. "Grand Cerf ' Inn, Grand Andely : Chimney-piece. Drawn by Philip Hepworth. little or no garden, and were surrounded by open forest bringing wild game within easy reach. The Italians laid out gardens on a larger scale, and revived many features of ancient Roman gardens — statuary, sun- dials, and obelisks ; quincunxes, topiary work, and patterned parterre. They applied architectural treatment to the terraces, nights of steps and balustrades, the summer-houses, well-houses, dovecotes, and orangeries. the style of louis xii. 33 They made decorative use of water by means of grottoes and cascades, tanks and fountains, laying out moats in graceful plans, and spanning them with ornamental bridges. The French garden was at first only slightly affected by the Italian influence, although several garden designers were among the earliest Italians employed in France. They retained the practice of having one or more gardens within the castle walls, forming, as it were, additional courts, supplemented in some cases by further enclosed gardens at a little distance. They introduced, how- ever, a more symmetrical method of laving them out with Italian detail in the trellis work, arbours, and pavilions (Fig. 8), and Italian works of art as ornaments, and sometimes arcaded porticoes of stone along the enclosing walls. Fountains, Well- houses. — Water for all pur- poses was drawn from open-air foun tains and wells. This practice per- sists to the present day to a far greater extent on the Con- tinent than with us ; even when water is laid on to the houses, the house- holder often sends to the town fountain for the coolest and clearest drinking water, while clothes and vegetables are washed in its basins. Both fountains and wells took the form of isolated monuments or were incorporated in a wall ; in either case they were often sheltered under a canopy or loggia. One or other stood in the courtyard of every castle or large house, and in the squares and streets of towns and villages. The market fountain at Blois, built by Louis XII., is entirely Gothic, but that of Tours, built by his minister, Jacques de Beaune-Semblangay (1510), is entirely Renaissance. It is the work of the brothers Martin and Sebastien (Bastien) Francois, maitres des txuvres to the city. They had been trained in Colombe's studio, whose great-niece Bastien married. Both appear to have died about 1525. The well-heads in theold Hotel de Villeat Bourges and the Archbishop's palace at Sens, and the public fountain at St Saturnin are in the mixed style. 3 29. Emblem ok Anne of Brittany. 34 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 30. Stalls from Castle Chapel at Gaillon, now at St Denis. CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. Its Relative Unimportance. — A history of architecture in the Middle Ages naturally gives the foremost place to church building. When we reach the threshold of the modern world the position is THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 35 reversed. Secular architec- ture leads and church archi- tecture follows, though often lagging behind. In France the chateau supplants the church as the most finished product of building art. Two reasons explain the comparative rarity of ex- amples of church work show- ing Italian influence in the period under consideration. It was not a great church- building age, and the major part of the church building carried out was unaffected by the movement which was transforming secular archi- tecture. Church building slackened at this period, partly because the enormous activity of the previous cen- turies left little need for new places of worship, partly be- cause the Church lacked the moral force to create enthusi- asm. Morally as well as intellectually she was no longer the only, nor even the principal leader : politically she was becoming more and more subject to the civil power. Little but their costumes distinguished the clergy from others of their respective class. They were often worldly, if not vicious and superstitious, and the more prominent churchmen were distinguished rather for political ability or secular learning than for piety and spiritual zeal. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the French Church produced no prominent saint or theologian, except such as, after the beginning of the Reformation movement, had leanings to the unauthorised doctrines, and she allied herself as a whole with the forces of obscurantism. Persistence of Gothic. — The building done consisted largely in Ji- Chartres Cathedral Choir Screen. Detail of 36 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 32. Chapei. of the Holy Spirit : Rue. Vault. the completion of structures already begun— such as the cathedrals of Sens, Senlis, Beauvais, Evreux — and it remained wholly, or almost wholly, Gothic. Even new buildings showed no trace of innovation in design throughout, and even beyond, the sixteenth century. The choir of St Vincent at Rouen (151 120), the church of Brou (1505-16), that of St Merry in Paris (1520-1612), and the Cathedral of Orleans, begun under Henry IV. and finished under Louis XV., are cases in point. And in like manner the inconsequence of the mixed style continued after assimilation had been completed in secular work. This is to be explained both by the commonplace that men are most conservative in THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 37 that which touches their religion, and by the existence among the masons and other craftsmen specially employed in the service of the Church, of a peculiarly complex and deep rooted body of tradition, often handed down from father to son for several generations. Renaissance Influence. — Renaissance forms, however, began to percolate in even here, and as in secular architecture, detail rather than design was first affected. Church building was no longer a popular enthusiasm, and though occasionally paid for by public subscription or out of municipal funds, it was more often due to the bounty or vanity of the rich. Bishops, too, had lost the taste for lengthy constructions and preferred to undertake works they could hope to see finished in their lifetime. Therefore Renaissance influence is at first chiefly traceable in private chapels and mausolea, in single features such as a steeple, a doorway, a buttress, or a tomb ; or in fittings such as altars or screens. Hybrid Style. — No important complete churches of a Transitional character exist. The chapel of Gaillon, which was probably the most splendid example (Fig. 15), has all but entirely disappeared. Those that survive show precisely the same lack of a grasp of Renaissance principles, and the same sprinkling of Gothic designs with Renaissance items as contemporary secular work, but with this difference that the Gothic element remains more constantly predominant. In so far as any system at all can be observed in these attempts, it is the same as in secular work. The bearing and enclosing members remain Gothic, the portions carried and enclosed receive Renaissance treatment. The general lines of the elevations are affected but seldom, and only then to a very slight degree, and the plan and section practically not at all. In view then of the haphazard character of the design of this phase, it will be well to reserve the interesting subject of the various methods of translating the elements of a Gothic church into Renaissance equiva- lents till the chapter on the following phase, in which the attempts to do so become more systematic, and to confine the remarks here to a notice of a few examples. St Pierre, Avignon. — The west front of St Pierre at Avignon is a good Flamboyant design in which two be-ribboned Renaissance wreaths are introduced as the decoration of the wall surface and two circular turret lights have carved Renaissance architraves. This may be regarded as the first stage. The elements are in juxtaposition and do not mingle. St Calais. — In the transitional front of the church of St Calais (begun 15 18) there is a great diminution in the amount of Gothic detail but still little attempt at horizontality (Fig. 33). In spite of the beauty of certain of its individual features, as, for example, the central doorway and its traceried fanlight, it is as a whole an unskilful essay in 38 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. amalgamation, and the treatment of the central window quite grotesque. It is en- closed by a trefoil crocketed label, on the top of which is perched an entabla- ture and pediment. Similar incongruities survive in the front of the chapel at Til- loloy, as late as 1534, where the general outline and the grouping of the features is still medi- aeval, but combined with a much stronger accentuation of hori- zontal members. Chapel, Usse. — Much more satisfac- tory, though perhaps earlier, is the front of the castle chapel at Usse {c. 1510-20) (Fig. 34), where the two styles have been successfully fused into a harmonious blend. The other elevations are largely Gothic, but here nearly every detail is translated into a Renaissance equivalent — for instance the tracery takes the form of a pierced shell and the pinnacles of tapering candelabra— but unlike some of the previous examples its general effect is still overwhelmingly mediaeval. The designer had a better mastery of Renaissance detail, but his principles of general design were un- affected. He used hardly any horizontal lines, and emphasised the soar- ing effect by grouping the door and window into a single tall feature, crowned by a pointed arch under a canopy of Flamboyant outline. Other examples of facades are those of St Pierre, Dreux, of St Riquier, and of the south transept of the cathedral at St Quentin, and similar stages of transition in other parts of a church may be studied for 33. St Calais : West End of Church (Begun 151! TEIE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 39 instance at St Ouen, Pont Audemer, Vieux St Etienne at Caen, St Remy at Dieppe, la Trinite at Falaise, and St Pantaleon at Troyes. Features. — The mingling observable in designs as a whole can also be found in individual features. At Avesnieres, for instance, is an example of a transitional spire. But the spire was one of the first features to be modified by the. Renaissance, steeples receiving a domical instead of a sharply pointed termination, as exemplified in one of the earliest pieces of church work of the period. The upper portion of the north-west tower of Tours Cathedral (begun c. 1498, finished 1507), probably by the brothers Francois, is a charming composition in its general lines and shows a skilful blending of the two styles (Fig. 35). The south-west tower is a copy of this begun in 1532. The west door- way of Rouen Cathedral (15 10), by Rouland le Roux, contains arabesque pilasters among Gothic members : the chapel of St Esprit at Rue has an elaborate stellar vault with pendents and Renaissance enrichments (Fig. 32), and St Gengoult at Toul offers an example of a transitional cloister. Fittings. — This notice of transitional church work may appro- priately be concluded by the enumeration of some examples of fittings in the mixed style. The cathedral of Chartres possesses a magnificent set of stone choir screens begun in 1514 (Fig. 31). Chapel screens occur in the cathedral of Evreux and St Jacques at Dieppe. In the Madeleine Church at Troyes is a celebrated rood screen of audacious late Gothic construc- tion with insignificant Renaissance orna- ments. The churches of Villemaur (Fig. 36), Guern, and Lam- bader have good wooden rood screens. The stalls from Gail- Ion (Fig. 30) are now 34. Castle Chapel at Usse: West End (c. 1510-20). 40 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. at St Denis ; other examples are to be found in Amiens Cathedral, Notre Dame at Bourg, and at Brou. St Riquier offers an example of a font and its cover, Bueil of a font cover, and Bretagnolles of a font canopy (Fig. 37), a chapel in St Wulfran at Abbeville of a reredos, the cathedral of Aix in Provence and St Gengoult at Toul of doors. Tombs. — The tombs of the great often assumed considerable archi- tectural proportions. Up till the Renaissance period it had been usual to show the figure of the deceased clothed and sleeping on an altar-like pedestal, either standing free or against a wall with or without a canopy or arched recess above it. Occasionally the naked wasted corpse or skeleton appeared in a niche below. Louis XI. was the first to be represented in a kneeling position above. The duplication of figures became frequent at the Renaissance, and the architectural surroundings correspondingly increased in size and elaboration. The corpse effigies (gisants) sometimes lay in an open vault below or within the pedestal and the life-like effigy on its top : or, if the former occupied the top, the pedestal sometimes took the form of a sarco- phagus, and the canopy above was transformed into a platform or upper niche for the latter. Besides kneeling figures (priants), others, in various at- titudes of life, and even on horseback, came into use. Tombs by Ital- ians.— It has already been noticed that sepulchral design was in advance of archi- tecture generally, and that even before the Italian campaigns Italian tombs were 35. Toms Cathedral: Lantern ok X.YV. Tower erected in France. (1498-1507). Consequently it is THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 4T 36. Villemaur : Rood Screen. not surprising to find many of the tombs of the transitional period wholly Renaissance. Among these were the altar tombs of black and white marble erected by Anne of Brittany to her infant children in Tours Cathedral (1500-6), to her father, Duke Francis II. of Brittany, in Nantes Cathedral (1502-6), and to Charles VIII. at St Denis (finished 42 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. before 15 17, now destroyed). This last was by Mazzoni and had bronze figures with gilding and blue enamel. The large white marble monu- ment to the House of Orleans (now at St Denis) was ordered at Genoa by Louis XII. (1502) and placed in the church of the Celestine monks in Paris, long a favourite burial place (15 16). The great wall-niche tomb of Bishop Thomas James in Dol Cathedral in coloured ala- baster (1504-7) was the work chiefly of Jehan Juste (Giovanni di Giusto). Tombs by French- men.— Unlike the above, some tombs of the period show the usual contempor- ary mixture of style. For example, in the church of Brou, built for Margaret of Austria as a mausoleum for her husband, Philibert of Savoy, and herself, the architecture, both of the building and of the pedes- tals and canopies of the tomb, are in the extremest type of Flamboyant ; but the Renaissance slabs and statuary were obtained under the influence of Jehan Perreal from Col- ombe's studio (c. 151 1). Examples of wall-niche tombs in transitional style are those of Duke Rene II. of Lorraine in the Fran- ciscan church at Nancy (1508) by Mansuy Gauvain, of Bishop Hugues des Hazards at Blenod- lez-Toul, probably by the same (1520), both coloured and gilded, and of Bishop Gueguen in Nantes Cathedral (1508) by Michel Colombe. Holy Sepulchres. — Another class of monuments frequent in 37. Bretagnolles : Font Canopy. THE STYLE OF LOUIS XII. 43 French churches, representing the entombment of Our Lord and similar subjects, are often architecturally treated. One of the most splendid examples is the Holy Sepulchre in the south transept of the abbey church of Solesmes, which, contrary to the more usual practice, exhibits a Renaissance design carried out, except for two arabesque panels, in Gothic detail (Fig. 38). The style of Louis XII. may be summed up in a word as one whose monuments exhibit the same general aspect as those of the fifteenth century, but, on a closer observation, reveal a certain proportion of Italian ideas, detail, and ornament. It charms by its picturesqueness, by its piquant combination of very dissimilar ideals, and by much beauty in individual parts. It is interesting as illustrating the first effects upon architecture of a great moral crisis, but is too loosely compounded of discordant elements to be of permanent value from an artistic point of view. •a .'-A r . ■ ^ r 38. Priory Church, Soi.esmes : Easter Sepulchre. 39- Salamander: Emblem of Francis I. CHAPTER II. STYLE OF FRANCIS I. (1515-45) KING. Francis I. (1515-47). Initial— F. Emblem — Salamander among flames. Motto — " Nutrisco et extinguo." QUEENS. Claude of France. Initial — C. Emblem — Swan transfixed, or full moon. Motto — " Candida candidis. " Eleanor of Austria. Initial — E. Emblem — Phcenix, or tree and sun Motto— " His siiffulta." CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH SOVEREIGN. Henry VIII. (1509-47). HISTORICAL SKETCH. Reign of Francis I. — The reigns of Charles VIII. and Louis XII. had been a stage of transition in other spheres than that of architecture. The ideas underlying the Renaissance were permeating French society, and the next reign was to see their fruition. It opened under propitious auspices. The young prince, who ascended the throne in 15 15, seemed to have all in his favour. Adventurous, gallant, and open-handed, with chivalrous instincts and artistic and intellectual tastes, of athletic build and kingly bearing, Francis I. seemed the embodiment of the new era. The new national life had lost neither its vigour nor its appetite for expansion. The people were industrious and unprecedentedly prosperous, and the prospects of the government were bright. Art and literature were reviving. Reform was in the air. It was a moment of unbounded enthusiasm and hopefulness, and the young king seemed destined to inaugurate a new heaven and a new earth. To some extent 44 THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 45 these brilliant auspices were realised. The society in which Francis moved led a large and cultured existence, practising all courtly graces and welcoming art and learning. The material circumstance of court life was sumptuous and stately, costume rich and graceful, and wherever Francis found himself the royal table was served with as much decorum as at Fontainebleau, in contrast to the riotous orgies of his grandsons. Abroad Francis rather more than held his own. At home he found a compact realm. The position of the royal power as arbiter in internal struggles further increased its influence. The Reformation, in alliance with the New Learning, spread rapidly and was not unfavourably received at Court. Francis and the Duchess of Etampes were interested, while his sister was its ardent supporter. The king defended the humanists and pioneers of science against the scholastic authorities, and promoted reforms in education. But there is another side of the picture. Francis had no serious- ness of purpose. Self-indulgent, superficial and vacillating, though capable of vigorous action on occasion, he was swayed by the impulse or favourite of the moment. A bad education, flattery, and irresponsible power intensified his weaknesses. Court life with its endless round of flittings from chateau to chateau, balls, tournaments and hunting parties, varied by artistic and literary enjoyments, generated a frivolous atmosphere in which State affairs and the fate of ministers and generals often depended on the intrigues of dissolute women. For the influence of heroes like Bayard, of statesmen like the du Bellays, and virtuous princesses like Claude of France and Margaret of Navarre prevailed little with Francis against that of his mother, the cultivated but unprincipled Louise of Savoy, the royal mistresses, especially the Duchess of Etampes, the unscrupulous and intriguing cardinals Duprat and Tournon, and the intolerant and ambitious Constable, Anne de Montmorency, whose incompetence eventually brought him into disgrace. If the brilliant hopes of the reign failed of fulfilment, this was as much due to the magnitude of the forces in play as to the inferiority of the actors. The re-casting of European civilisation produced such dis- integration in established ideas and institutions that confusion rather than progress was the first result. In international politics Francis was pitted against formidable rivals. He renewed the adventure of Italian conquest and competed for the imperial crown. The electors preferred Charles of Austria, who, with the Empire and his vast hereditary possessions, threatened France on all frontiers. Only in the first war were French arms entirely successful, but the conquest of Lombardy was ephemeral. Defeated in the second before Pavia, Francis lingered for many months a prisoner at Madrid. A third and fourth brought exhaustion to both sides. 46 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. The sovereign power built up by his predecessor as a national asset was used by Francis and his descendants for their private enjoyment. Disorganisation invaded every department. Extravagant expenditure threw the finances into a chaos from which neither exorbitant taxation nor the sale of offices could extricate them. In religion, Francis, failing to effect a settlement, which might have saved France the loss of much of her best blood, eventually gave in to the party of obscurantism, and permitted the persecution of the Reformers. Tastes and Influence of King and Court. — The true glory of his age lies in the achievements of literature, learning, and art, and in the keen interest with which they were followed by the king and the society around him. In this respect the reputation of Francis and his Court as prime movers in the Renaissance movement is justified. Whatever their shortcomings, they can- not be accused of lack of culture. Art, and the things of the intellect, took a large place in their interests. Some may have patronised artists and scholars from the love of display or of being in the fashion, but the fact that display was only thought effective when artistic, and that fashion took the form of culture must be reckoned to their credit. The king's sister, Margaret of Na- varre, was an authoress, and gathered scholars, divines, and writers around her. The Duchess of Etampes, "fairest of the learned and most learned of the fair," was a patron of art and learning; Car- dinal du Bellay was the lifelong friend of Rabelais, and the discoverer of de l'Orme; even the terrible and un- lettered Montmorency had a keen eye for artistic talent, and was generous in its encouragement. With Francis himself culture was a passion, and a love of art and intellectual concerns was an abiding factor in his life. He founded the royal library at Fontainebleau, and the College de France at Paris. His purse was ever at the service of men of letters and artists, whom he admitted to intercourse on equal terms, counting among his friends the poet Marot, the learned Bude, Andrea del Sarto, Benvenuto Cellini, Dominic of Cortona and two of 4' Troves : Oriel in Hotel de marisy. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 47 the greatest spirits of his age, Francois Rabelais and Leonardo da Vinci. " All kings have honoured the arts," says Michelet, " Francis loved them." Never has an artistic movement been more justly identified with the name of a sovereign than in his case. His predilections were for Italian art, and his position as an Italian prince gave him great opportunities for indulging them, but his patronage was extended impartially to artists of merit of any nationality. Throughout his reign he kept colonies of architects, sculptors, and painters in constant employment, and lodged at his expense at Paris and Fontainebleau. His building activity was astonishing. The gay and sumptuous Court with its host of retainers must be housed, and that splendidly, as it passed along the banks of the Loire or through the forests of the He de France from one scene of sport and revelry to another. Yet this en- thusiasm of Francis was often defeated by his lack of steady purpose. His interest was seldom concentrated long enough on one building to ensure its completion, or if completed, it was allowed to fall into decay for lack of care. Du Cerceau, in pointing out the simple means by which the royal castles might be kept in repair, relates that Francis himself used to say, if a well cared for house was spoken off, "That cannot be one of mine." Art, Science, and Literature. — The other arts, though under- going the same impulse from Italy, make a less impressive show than architecture, but, while sculpture and painting were hardly emancipated from their subordinate positions, works of great charm came from the chisels of such men as Ligier Richer and Jean Cousin, and the Clouets formed a delicate, if somewhat timid, school of painting and portraiture. Meanwhile Jean Cousin, Bernard Palissy, and Pinaigrier, as stained glass workers, and Leonard Limousin, Courtois, and Penicaud, as enamellers, brought these genuinely French arts to great perfection. The intellectual activity of the reign was as great as the artistic. Rabelais was laying the foundations of modern education and scientific research ; Bude, Estienne, and Dolet rivalling and extending the triumphs of Italian scholarship. Legal, historical, and philosophical studies were pursued with ardour. Literature was illustrated by the tender and graceful verse of Marot and Margaret of Navarre and the racy tales of the " Heptameron," while the pages of Rabelais embodied the whole spirit of the age : its enthusiasm, its eager inquiry, its wide but ill-digested learning, its debt to the world of antiquity, its revolt against monastic ideals, and its joy in life and action. The French language and literature, if as yet unequal to the exposition of the noblest thought and gravest themes, or the treatment of intricate problems, was supple, fanciful, exuberant. Tender and gay by turns, it was a fit exponent of the sparkling esprit Gaulois. It had a close parallel in contemporary architecture. Both reflect the society to which they 48 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. belonged, its joyousness, its naive delight in classical allusion. Both exhibit the same exuberance and redundancy, the same lack of pro- portion, the same failure to subordinate detail to the design of the whole. Both redeem these defects by their inventiveness and youthful vitality. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. Plans. — Town houses and public buildings show little change of plan. They retained largely the arrangement of the fifteenth century. 42. Castle of Bury, near Blois (c. 1515-20). Plan : from du Cerceau. In the chateau the changes were more marked, and included a continu- ance of the tendencies, described in the preceding phase, towards increase in accommodation, cheerfulness, and regularity. Yet the influ- ence of the fortified castle remained paramount in determining the general outline and distribution. The expense of pulling down massive existing structures was often prohibitive, and even when this was done the old foundations were sometimes utilised and governed the plan. New requirements were more generally supplied by alterations and THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 49 43- Castle of Fontaine-Henri, near Caen. additions, but even entirely new buildings were planned to some extent on traditional lines. The general scheme of courts and towers persisted, together with the moat and drawbridge. The principal apartments occu- pied the back and sides of the court, while the front wing was often lower (Fig. 53) and con- tained a central gatehouse (Fig. 60). The typical plan of the chateau and hotel of the seven- teenth century was thus already foreshadowed. The smaller chateaux and manors often con- sisted only of a single block ; either regular (Figs. 69 and 70) or L-shaped, as at Azay-le-Rideau. These arrangements were sym- metrised as far as circumstances permitted. Where existing buildings necessitated the retention of irregularities, attempts were made, in re- modelling them, to straighten the sides, to mask awkward angles, and to balance the features. In new buildings courts were almost invariably rectangular. In some cases more than mere regularity was aimed at, and plans were set out on definite geometrical schemes of "ideal" symmetry, as at Chambord, Madrid, and La Muette. Yet planning remained in some respects rudimentary. For while mediaeval arrangements had ceased to be adequate, the nature of modern requirements was imperfectly understood. Traditional plans were ex- panded by repetition of parts, but these were not correlated. Thus the hall was replaced by a number of large and splendid apartments, the scene of state functions and fetes, but they were not individually devoted to special uses. Ranges of smaller chambers for sleeping and retirement were provided around them. Balconies, galleries, and terraces grew in frequency (Fig. 51), and cloisters often occupied one or more sides of a court (Fig. 71). But little attempt was made to increase privacy or ease of access. Rooms were frequently only reached through others or directly from the open air. Stairs were still generally spiral, though not always in projecting turrets, but straight flights parallel to the walls, or dog-legged stairs began to make their appearance. Round towers and turrets (Figs. 39 and 53) were still the rule, but were not infrequently replaced by square ones, and these began to develop into important pavilions (Fig. 60). 4 50 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. AZAY-I.E-RlDEAU. 44. Windows and Dormers. From a Drawing by G. G. Wornum. 45. Entrance Bay. Roofs. — The most striking external feature remained almost invariably the steep lofty roof, either hipped or gabled, with its metal or pottery embellishments: at Fontaine-Henri (Fig. 43) the roof occupies more than half the total height. In contrast to English practice the French then, as at most periods, gave a separate roof, usually hipped, to each THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. Si block or wing. Flat roofs also became not uncommon from this time onwards, especially over galleries ; they were sometimes covered with slabs of wrought stone. The roof masses were broken up by rich and monumental chimney-stacks, lanterns, and dormers (Figs. 46, 52, and 55). Pierced balustrades ran from membered cornices reminiscent of dormer to dormer, and many- machicolations still prevailed (Figs. 49 and 56). Doorways and Windows. — Doorways and windows became larger than in Gothic times. The commonest type of window was two lights wide, with one or more transoms, and was called croisee from the stone cross thus formed (Fig. 44). They are square- headed, but occasionally have the shoulders rounded. A characteristic feature is the arrangement of windows in vertical stripes (Fig. 44), often combined with a dormer above and a doorway below, the entire group being framed in by pil- asters, tier above tier, each pair connected by panels or friezes, while the intervening wall spaces were decorated with a central ornament (Fig. 49). This stripe treatment tended to maintain the vertical character of the eleva- tions as much as the frequency of towers and stair-turrets. The main staircase continued to be the occasion of an important feature. Oriels, " Trompes." — Oriels and overhanging turrets were frequent (Fig. 41). The problem of carrying these and similar structures was congenial to the national delight in scientific stone-cutting, and gave rise to a feature almost peculiar to French architecture, the trompe. This is a method of corbelling in the form of a vault or portion of a dome, whose function is to carry projections in the upper part of a building, its construction varying according to its position. The "trompe dans le coin" is placed across a re-entering angle to carry a diagonal or convex wall (Fig. 233A). The pendentive, or "trompe en 46 Castle of Blois : Chimney-stack. 52 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. niche," is one variety of this type. The "trompe sur Tangle" is placed over a splayed or convex face to carry an angle overhanging it (Fig. 134); and the "trompe en tour ronde" is placed on a plain wall to carry a curved or polygonal projection. Detail. — All parts of a building were now carried out in the detail of the North Italian Renaissance with its characteristic exuberance and delicacy. Gothic detail had been eliminated, and Gothic ideas were expressed in Renaissance diction. The first fusion of Italian and French architecture was complete. Openings usually retained the receding mouldings of Gothic tradition, though with Renaissance pro- files, and projecting architraves were quite the exception. The stonework of windows was also often of square section, with the face panelled or otherwise enriched. Cornices generally replaced hood moulds. The Orders. — In the use of the orders there was still little approximation to classical practice, either as regards the proportion or the arrangement of the members. The shafts were of every degree of abbreviation and elongation, and orders of the most diverse scales were combined in the same composition. Capitals recall the accepted types only in their general outline, and were composed with infinite variety, of plant forms, cornucopias, human and animal heads and figures, and fanciful volutes. Shafts were decorated with arabesques and interlacing patterns, or panelled in circles or lozenges. Ornament. — Though the reminiscences of pagan worship, ox skulls, paterae, and so forth, were retained as decorative elements, they were supplemented by monograms, mottoes, and emblems, which provided motives for filling panels and powdering wall surfaces and also for open- work balustrades and crestings. The beautiful features which crowned doorways and dormers, and vaguely recall crocketed and traceried Gothic gables, were largely made up of such elements as well as of architectural members. The crowning features of turrets and lanterns were tastefully composed of cupola and " tempietto " forms, with scrolled buttresses and carved finials. The relief of ornament was usually slight, the sculptured portions delicate and refined, and the human figure, when introduced, vigorously, if often incorrectly, drawn. The general effect of such decoration is that of a stone embroidery rather than a stone lace — a step in advance. Materials. — In addition to stone, brick was largely used for walling, and even for dressings, in conjunction, generally, with plastered rubble. Effects of colour decoration were obtained in the forms of patterns of stone, brick, flint, slate, and plaster, as well as by the brilliant painting and gilding of certain portions and the introduction of majolica medallions and friezes or marble panels. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 53 ayjaujiu 3f si w tmm 47. Castle of Bums: North Side of Court (1515-19). Thirteenth Century. Charles of Orleans or Louis XII. ; XV. Century ; since de- stroyed. Charles of Orleans or Louis XII. ; XV. Century ; still stand- ing. Louis XII. ; finished 1503- Francis I., c. 1515-30. Gaston of Orleans, 1635-40 ; since de- stroyed. O Gaston of Orleans, 1635-40 ; still stand- ing. Castle of Blois : Plan. SECULAR ARCHITECTURE. Blois. — The first in date of Francis I.'s buildings is also the first in importance and richness of decoration. He lost no time in enlarging the castle of Blois (15 15-19), which was the home of his wife, Claude, daughter of Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany. The initials and emblems of the king and queen enter largely into the decoration of the 54 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 49. Castle of Blois : Great Stair. new building, which stands to the north of the court on the site of an older one, in part pulled down to make room for it. (See plan, Fig. 48.) Court Elevation. — The elevation to the court consists of a low ground storey, two higher storeys, and attics (Fig. 47). Horizontally the spacing of the openings is irregular, but above the ground floor the windows are in vertical lines. The elevation is treated as a con- THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 55 sistent whole, and crowned by a rich cornice and balustrade. The greatest wealth of decoration has been lavished on the open spiral stair- case, which occupies what was once the centre (Fig. 49), the culmi- nation of a type soon destined to disappear. It is octagonal in plan with five sides projecting into the court. The stone stair is carried up spirally on a continuous barrel vault. The outer shell is stiffened by radiating rectangular piers, treated somewhat after the fashion of a giant order. External balconies run from pier to pier, and the tower like mass terminates in a flat-topped open lan- tern. In spite of the delicacy of the detail, the richness of the ornament, and the boldness of the main conception the de- sign is not entirely successful. The dif- ference in slope of the stairs at the various storeys, the divergence be- tween the rake of the ramped arches and that of the balconies, and the lack of rela- tion between the tower and the adjoin- ing elevation, tend to mar its effect. But, as seen from the cloister arcade, framed in gloom and bathed in morning light, it cannot fail to strike with wonder and admiration as an exquisite piece of jeweller's work on a monumental scale. Internally (Fig. 50) the effect is more completely satisfactory, for the awkward lines of the elevation are invisible, and the elaboration and delicacy can be better appreciated at close quarters. Everything thus conspires to charm, from the outline of the steps, subtly curving like the lip of a shell, to the vault spreading like a palm from the summit of the newel. As one ascends, each arabesque and slender shaft, and carved boss, each monogram and emblematic beast, obtains its full value. 50. Castle of Bums : Interior of Great Stair. 56 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 1 51. CASTLE OF BLOIS : North Front (1524-70). THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 57 Outer Elevation. — The north elevation of Francis I.'s wing, which was some fifty years in building, is one of the most original designs of the century. It consists (Fig. 51) of two tiers of arcaded loggias (built in. 15 24 and 1563), extending the whole length of the building, carried on a trefoil plan round the old western tower, and originally enriched with colour and gilding. Above these runs a third gallery (built in 1570), below the eaves, which are carried on squat round columns. Several irregularly placed features, and the slope of the ground permitting of an additional storey below the eastern portion of the loggias, in- troduce elements of unexpected- ness into a facade, which derives added dignity from the height of blank wall at its base. Chambord. — Another of Francis I.'s splendid buildings, the chateau of Chambord, begun shortly after Blois (1526-44), is on an equally great and elaborate scale, and forms one of the strangest kjMLii? /^vjLLu-.Luj.u LlLD-Lg 53. Castle of Chamkord (1526-44). Plan : from du Cerceau. 52. Chambord : Dormer. From a Sketch by G. G. Wornum. monuments of the Loire style. Francis wished for a hunting-box in the forests of Sologne in order to enjoy the pleasures of the chase with less fatigue. None but a Valois prince of the Renais- sance, who ordered a new palace with no more ado than a new suit, would have selected this swampy clearing in the woods for the site of a vast pleasure- house capable of housing his entire Court. Plan. — In the plan (Fig. 53) the traditions of the fortress are respected in the retention of 58 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. round towers at the four outer angles, the two forward ones of which were never completed, and of the donjon, a square block also flanked with four round towers. Each angle of this block with its tower forms a sepa- rate suite, while the space intervening between them con- stitutes a hall of Greek cross plan with an opening at the end of each arm. This arrangement is repeated on each storey, and on the third the arms of the cruciform hall are ceiled with a coffered stone barrel vault of elliptical form (Fig. 54). In the intersection, but not filling it entirely, is the celebrated spiral staircase, cir- cular on plan and consisting of two stairways, which start from opposite sides and ascend in the same direction round a hollow circular newel. They are en- closed in a pierced stone shell decorated with orders of pilasters ranging with the storeys. Elevations. — The treatment of the elevations is uniform throughout (Fig. 39). The wall surface is divided into compartments by pilasters and their entablatures, an order to each storey. These are all of a Corinthian type, but each capital is of a different pattern, while the entablatures are little more than strings. The uniformity is, however, broken by an unsymmetrical arrangement of openings. Roof. — The most striking feature of the design is the treatment of the roofs which combines the French tradition with the terrace 54. Cuambord : Central Staircase. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 59 55. Chambord: Lantern, Roofs. roofs of Italy. Each of the towers was covered by a conical roof terminating in an open lantern, while the rectangular blocks had hipped roofs. The four quarters of the donjon were treated thus, leaving a flat terrace carried on the vaults over the cruciform hall. From the centre of this, over the great staircase, sprang a high and graceful open stone lantern, circular on plan, ter- minating in a fleur- de-lys finial (Fig. 55). The staircases throughout, both in the angles of the court and in the interior of the building, are surmounted by stone cupolas, and the roofs are broken by a forest of dormers and chimney-stacks, all of which features are profusely decorated (Fig. 52). The introduction of slate panels among the cream-coloured stonework has a happy effect. Merits of the Design. — With all its wayward charm, its pictur- esque grouping, its wealth of ornamental features, this strange pile strikes the beholder rather with wonder than admiration. When every allowance has been made for its incompleteness, for successive mutila- tions and alterations, and for the removal of the moat, in whose waters its walls were mirrored, gaining thereby in apparent height, the verdict must be that, from the architectural point of view, Chambord is a pleasing failure. Formality of setting out in the plan and elevations is counteracted by the confusion of the roofs, where innumerable features, individually beautiful but mutually destructive, set un symmetrically and at all angles, and poised in apparently impossible situations, give a sky-line too restless to be even picturesque. The whole design is a tour de force, a splendid freak, suitable only for the makeshift life of a Court picnic during a few sunny days of summer, but too ponderous a creation to be justified by so ephemeral an object. The Designers of the Loire Chateaux. — Much controversy has raged over the authorship of these and other buildings of this 60 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. period. The hierarchy of the architectural personnel was still ill-defined, and uncertainty as to the respective shares of responsibility for the design in given buildings of the various participants in it must be expected to continue. It is at any rate clear that the superior class of designers — and these were generally Italians — was admitted to social intercourse with their clients, as in the case of Fra Giocondo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Boccadoro. They had a footing at Court as valets de chambre dn roi (grooms of the chamber), and, though occasionally receiving fixed salaries, were more often remunerated by appointment to ecclesiastical benefices in commendam. The influence which they could exert on architecture by their advice and in the selection of minor artists cannot but have been considerable, even if they made no actual designs for specific edifices. At the same time, many of the French master-masons and master- carpenters reared under the new influences were learning to express themselves in Italian forms, if their ideas were still French, and would with growing frequency originate at least parts of the greater and perhaps the whole of the minor buildings. Leonardo da Vinci. — Attempts have been made to prove that Leonardo da Vinci was the designer of much of the Loire architecture, particularly of the great staircase at Blois. It is not, indeed, impossible that it may embody suggestions from him, for he was in France at the time of its building. He arrived in 1516 at the invitation of Francis, who gave him an allowance of 3,000 1. a year and a house at Amboise, where he died three years later. Moreover, a sketch plan made by him at this time for a castle with rectangular courts and round angle towers is extant. But he was an old and broken man when he came; his hand became partly paralysed shortly after, and it is not probable that he can have made important or detailed designs. Yet his sojourn on the banks of the Loire was doubtless not without result. The presence of such a celebrated master cannot have failed to stimulate the Renaissance movement. The French Builders. — On the other hand it is hardly conceiv- able that the men who undoubtedly carried out the work could, in the early years of Francis' reign, have originated the complete designs unaided. Jacques Sourdeau (born c. 1470, died c. 1530) was master- mason at the castle, and later master of all works in the county of Blois. His son Denis (died 1534) succeeded him in both offices. Between them they carried out the bulk of the work of all trades in the Francis I. wing. At Chambord there appear to have been always two master- masons working in conjunction. At first they were Denis Sourdeau and Pierre Nepveu (nicknamed Trinqueau). Jacques Coqueau (died 1569) replaced the former when he succeeded his father at Blois (c. 1530), and the latter when he became Controller of the Works at Chambord (1536). Another master-mason, Jean Gobereau, and THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 6l a master-carpenter, Mangyn Bonneau, also worked at Chambord at different times. These men sometimes contracted for specific works, at others worked at daily wages of from 20 to 30 sols, only attaining to annual salaries comparable to those of architects on promotion, after long service, to posts of general superintendence. However much they may have been left to themselves, it is only reasonable to suppose that if there were an Italian architect at hand, he would be consulted both by the king and by the builders. Now just such a man had been for many years in the royal employ, and during the main building operations referred to was a householder at Blois (•5i5-3i)- Boccadoro.— Domenico Bernabei, surnamed Boccadoro, known in France as " Boccador " and " Dominique de Cortone " (born at Cortona, died 1549 at Paris), is said to have been a pupil of Giuliano da San Gallo. He came to France with Charles VIII. 's colony (1495), and was then described as " menuisier de tous ouvrages," a translation of the Italian legnaiuolo, a term including carpentry, joinery, cabinet and model making, inlay and parquet. Dominic was employed by Louis XII. as early as 1497 ; on the departure of Fra Giocondo in 1505, he appears to have succeeded to his position, and on the death of Louis he passed into the service of Francis I. His position was analogous to that of Inigo Jones at the English Court a century later, and, as Court stage manager, it was his business to organise pageants and festivities, to design and put up the stands, triumphal arches, and temporary halls, and to design the decora- tions. For the lying-in-state of Louis XII. he made a catafalque, architecturally treated, 15 feet long and 26 feet high. He also probably carried out the wooden structures in the garden at Blois, and certainly made suites of furniture for royal and other palaces. Finally he prepared models of cities (i.e., of the fortifications), of bridges, and other edifices ; amongst these was one for Chambord, and another later on for the Paris Hotel de Ville. It will be seen that many of the works of his craft required a thorough knowledge of architecture, and from the year 1516 onwards he is described as " architecteur." It is certain that in the case of the Paris Hotel de Ville he was the designer of a building for which he made a model. That the same was the case at Chambord, and that he stood in the same relation to the masons and joiners there as he undoubtedly did in Paris — i.e., in the relation of architect to contractor — is highly probable. The model which he made, in all likelihood the same as the one shown in the castle in the seven- teenth century, differed from the executed work in little else than in having a staircase in straight flights. That is precisely what one would expect of an Italian. The spiral form would be a concession to French ideas. If Boccadoro was the architect of Chambord, the attribution to 62 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 56. Castle of Azay-le-Rideau (1521). him of the same functions in regard to Francis I.'s buildings at Blois, where he lived, presents no difficulties. Bury. — Innumerable other chateaux arose about the same period inspired by the same influences as the royal residences. One of the earliest of the fully Renaissance country mansions was that built by Flori- mond Robertet at Bury near Blois (Fig. 42). There are indications that it was designed by Fra Giocondo. The building, however, does not seem to have been commenced till after 151 5, or at least ten years after his return to Rome. It is now a complete ruin only distinguishable from a mediaeval fortress by an occasional string or shell ornament. The gallery inside the screen wall at the entrance was of particularly graceful design. Azay-le-Rideau. — One of the most attractive of the lesser chateaux of this phase is that of Azay-le-Rideau, built in 1521 on an island in the river Indre (Fig. 56). In plan it is L-shaped, with round turrets at the angles, and on the three outer sides it has machicolations and a chemin de ronde forming a bold cornice. The ordinance is clear and simple, and with judicious restraint the ornament is confined to a few im- portant features, whose delicate elaboration thus receives its full value. There is great beauty in the design of the dormers and of the stair- case bay (Fig. 45). The stair is planned in straight parallel flights THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 63 57. Viij.a at Moret : Court Front (Now Rebuilt in Cours la Reine, Paris). separated by a wall and decorated on the soffit with pendents and medallions. Chenonceaux. — The chateau of Chenonceaux (Fig. 141), built about 1520, owes its chief celebrity to additions later than the reign of Francis. The original building was a rectangular block replacing an old mill, built on stone piers and arches rising out of the river Cher, and connected with the right bank by a bridge. The entrance front is squat and unprepossessing, with a balcony over the door carried on clumsy corbelling, but the eastern side is pleasingly broken by two projections, one of which is the chapel. The interior contains some characteristic decoration. The dormers are beautiful examples, and the isolated tower at the head of the bridge is a highly picturesque object with an exquisitely decorated doorway. Loire District. — Among other examples of the Francis I. style in the provinces in or adjoining the Loire valley are Le Rocher Mezanger, Le Lude, transformed from a fortress (finished 1536), Les Reaux (c. 1520), L'Islette (1526), Villandry (c. 1540), parts of Usse and Chaumont, both remodelled at this period, and Valencay {c. 1540). The provinces adjacent to the Loire, as the principal scene of Court life and the centre of the first wave of Italian influence, contain the most typical examples of the style of Francis I. But the style there evolved spread rapidly through France, and even beyond the then limits of the 64 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. kingdom, and while examples indistinguishable from the Loire type occur in every province, local types also arose. Such variations are traceable to the nature of local materials, to idiosyncrasies of local designers, or, in the case of border provinces, to the influence of the neighbouring states. Ile de France. — Next to the Loire valley the country round Paris was most frequented by the Court, and is richest in examples of the style. Where a free-working stone was available the luxuriance of carving was undiminished; but in some places, and especially where stone was scarce or too hard, elaborate ornament was reduced to a minimum. When stone dressings are largely replaced by brick, and carving eliminated, the resulting severity contrasts so startlingly with the gay aspect of Blois and Azay as to make it appear all but incredible that all these buildings are contemporary. In the Ile de France Francis' chateaux of Villers Cotterets (1532-50) and Folembray, his villa at Moret (Fig. 57), removed in the nineteenth century to the Cours la Reine in Paris, where the court front has been turned outwards, and Cardinal Duprat's country seat at Nantouillet (1517-25) are of the Loire type. They were all surpassed in splendour by the chateau of Chantilly, an old fortress of triangular plan, transformed for Guillaume de Mont- morency (finished 1530, destroyed at the Revolution). Madrid. — The picturesque exuberance of the latter was in marked contrast to the ordered, but no less rich magnificence of its contemporary, the chateau of Madrid, built by Francis I. in the Bois de Boulogne (1528-65). The regularity and concentration of the plan and design as a whole seem to point to the conclusion that of the two men who collaborated upon it, Jerome della Robbia and Pierre Gadier (died 1 531), the Italian was the architect, as he certainly was the decorator, while the Frenchman and his successor, Gatien Francois, son of Martin Francois of Tours, superintended the execution of the structural works. For Jerome (born 1480, died 1566) was not only a member of the 58. Chateau of Madrid in Bois de Boulogne, near Paris, now destroyed. (1528-r. 1565.) Plan : FROM DU CERCEAC. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 65 ?|«;^if» : u E> Q 66 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. celebrated Florentine family of majolica workers, but had been a pupil of Giacopo Sansovino (Figs. 58 and 59). The house, which measured 265 feet by 112 feet, consisted of two square blocks, each with four square angle turrets, connected by a third block of less width. Arcaded galleries ran along the sides, in the two lower storeys, from turret to turret. The end blocks contained suites of private rooms, the intermediate one halls of state, and the turrets either stairs or private cabinets. The house was of unusual height, having four storeys below the eaves and above the vaulted half basement, in which were servants' offices especially commodious and well lit for the period. The symmetry of the plan prevented the confusion in the roofs and dormers which is often characteristic of the style, and the uncompromis- ing plainness of the projections confine the design within clearly marked boundaries, which are often lacking in its contemporaries. The total effect, however, was the reverse of austere, for all the columns, pilasters, architraves, medallions, friezes, dormers, and chimney-stacks were of brilliantly coloured majolica. This mode of enrichment was introduced in small quantities elsewhere, but on no other French building did it assume the same predominant place. One or two fragments are preserved in the Cluny Museum, but the rest was pounded up to make cement when the chateau was pulled down at the Revolution. Ecouen. — Like Madrid, the chateau of Ecouen (Fig. 60) shows an advance in regularity of planning, while it surpasses it in breadth and sobriety of treatment. It was built (1531-40) by the Constable Anne de Montmorency, son of the builder of Chantilly. The architect is un- 60. Chateau oe Ecouen, near St Denis (1531-r. 1566). From a Drawing by Du Cerceau. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 67 known. Neither of the men to whom it has been attributed — the mason Charles Baillard or Billard and the architect Jean Bullant — seem to have appeared upon the scene till the bulk of the building was finished. In its original condition it consisted merely of the three sides of a square court, with square angle pavilions, one of which contains the chapel ; and before the addition of dormers, of the screens, gatehouse and entrance porticoes, its sole decoration consisted in light continuous entablatures at each storey and shallow unenriched pilaster strips. Fontainebleau : Cour Ovale {Early Works). — The simplified style, of which Ecouen is the most stately example, seems to have been evolved at Fontainebleau, where there was no material at hand suitable to the carver's chisel. Alterations and additions to the royal hunting castle there were carried out (1527-40) by the builder Gilles le Breton (died 1552), probably without an architect. The design is just such as a fairly intelligent contractor might produce on the instruction of a cultivated client. The work in question consists in the main of a refacing of the old buildings on the south-west, west and north of the then only court ("Cour Ovale") (d, a) with the addition of a new block to the north east and of a guard-house on the east ; and of the erection of a wing farther west facing a new forecourt (g, i, Fig. 61). The p\ V \ \ 4 \ 0t* Francis I. and Earlier. □ Henry IV Charles IX. Subsequent to Henry IV. 61. Palace of Fontainebleau in 1610: Plan. 68 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. U THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 69 Palace of Fontainebleau. 63. Cour du Cheval Blanc : 64. Pavillon de la Porte Doree North Wing. or de Maintenon. principal decoration of these buildings is constituted by a system of rather clumsy stone pilasters, with rudely carved capitals and of equally rude dormers, while the walling is either ashlar or plaster-faced rubble. The archway and loggias in the remodelled gatehouse were decorated with frescoes and gilding, whence its name " Pavilion de la Porte Doree " (Figs. 61, d, 62, and 64). Cour Ovale {Later Works). — A colonnade supporting a terrace was then carried round the western half of the court (Fig. 65), and a two-storeyed loggia {Peristyle) (Fig. 6r, e) added (c. 1540). In the next five years the old chapel of St Saturnin (Fig. 61, f) was remodelled with the addition of a lantern and pair of turrets (now disguised by the alterations under Henry IV.), and a rectangular block to contain a ball-room added between the chapel and the gatehouse. This later group of works shows a certain advance in knowledge of Renaissance detail. The ball-room elevation (Figs. 62 and 65) with its arcade treatment is broader in effect than those opposite, and the chapel has considerable refinement and charm. Whether these improvements in style are due to Le Breton's maturing experience or to the influence of some architect remains doubtful. Cour Du Cheval Blanc. — This is not the place to speak of the work of the new Italian colony established by Francis at Fontainebleau, since it is inspired by the advanced or Roman Renaissance and will be discussed in the next chapter. But, simultaneously with Le Breton's 70 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 65. PALACE OF FOXTAINEBLEAU: Cour Ovale, West End. From a Drawing by P. Hepworth. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 71 first works, either by him or another builder, Pierre Chambiges (died 1544), probably a son or nephew of Martin Chambiges, was erecting another addition to the castle in a different manner. This consisted in the three wings surrounding a new rectangular forecourt, " Cour du Cheval Blanc " (Figs. 62 and 64), so called from a plaster cast of the statue of Marcus Aurelius on the Capitol, set up there by Catharine de Medici, or " des Adieux," so called from its being the scene of Napoleon's farewell to his troops in 18 14. While the walls were still plaster-faced rubble, and the general outlines similar to those of the Oval Court, the dressings, including the pilasters, cornices, and strings, were executed in red brick and patterns of brick introduced into the plaster surfaces. St Germain-en-Laye. — The use of brick is characteristic of at least two other buildings on which Chambiges appears to have been em- ployed, viz., St Germain and La Muette. He may have worked out the designs without an architect under Francis' personal direction. If this be the case he must be credited wilh much greater architectural capability than his colleague, for the elevations of St Germain and the plan of La Muette have great merit. The date pf the latter is not known, but the work at St Germain was carried out probably about 1540, at a time when Chambiges had had the advantage of working under Boccadoro at the Paris Hotel de Ville. At the same time it is not impossible that one of the Italian architects then in France may have given the designs for these castles. ' - iJhi4 1* fff yftit 1 hf 1 i i hii IMM Tn??^H ■'^mI^BBBb"^^^^ i! - ; [ " ^^^^Ifciyj ■ Kjgggtfflj ^^W"*^^ ^ £tX*H-*" 66. Castle of St Germain-en-Laye (c. 1540) : View from North-East. 72 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. At St Germain- en-Laye, on an emi- nence overlooking the Seine, stood a fortified castle which Francis I. trans- formed into a plea- sure house. In his buildings here, various uses are made of brick both as dressings in com- bination with ashlar and plastered wall- ing, and as walling material with stone dressings. The chateau has other peculiarities. It has a court of irregular 67. Castle of St Germain-en-Laye : View in Court. rhomboidal plan (Fig. 68), a legacy from the fortress, and is in some respects more Italian, in others more French than most of its con- temporaries. The Italian feature is the abandonment of steep roofs in favour of balustraded terraces, broken only by the massive chimney- stacks and the cupolas over the staircases. These terraces are of stone and carried on vaults maintained in equilibrium by the Castle of St Germain-en-Laye. Plan : from du Cerceau. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 71 SCALE OF SCALE OF 69. Chateau ok La Muette, near St Germain (now destroyed). Plan : from du Cerceau. Italian system of iron ties and the French one of external buttresses both used concurrently at the time of erec- tion. The boldly projecting buttresses divide the elevations into narrow bays (Fig. 66) and strongly accentuate the element of verticality. They are treated on face and sides with straight pilasters and crowned with stone urns. Two balustraded galleries on semi- circular arches run from buttress to buttress, and single or coupled open- ings framed in pilasters and with semi- circular heads occur in the recesses thus formed. The different elevations exhibit slight variations on the same theme. Circular stair turrets occupy the angles of the court (Fig. 67), and the chapel, a graceful specimen of thirteenth-century Gothic, stands across the south-west angle of the trapeze, thus forming a short fifth side. Its buttresses were carried up above the roof, where they were treated with pilasters like their neigh- bours, and the upper gallery was continued over them in the form of a bridge — a very successful attempt to harmonise two antagonistic styles without detriment to the proper character of either. Externally the angles of the castle are emphasised by massive towers of irregular plan. In the intervening fagades the buttresses are not con- tinued below the level of the lower terrace, which is carried on a project- ing gallery corbelled out as far as the face of the tower and forming a chemin de ronde. The total effect of the building, depending as it does hardly at all on ornament, is original, if somewhat gloomy. La Muette, Challuau. — The curious system of biick and stone elevations, with windows deeply set back in arches and terrace roofs carried on vaulting, is a characteristic shared by the two hunting boxes of Chateau of Challuau, near ^ M n£ar gt Germai and FONTAINEBLEAU (NOW DE- . ' stroyed). Plan: from du Challuau, near Fontainebleau, both Cerceau. built for Francis I., probably by the 70. 74 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. same architect, and both now destroyed. The plan is in each case a square with four square angle projections. The central block con- tains the principal rooms, with the offices below. The projections, which are no longer mere turrets, contained a self-contained suite on every floor, each provided with a corkscrew stair. At Challuau (Fig. 70), the great stair is in a single straight flight in the main block starting from the entrance in the centre of the front. The chapel is over this, and its projecting apse forms a porch. On the two side elevations open loggias, as at Madrid, connect the pavilions. At La Muette (Fig. 69), where the projection of the pavilions is greater, the entire chapel projects between them on one elevation, and the staircase and entrance occupy similar projections on the opposite one. The recesses on the side elevations are formed, as it were, into external apses of semi-octagonal plan, possibly for use as open-air theatres. Northern Provinces. — In Normandy are several notable ex- amples of Francis I. chateaux. The main block of Fontaine Henri (c- J535)> near Caen, offers an example of fantastically high roofs and chimney-stacks (Fig. 43). In the delightful Manoir dAngo near Dieppe, is a manor-house with its farm buildings defended against 71. Castle of La Rochefoucauld: View in Court. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 75 casual attack. The buildings surround a large rectangular court and are in stone with squared flint diapers, a method of decoration characteristic of the district, while the stables and byres are in half timber. A richly patterned brick and stone dovecot of circular plan and with curved roof stands in the midst of the court. In the north and east there is little, except parts of Fleurigny and of Bussy Rabutin in Bur- gundy, and La Bastie d'Urfe near Lyons (remodelled between 1535 and 1555), in the court of which is a splendid open canopied stair- case in straight flights. Southern Provinces. — In the south-western provinces are La Rochefoucauld (Fig. 71) with its fine spiral staircase and its arcaded courtyard ; Usson, re- built near Pons, of rich but clumsy design, with a dove tower; Assier, near Rodez, attributed to Nicolas Bachelier of Toulouse, and parts of the castle at Pau. Portions of the destroyed chateaux of Montal (1534) and Bonnivet (begun 1528) are in the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington. At St Jean d'Angely, in the public square, is a charming well- house, removed there from the chateau of Brizembourg (Fig. 72). Hotels: Eastern Pro- vinces. — Local characteristics are not so marked in the chateaux just enumerated as in many of the hotels still to be found in HALF-PLAN -OF- DOME 72. St Jean d'Angely ; Well-House formerly in chateau of brizembourg. Measured and Drawn by the Author. 76 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 73. Caen : Town-House of Charles de Valois d'Ecoville (1535-38) : View in Court. vinces, a debatable land conquered and reconquered alternately by the rulers of France and the Low Countries, the Renaissance came less by the direct agency of Italians than of Flemings who had visited Italy, and it received a tincture from the somewhat heavy Gothic and naturalistic sculpture of Bel- gium. The Flemish gable with its crow-steps also prevailed in the northern cities. A certain degree of Flemish influence penetrated as far south as Normandy. It may be seen in a wing of the Hotel Bourgtheroulde at Rouen richly decorated with sculptured panels the towns. The eastern provinces, some of which were not united to the French kingdom till the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries, show the influence of the Netherlands and Ger many. A fondness, for instance, for oriels and overhanging turrets is illustrated by the hotels of Troyes (Fig. 41) and Dijon; and the Palais Granvelle at Besancon (1532-40), shows Flem- ish influence in its stepped gables and heavy arcades, while the street front gives an in- stance of an early and unskilled use of three- orders superposed. Hotels: Nor- thern Provinces. — In the northern pro- INNER COURT 74. Caen Hotel d'Ecoville Plan. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 77 .' I 0 2 3 4 •W.T ! ? ! 75. Caen : Hotel d'Ecoville : Doorway in Loggia. Measured and Drawn by Arthur Stratton. representing the Field of the Cloth of Gold. The characteristics here exhibited— the realism, the great relief, the squat forms, and the fondness for the candelabrum motive — are shared by the Amboise monument in the cathedral and to some extent by the chevet of St Pierre at Caen (Figs. 113 and 114). A more normal type is represented by the Hotels de la Monnaie (1531-35) and de Mondrainville (finished 1549) at Caen. These formed part of a great mansion built for Etienne Duval by Blaise Le Prestre and his sons, the builders of that of Nicolas de Valois, Seigneur d'Ecoville, in the same city (1535-38), which is perhaps the most perfect specimen of a town mansion of this period. It belongs to the late phase of Francis I. work (see p. 115), and exhibits a purity of detail, an elegance of proportions, a consummate ingenuity in the adjustment of the claims of symmetry and utility such as are seldom found in combination. The buildings occupy the four sides of a court (Fig. 74). Their most RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 0 1 2 SCALE OF L 0 SCALE OP*— ■— 76. ORLEANS: House in Rue de Recouvrance known as " MAISON DE FRANCOIS I." (1536-50): Left Side of Court. Plan and Elevation. Measured and Drawn by L. M. Gotch. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 79 remarkable features are a graceful two-arched loggia in two storeys leading to the principal staircase, the lantern surmounting it, the symmetrically set-out fagade on the right with alternating niches, and windows and elaborate dormers (Figs. 73 and 75). At Angers is the Hotel Pince, a very fine stone house, of which the loftier wing dates from the early years of the reign, and the lower was added by Jean l'Espine (1532). At Orleans, which is peculiarly rich in the architecture of the sixteenth century, are the brick and stone mansion now used as Hotel de Ville (1530) and the so called Maison de Frangois I. (1536-50), whose best preserved portion is a charming wing facing the court (Fig. 76), with loggias running between turrets. Hotels: Southern Provinces. — -At Perigueux are several Francis I. hotels, especially in the Rue Limogeanne and on the quay (Fig. 4). Toulouse, at all periods a centre of Renaissance work, has the beautiful Hotel Bernuy, attributed, like all contemporary architecture of the district, to Nicolas Bachelier, and offering a charming example of arcaded court architecture. The older portions of the Hotels d'Aus- sargues and de Lasbordes and other houses at Toulouse also show good Francis I. work. In addition to the peculiarity of the local bricks, or rather tiles, which are about 2 inches thick and measure about 2 feet by 1, the local artists show the same predilection for candelabra and high relief as those at Rouen, but without the northern heaviness, and were fond of the diamond-point ornament, of caryatids, of using two diminutive orders of engaged shafts, one above the other, in the height of a door or window, and small shafts or figures on the mullion to carry the transom. Smaller Houses. — Many houses of the bourgeois class are to be seen at Orleans, often with a wide arched opening for the shop front. Two excellent examples, probably by the same architect, and not incon- ceivably early works of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, are the house of Jean d'Alibert and the Maison de la Coquille (Fig. 77). In these and similar designs the necessarily unsymmetrical arrangement of unequal openings is treated with great skill to obtain a well-balanced grouping. Timber Building. — The general scheme of mediaeval timber design remained unaltered, but was translated into the nearest Renaissance forms. Thus, uprights were treated as pilasters, beams as cornices and friezes, and the spaces as panels enriched with medallions and arabesques. Corbels became volutes or caryatids. The so-called house of Diane de Poitiers at Rouen (Fig. 78) is a good example. Public Buildings. — Many towns rebuilt their town halls at this time. At Lorris the Hotel de Ville is a modest house in patterned brick with stone dressings ; at Niort a little stone, turreted chateau, built by Mathurin Berthome (1535). At Loches a more important structure, with an elaborate stair-tower adjoining the city gate, built by 8o RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. Andre Sourdeau (I534-43)- At Beaugency the Hotel de Ville is a very charming little edifice (1526), in- cluding two shops (Fig. 79), attributed, like that of Orleans, to Charles Viart. If this be correct, he had learned by this time to elimi- nate the Gothic elements which still appeared in his earlier work. The city hall at Toulouse known as the Capitol, was added to at this time, and its gate- way (now removed to the Jardin des Plantes) is one of the least doubtful works of Nicolas Bachelier (born 1485, died c. 1572), to whom every Re- naissance building in the district is ascribed. His father, a native of Lucca and a pupil of Brunelleschi, had settled at Toulouse. Nicolas went to Italy about 15 10 and worked under Michael Angelo ; returning to ply the calling of a master-mason and sculptor, he exercised a great influence on the architectural development of south- western France. Tj. Orleans: Hohse known as " Maison de la Coquille" (c. 1540). ;; /V fc'-M M^^iNBiq Bw few W 78. ROUEN : Timber House known as " MAISON DE DIANE DE POITIERS" (Rebuilt beside the Tour St Andre). From a Drawing by P. Hepwokth. 6 82 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. Hotel de Ville, Paris. — When it was decided in 1531 to build a new town hall in the capital, Bocca- doro was sent for by the king from Blois, and shortly after re- moving to Paris, where he lived to his death (c. 1549), he prepared a model for the pro- posed building, and exhibited it before the city authorities at the Louvre (22nd Decem- ber 1532). His design was approved, and he remained in charge of the works till their completion, his name appearing as that of the architect on an in- scription on the facade. Pierre Chambiges worked on the build- ing as carver, mason, and clerk of works. The new Hotel de Ville (Fig. 80) consisted of a central block of seven bays, two storeys high, and a three storeyed pavilion at each end, an arrangement which established a type still often followed in buildings of the same class. The composition showed a nearer approach to the monumental manner of the culminat- ing period of the Italian Renaissance than anything that had preceded it in France, but the detail and some of the features were still of the Francis I. type. Boccadoro's building, which was frequently added to subsequently, and formed the central portion of the building burnt down in the Commune (1871), has been substantially reproduced in the new building erected since. Interiors : Ceilings, Floors. — In the interior, complete schemes of permanent decoration were still a luxury reserved for halls of State and the chambers of the wealthiest, but entrances, staircases, and the features of the principal apartments were richly treated. Rib and coffer vaults in many patterns, and stone-slab ceilings with pendents were in use in the parts of a building usually vaulted hitherto, as in the halls at Chambord (Fig. 54) and the stair at Azay. Open ceilings were still the 79- Beaugency on the Loire Hotel de Ville (1526). THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 83 80. Paris: Hotel de Ville, by Domenico Bernabei of Cortona ("Boccador") ; (Begun 1532; Burnt Down 1871). From an Old Print. rule, but panelled ceilings became commoner, as also did parquet work for floors, and stone, marble, or tile patterns for paving both in halls and courts. The courts of the chateaux of Gaillon and Ecouen were paved with various coloured stones. While the native encaustic tiles with their strictly limited range of colour survived here and there, Italian enamelled tiles, with their gayer tones, their subject paintings and patterns on white grounds were much used. Chimney-pieces. — Chimney-pieces retained their hoods, but these were generally carried up vertically to the ceilings, and decorated with niches, pilasters, panelling, and sculpture, and supported on piers, corbels, or caryatids. In addition to the many fine chimney-pieces in the palace at Blois (Figs. 8r and 82) and other chateaux of the Loire valley, good examples are to be seen in the Cluny Museum in Paris, the museum at Orleans, the Hotels d'Alluye at Blois, and de Lasbordes at Toulouse. Glazed earthenware stoves were introduced from Germany by Francis I. at Fontainebleau, but were not generally adopted. Decoration. — The woodwork of ceilings, walls, linings, like decora- tion generally, was divided up into small panels in various patterns, and often enriched with arabesques, &c. Examples of Francis I. panelling are to be seen at Blois in the Queen's apartments, at St Vincent at Rouen, in the Cluny Museum, and elsewhere. Doors were in small panels variously arranged, or in boards and fillets, and were often enriched with carving, sculpture, and architectural features. 84 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 85 Gardens, Fountains. — Many gardens were laid out in the spirit introduced during the transitional phase (see p. 32) and adorned with architectural features in the style of Francis I. Du Cerceau illustrates a number of these, e.g., Bury (Fig. 42), Dampierre, Beauregard. This period has left a number of public fountains. Most of them stand free and have one or more basins round a column or obelisk decorated with sculpture. Such are the fountain at Guingamp, which has a granite basin with a wrought-iron railing, the remainder of the monument and its fgure work being in lead, and the stone and marble fountain of Clermont-Ferrand (15 15). A very magnificent one, erected at Rouen to the memory of Joan of Arc (1530, destroyed 1757), with a canopy 35 feet high, seems to have been principally in metal. CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. Renaissance Influence. — In church architecture Renaissance influence was no longer confined to the introduction of unrelated Italian elements, but took the form of a translation of each individual member of a Gothic church, though hardly yet of the total design, into Renais- sance forms. The task of the church-builder, like that of the castle- builder, was to clothe a mediaeval skeleton in Renaissance flesh, and he was confronted with the same problems. But there was this differ- ence, that whereas in the castle the reason of its being — its fortification — was growing obsolete, and some semblance of it was retained only from habit, in the church the functions were unaltered, and no change in essentials was tolerated. Consequently the plan and section of the mediaeval church, with its systems of rib-vaulting, buttresses and flying buttresses, and to some extent the pointed arch and the vertical character of design, persisted generally throughout the sixteenth century, and were not without influence even in the seventeenth and eighteenth. As in the previous period, ecclesiastical work lagged behind secular in style. It would be difficult to find fully assimilated early Renaissance ideas before 1520, and, when assimilated, they persisted after they had been superseded elsewhere. It is fortunate that, of the few churches built as a whole in this style, one, St Eustache at Paris, which may serve as a standard for the various aspects of church design, is a first- rate example. St Eustache : by Whom Designed. — The rebuilding of St Eustache was begun in 1532 and carried on slowly till 1589. After an interruption it was resumed from 1624 to 1654, at which period it was complete with the exception of the upper part of the western facade. There is no documentary evidence as to the architect. The theory that it was the product of the labours of three generations of master-masons of 86 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 83. Paris : St Eustache (Begun 1532). Plan. 84. Half Cross- Section. IE Scale as Plan. the Le Merrier family is unsupported by evidence, and the greatness and consistency of the design are such as to make it practically certain that it was the work of an architect of genius and experience. That he worked out the drawings with considerable com pleteness is proved by the fact that the portions built in the seventeenth century bear hardly any trace of con- temporary influence and are almost indistinguishable from the earlier ones. Again, the character of the design is in such close agreement with that of the Loire chateaux that the architect must have been familiar with them. Fur- ther, in view of Francis I.'s known interest in all architectural matters, it is probable that he would have a word to say in the rebuilding of the most fashionable church in his capital, and, when it is considered that in the year before building operations commenced he had sent for his architect from Blois to design the Hotel de Ville and other works in Paris, the conclusion seems almost irresistible that Dominic of Cortona was the architect of St Eustache. He had now been thirty- six years in France and was thoroughly conversant with French methods. It is not therefore surprising that, while every part is translated into Italian form language, the church should remain in all essentials such a one as French worshippers had for centuries been accustomed to. Plan. — In dimensions St Eustache is equal to all but the largest of mediaeval cathedrals. In richness and delicacy of decoration and in impressiveness and devotional effect it is hardly surpassed by any of them. Except in the total length which is less, and the height of the aisles which is greater, the measurements of St Eustache are nearly the same as those of Notre Dame. The internal length (inclusive of the Lady Chapel) is 290 ft., the width of the transepts 140 ft., THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 87 that of the nave at the trifoiium level 41 ft., the aisle bays, which are square, measure 19 ft. 6 in. from centre to centre. The height of the nave is 106 ft. 6 in., and that of the aisles 59 ft. In plan it is practi- cally identical with Notre Dame except that, whereas Notre Dame has five bays in the choir and eight in the nave, St Eustache has three and five respectively (Fig. 83). Till the influence of the Roman Renaissance prevailed, there was no important departure from Gothic planning in churches, though a tendency to prefer curved for polygonal forms may be observed. At St Eustache, however, the semicircular form of the chevet is derived from its Gothic prototype. At most two or three cases occur of definitely classical plans and then in small chapels, such as one in the chevet of Sens cathedral, which is an oblong with a semicircular apse. Section. — In section, St Eustache differs from Notre Dame in having the inner and outer aisles of equal height and very lofty (Fig. 84). The high nave arcade and aisle vaults recall those of the Gothic churches of Italy, and the freedom of vista in this interior lends it some of their spaciousness of effect. Neither St Eustache, however, nor other Francis I. churches show any marked departure in principle from the mediaeval structural system, attempts to substitute other systems, such as ungroined vaulting or domes, being rare and of small size. St Etienne-du-Mont, Single Piers. — It is in the forms of feature, detail, and ornament, that the characteristic differences must be looked for. The Renaissance architects hesitated between the single and the compound pier. At St Eustache the latter, and at St Etienne-du-Mont the former, was adopted. This almost contemporary Parisian church differs in many respects from St Eustache though resembling it in plan. It is on a smaller scale, and shows a progressive change of style from east to west. The choir (begun 151 7) is Flamboyant Gothic with no Renaissance elements. These first appear in the crossing and transepts (finished 1537), and become prominent only in the nave (1538-60), while the west end (Fig. 251) and rood screen (Fig. 86) belong to the reign and style of Henry IV. The piers are mere cylinders into which the vaulting ribs and arches die, though the designer thought himself bound to give them an awkward and unnecessary capital below the junctions. In the choir of St Remy at Dieppe are similar piers with foliage capitals. Sometimes, as at Gisors and St Calais, octagonal or hexagonal shafts are used. Instances also occur, e.g., at St Pierre, Tonnerre (Fig. 88), of single shafts treated as Roman columns. The gallery at St Etienne-du-Mont, carried on an arcade from pier to pier at mid-height is a rare feature, possibly suggested by the thirteenth century gallery in Rouen cathedral. In this case, its only purpose is to increase 88 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. their actual and apparent strength, for it cannot be used as a passage. At St Pantaleon, at Troyes, is a similar gallery, which breaks round the piers on corbelling, and thus forms a real passage. Compound Piers. — A variety of true compound piers occurs composed of alternating shafts and pilasters. Sometimes these pseudo- orders extend unbroken from top to bottom, as in the crossing pier at St Pierre, Tonnerre (Fig. 88), where they carry the vaults, and are combined with shorter ones carrying the arcade. A further stage is found at St Maclou, Pontoise, and Ennery (Fig. 87), where long and short members, corresponding to their respective functions, are used in alternation, and an element of horizontality is consequently in- troduced. The piers of St Eustache (Fig. 85) are the best example of this type. On their angles a series of superposed pilasters and engaged shafts, mark- ing by the horizontal lines of their capitals and entablatures the stages in the height of the building, such as the springing of the chapel and aisle vaults, and carrying the relatively light diagonal ribs, while on the faces are unbroken panelled pilasters carrying the heavier arches and transverse ribs. They supply a strongly vertical element, which is even further emphasised at the intersection. Capitals are generally of Renaissance character, but bases retain their Gothic type much longer. It being difficult to assimilate the plan of a classical capital or entablature to that of the vaulting ribs, the junction of the pier and the vaults is seldom so satisfactorily solved as in St Taurin, Evreux (Fig. 93), where a wall shaft is increased to the requisite area by a system of corbelling. Vaults. — The science of vaulting had reached such a consummate pitch in the fifteenth century that there was little room for development 85- Paris : St Eustache. View in Aisle. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 91 55 h 5U K 55 92 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. qi. Parish Church of Tillieres, near Dreux : Choir-Vaults. 92. Tillieres: Sketch Plan of Choir- Vaults. Rib-and-Slab Ceilings. — The multiplication of ribs tended to leave intervals so small that a single stone would fill them, whence there arose in Nor- mandy a type of rib-and-slab ceilings, which reached its richest development in the chevet chapels of St Pierre, Caen, and at La Ferte Bernard. The rib system of a more or less complicated vault was used in skeleton (with the spandrils filled either with slabs or with tracery), upon which another and nearly horizontal framework of ribs reposes, whose spaces are each filled in with a slab. Every part is enriched with scrollwork and carving, and pendents hang like stalactites from each intersection. Figs. 91 and 92 show a comparatively simple example from the chancel at Tillieres. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 93 Domes, Barrel Vaults, &c. — Forms intermediate between rib vaults and barrels or domes also occur, in which the construction belongs to the latter system, but non-functional ribs are retained, as in the cloisters of St Martin, Tours (Fig. 89). True barrels do not appear till the second half of Francis I.'s reign, when they are found in the lower castle chapel at Fleurigny (1532), in those at Chambord, and that of St Saturnin at Fontainebleau (1540-45). A few attempts were also made in dome construction, but always on a small scale. The first would appear to have been in the Bishop's Chapel at Le Mans (1510), now destroyed, and there does not seem to be any extant example belonging to this period, except the mausoka mentioned later (see p. 107), which are all on a small scale. Semi- domes over apses are not uncommon, e.g., at Sens and St Saturnin. Longni and the upper chapel at Fleurigny are among the rare examples (the latter a pointed barrel) of timber roofs. Arches. — The pointed arch gradually lost ground, though surviving sporadically, especially in windows. In doorways it is rare, semi- circular or depressed arches taking its place. Where it occurs, both in doorways and arcades, a keyblock is sometimes introduced to disguise the point (Fig. 94). Arcades are either pointed or semicircular. The transverse vaulting ribs are also often semicircular or slightly stilted. Pointed and round arches are sometimes used concurrently. Archivolts are variously treated, but generally with receding mouldings. Triforia. — St Eustache has a triforium over the arcades, but this feature is not very frequent ; interesting examples, however, occur in St Taurin, Evreux (Fig. 93) ; Notre Dame, Guingamp (Fig. 94) ; and St Pantaleon, Troyes. Elevations, Roofs. — In elevation all the types usual in the Middle Ages are reproduced, and their preponderatingly vertical character main- tained. Flat roofs, as in the chevet of St Pierre, Caen, are rare, and high roofs, as at St Eustache, almost universal, usually ending on the west and transept fronts in gables of more or less elaboration, and hipped off at the east end. At the intersection was occasionally a tower, as at St Jean, Caen, or more usually a timber fleche, as at St Eustache. Fleches also often occur on single roofs, as on the chapels at Chenonceaux and Champigny-sur-Veude (Figs. 95 and 96). The eaves cornice is often surmounted by a balustrade : thus at La Ferte Bernard is one composed of statuettes in a miniature arcade, and others of open-work inscriptions ; at St Pierre, Caen, again they consist of griffins, vases, and cherubs (Fig. 113). West Fronts : St Eustache. — St Eustache offers typical examples of the long sides, transept fronts, and apsidal termination of a church, distinguishable only by their detail from those of mediaeval times. Its west front, as originally designed, is known only from seventeenth 94 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 93. Evreux: St Taurin. Triforium. 94. Guingamp : Notre Dame de Bon Secours. Triforium. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 95 95. Paris : St Eustache from South-East. century drawings, which show it in its then incom- plete condition. Over its deeply recessed central door- way was a five-light window under a semicircular arch. Above this was to have been a great rose window and a smaller one higher still in the gable. In front of each pair of aisles was a tower with bold buttresses and windows of varied design in each storey. In the Cabinet des Estampes at Paris is an alternative design by du Cerceau for this front in a style re- sembling that of the facade 96. Champigny-sur-Veude : Chateau Chapel. East End. 96 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 97. Dijon : St Michel. West Portal. of the Certosa of Pavia, with an atrium like that of St Ambrose at Milan. St Michel, Dijon. — St Michel at Dijon is another example of a twin- towered front in which the lower part (Fig. 97) is a splendid rendering in Francis I. forms, mixed with a few Gothic elements, of the triple portal motive of Roman- esque and Gothic times, such as those of St Gilles or Chartres. The towers above the strong horizontal member, by which the three arches are surmounted, are of LTsle Adam : Parish Church. West Doorway. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 97 later date. The same motive is finely used at Vouziers where the towers were never built. A central west tower is unusual outside Brittany. External Galleries. — Facades are often subdivided horizontally, like the south transept front of St Eustache, which has two arcaded galleries. A single one of graceful design divides the west front of Brie-Comte Robert (Fig. 99), and at Vetheuil there are as many as three balustraded balconies, while at Angers Cathedral is a range of statues in niches. But these horizontal divisions, and even such marked cornices as those over the portals of Dijon and Vouziers, are all paralleled in Gothic churches, and at this period a definite division into storeys by systematic use of orders is scarcely more than hinted at in facades, though more fre- quent in towers. Buttresses. — The vertical lines of towers and buttresses are as a rule the most important ones in the elevations. All types of Gothic but- tress, both as regards plan and outline, were used. But attempts were made to vary the plan, while the faces and angles were panelled or enriched with canopy-work or orders. The outline remained much what it had been hitherto, though the weathering occasionally assumed such forms as domes or pediments. Very various are their summits and pinnacles — candelabra, vases, statues, balls, or miniature lanterns and domed iempietti, and sometimes they terminate in flat corniced tops. Structural flying buttresses are likewise rendered in Renaissance detail, and the purely ornamental ones of lanterns and turrets take the form of dolphins, scrolls, and so forth. Towers, Turrets, &c. — The familiar lines of mediaeval towers, with their bold buttresses, angle turrets, belfry windows, and sturdy, 7 99- Bkie-Comte-Robert : Parish Church. West Front. 98 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. ioo. Loches : Tower of St Antoinb (1519-30). 101. Brbssuire: Tower ok Parish Church (Finished 1538). tapering silhouettes, are reproduced in many Francis I. examples. The main difference, apart from the detail, lies in the disappearance of spires, and the substitution of cupola lanterns of the type inaugurated on the towers of Tours Cathedral. Examples of this kind are offered by the cathedral at Blois (N.W.), St Pierre, Coutances (W.), and Argentan (S.W.). Two of the finest are those at Bressuire (1538) and of St Antoine at Loches (1519-30). The former (Fig. 101), a noble design, is thoroughly French in outline, with buttresses gradually reced- ing as they rise. The latter (Fig. 100), equally beautiful in its way, recalls an Italian campanile by its open lantern and vertical panelled sides. Brittany, the land of spires, did not abandon the traditional type so easily ; at Bulat, for instance, is a spire in Francis I. detail. The graceful steeple of St Paterne, Bayeux (finished in modern times apparently in accordance with the original design), approximates in outline to a spire. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 99 too RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. 16t Flat balustraded tops and conical roofs, slated or tiled, are not un- common. Turrets reproduce in miniature the various types of towers. Gargoyles take various forms such as monsters of Renaissance type, terms and caryatids, and channels carried on corbels or consoles. Doorways. — Of all external features doorways give the greatest scope for ingenuity in decorative treatment, and they usually form the principal motive in a facade. The first stage was merely to translate the traditional doorway with its receding and enriched soffit and jambs into Renaissance detail, introducing columns, pilasters, niches, and figures, as, for instance, at L'Isle Adam (Fig. 98), and the churches at Tonnerre, and at Notre Dame, Guingamp (Fig. 102), where balusters take the place of canopy work. As the style advanced the concentric orders in the soffit were replaced by a coffered splay, as at Gisors and Dijon (Figs. 97 and in). The practice of interweaving classical elements with Gothic types of doorway soon led to that of enclosing the doorway in a more or less independent classical framework, as at St Martin at Epernay, and the great south doorway at St Eustache (Figs. 103 and 104). Then this frame became the most important element, and the arched opening gradually sank into insignificance, as at St Andre-lez-Troyes (Fig. 105). Doors. — Besides following the usual domestic types, church doors are sometimes much more elaborate, and are enriched with architectural features and sculpture. Such are the west doors of St Wulfran, Abbe- ville, by Jehan Mourette (1548-50), and the north doors of Beauvais Cathedral (Fig. 106), by Jehan Pot {c. 1535). Windows, Moulded Tracery. — In windows the pointed and semi- circular head is almost equally prevalent. Circular and occasionally elliptical lights also occur. Tracery was, as a rule, retained, except in the smaller single lights, and a few larger examples such as those in the chevet of St Pierre, Caen, where the existing tracery is a modern insertion (Fig. 1 1 3). Tracery was one of the hardest nuts the Renaissance designers had to crack, and it gave rise to many interesting experiments. Round forms had been introduced among the pointed ones even in Gothic times, e.g., in the screens of Albi Cathedral ; still the pointed may be found even late in the Renaissance. As variants on the hackneyed leaf forms, symbolical shapes such as hearts and fleurs-de-lys were intro duced together with geometrical ones — ellipses, lozenges, and hexagons. Most of these types may be seen at St Eustache (Figs. 95 and 104), where, however, the tracery is one of the weakest points. Radiating tracery is usual for rose windows, and is sometimes used for the heads of other windows and fanlights ; at Brie-Comte-Robert (Fig. 99) a circular window is designed as a many-petalled rose. Flat Tracery, &c. — Most of the above instances have splayed or moulded mullions and tracery. In the second half of Francis' reign, to2 RENAISSANCE ARCHlf ECTURE IX FRANCE. 106. Beauvais Cathedral: Doors of South Transeki (<-. 1535). another type with square section was introduced, whose flat faces were sometimes panelled or otherwise enriched, the mouldings, if any, pro- jecting from the face. The choir of Beaumont-le-Roger (Fig. 107) gives examples of several types. In the aisles the tracery is moulded, and consists of combinations of round arches and circles ; in the clearstorey it is of square section and the mullions have capitals. In one window the pattern simulates a ribbon interlacing in circles, in another it forms a monogram. From such a treatment, it was but a step to a further development in which the Gothic effect of growth is abandoned for the The style of erancts i. 103 classical effect of structure. Mullions become pilasters, curved heads arches ; cornices, gables, pediments are introduced, and, combined with scrolls and hori- zontal transoms, constitute a kind of skeleton edifice, as at La Ferte-Bernard, St Jean, Troves (Fig. 108), and St Pierre, Tonnerre. Cusping became less frequent as the Renaissance ad- vanced, but, where used, instead of growing out of the bars as before, it was often merely applied to them. Often, too, the minor members were not the full depth of the mullions, and appear on the outside of the glazing only. In unglazed tracery, as in 108. Troyes : Window in St Jean. Elevation. No Scale. Sketch hy the Author. Beaumont-le-Roger : Parish Church. Upper Portion of Choir. balustrades, screens, and the like, all the ahove types may be found, with a free use of animal and plant forms (Fig. 109). Ex- amples of pierced arabesques may be seen in the screen doors in the choir of Ecouis and in a stone screen in Rodez Cathedral. Troves. — Troyes possessed an active school of church builders and decorators, whose sphere of influence extended through- out southern Champagne and northern Burgundy. The introduction of Renais- sance work into the churches of Troyes was stimulated by the necessity for building and restoration after a fire which devastated the city in 1525, and further by the advent of the Florentine, Domenico Ricoveri or " del Barbiere," who settled there about 1545, and married his daughter to a native master- mason. Amongst other works he carried 104 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. SCALE % *"CCCHr* laifJfefxoorlFi SCALE0* JMETRE 109. Evreux Cathedral : Chapel Screen. Measured and Drawn by P. Hepworth. out the portal of St Andre-lez-Troyes (1549) with Francois Gentil. Earlier in the century Girard Faulchot, his son Jehan, and Maurice Fauxcreau had been working at the rebuilding of St Nicolas and St Pantaleon, which exhibit in their structure and fittings traces of the various changes of style throughout the century, as do several other churches in the city and neighbourhood. Tonnerre. — Tonnerre has two striking examples of Renaissance church work. At Notre Dame a west front was added to an existing church (1533-36), but unfortunately damaged by fire twenty years later. the style of francis I. l0 = no. Tonnerre: St Pierre. South Side. The massive tower with its spiral turret, the bold buttresses, the noble recessed doorway with a gallery and elaborate gable above, all treated in pure Francis I. detail, form a composition of remarkable beauty. St Pierre was some seventy years in rebuilding (1535-1603), and shows corresponding stylistic development (Fig. no). The great doorway in the south transept is treated with as much charm and greater reticence than that of Notre Dame. The south aisle elevations show an approximation to Henry II. work, while the north transept has considerable analogy, though in a severer manner, with the two fine transept fronts at St Florentin, a large cruciform church in the neigh- bourhood in which all the nave, but one bay, is lacking. The structure is largely Flamboyant, and Renaissance work of various periods has been interwoven into it in a perplexing manner. It is also a perfect museum of Renaissance fittings of all phases. Pontoisk. — At Pontoise, to the west of Paris, the church of St Maclou underwent constant alterations during the sixteenth century. The apse is of the twelfth century, and the bulk of the structure was of the fifteenth. From T524 to T540 a double aisle and chapels were Io6 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. in. Gisors : St Gervais and St Protais. West Front. added to the north side, the nave arcade and north-west crossing-pier rebuilt, but the vaults were retained. The beautiful doorway to the east of the chapels belongs to this period. A lantern was added to the tower by Pierre Le Mercier (1548-52), and later a single aisle and chapels with east and west doorways were added on the south, involving the rebuilding of the south arcade and south-west crossing-pier. f life STYLE OF FRANCIS 1. 16? Gisors, &c— The great church of St Gervais and St Protais at Gisors (Figs, in and 177) exhibits specimens of every stage of develop- ment traversed in the sixteenth century. The thirteenth-century choir was surrounded with new chapels and the central tower flanked by new transepts (Flamboyant) (1497-1521); the north portal was built; the nave with its double aisles and chapels and the west front rebuilt (mostly Louis XII., but the upper part and lantern of the north-west tower Francis I.) (1515-41); the high vaults fell in (1541); the damage was repaired and the works previously in progress completed (1547-58) ; the south-west tower, and probably the upper parts of the central and right-hand bays of the west front, were built (1559-75). The works were carried out by Robert Grappin (died c. 1545), and his sons Jean I. (died 1547), and Michel (died 1553), and after 1560 by his grandson Jean II. Pierre de Montheroult, probably the designer of the south- west tower, worked there from 1557 to 1560. Caen, &c— The churches of St Remy and St Jacques at Dieppe, the cathedral and St Taurin at Evreux, St Pierre at Dreux are rich in Renaissance work, as are also several churches at Caen. At St Pierre the four-sided apse (1521-28) (Fig. 113) has scarcely a trace of the Renaissance, but the chevet chapels added round it immedi- ately afterwards (1526-38), probably by Hector Sohier, are in luxuriant Francis I. work. La Ferte-Bernard. — The important church of Notre Dame-des- Marais at La Ferte-Bernard was largely altered and furnished in the sixteenth century by Mathurin Delaborde and the brothers Le Viet. In spite of the long continuance of the work little advance is shown in style, and Gothic traditions persisted to the end, side by side with Francis I. elements. The nave transepts and tower were rebuilt and the northern chapels begun (Flamboyant) (1450-1500). The southern and eastern chapels and the south-western chapel or sacristy were built (Louis XII. and Francis I.) (1520-44). The choir clearstorey and flying buttresses were added (Louis XII.) (1575-96). Cloisters, Mausolea. — Monastic architecture is almost confined to a few cloisters such as those of St Martin, Tours (Fig. 89), and Fontevrault. But the age of Francis I. is rich in sepulchral architecture. There are several examples of chapels built as family mausolea, generally with some form of domical roof, as that at Blere (1526), and the chapel of the Mistral family, or so-called " Pendentif de Valence " (c. 1549). Tombs. — Many Francis I. monuments, like those of the Gouffier family at Oyron (1532-39) by Jehan Juste, are of the altar tomb type. In the tomb of Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany, erected by Francis I. at St Denis, the sarcophagus stands in an arcaded shrine carrying the kneel- ing effigies and surrounded by allegorical figures on a broad pedestal. It was executed mainly by Antoine and Jehan Juste (1517-31). lo8 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. The tomb of Admiral Chabot by Jean Cousin (1543), once in the Celestine Church in Paris, fragments of which are preserved in the Louvre, is an example of the wall-niche type, which reaches its most splendid expression in the monument of George, Cardinal of Amboise, in the Lady Chapel of Rouen Cathedral (1520-25), attributed to Rouland le Roux, with several assistant sculptors (Fig. 114). The kneeling effigy rests on a black marble slab with an alabaster substructure, back- ground, and canopy, forming a setting, simple in its main lines, yet wrought up to a pitch of indescribable intricacy, with a wealth of statuary and bas-relief, shells and scrolls, wreaths, pendents, and candelabra. The monument was altered after 1540 to commemorate its builder, George II., of Amboise. Room was made for his effigy by prolonging the slab. Another type of monument was the wall tablet, a fine example of which is that of Cardinal Hemard in Amiens Cathedral (1543). At St Florentin and at St Andre, Joigny, are examples of Holy Sepulchres, and at Solesmes a series of monuments illustrat- ing the life of the Virgin. Fittings. — Church accessories and fittings in the style of Francis I. exhibit many delight- ful and ingenious applications of its characteristic decora- tion, while, as in the case of the church itself, the essential form remains little changed, as the ex- amples illustrated will show. They are a font from St Ouen at Pont Audemer (Fig. 112), a reredos from a chapel in the 112. Pont Audemer: Font in St Ouen. Cathedral at Sens 113. ST. PIERRE, CAEN. EAST END. THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. IO9 114. Rolen Cathedral: Tomb of the Cardinals oe Amboise in the Lady Chapel. (F'g- IJ5)> a portion of the rood screen of the Cathedral of Limoges (Fig. 116), and a wooden screen from that of Evreux (Fig. 109). Stained Glass, Colour Decoration. — The art of stained glass making continued to flourish during the reign of Francis I., and reached no RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 115. Sens Cathedral: Side Chapel. a pitch of excellence towards the end of it, scarcely surpassed even in the Middle Ages: Italian influence was confined to the character of the ornament and the interpretation of the subjects. The drawing and perspective improved, the treatment became rather more pictorial, while the colour acquired a delicacy hitherto unattained. The grisailles assumed more silvery tones, and the agglomerations of crocketed canopy work gave place to the simpler lines of Renaissance architecture and arabesques. The treatment still in the main fulfilled the requirements of the medium, though containing elements which led to decline in the second half of the century. Good specimens of sixteenth-century stained glass are to be seen in St Etienne-du-Mont, Paris, St Vincent, Rouen, and in the churches of Troyes. Renaissance churches were often decorated in colour. Examples of such decoration on roofs and walls are to be found in parts of the interior of St Eustache, and the castle chapels of Ecouen and La THE STYLE OF FRANCIS I. in 116. Limoges Cathedral: Part of Rood-Screen (from Cast in Trocadero Museum, Paris). Bourgonniere ; in slight traces on the exterior of the towers of Tours Cathedral ; on fittings such as the reredoses at St Andre-lez-Troyes, Hattonchatel, and St Wulfran at Abbeville. Regarded as a whole, the style of Francis I. must be felt to have fallen short of the highest achievements of architecture. It often lacks the sense of the monumental. Consistent setting-out 112 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. and refinement of proportion were but little attended to. Their place was taken by picturesque grouping, and somewhat immoderate use of ornament, and where, as at St Germain, greater severity was aimed at, the qualities, which charm elsewhere, largely evaporated. Buildings were too often an ill-digested aggregation of features, each beautiful in itself. So much may be admitted, but it would be grossly unfair as a complete verdict. The defects were to a large extent cor- rected in the last decade of Francis' reign ; and, apart from this, extreme delicacy of detail, profuse and exquisite ornament, great beauty and variety of design in individual parts must be placed in the opposite scale. When natural surroundings and the traditions of the mediaeval fortress lent their aid, even grandeur was attained ; great skill, too, was shown in the management of necessarily unsymmetrical facades, such as those of town houses where well-balanced and satisfying compositions were produced, which yet frankly expressed internal arrangement. He would be a hostile critic, indeed, who could study the best examples of the style without falling under the spell of its wayward fascination and overflowing fancy, its lightness, gaiety, and picturesqueness. 117. Initial of Francis I. n8. Cresting of Attic in Court of Louvre. CHAPTER III. STYLE OF HENRY II. (1530-90) KINGS. Francis I. (d. 1547). Henry II. (1547-59). Initial— H. Monogram — BH for Henry and Catharine, or Henry and Diana. Emblem — Crescent or three cres- cents. Motto — "Donee tot um im- pleat or be //i." Francis II. (1559-60). Initial— F or cj>. Emblem — Burning column and two globes. Mottoes — " Lumen Kectis " and ' ' Unrts non sufficit orbis. " Charles IX. (1560-74). Initial — K. Emblem — Two columns intertwined. Motto — " Pietate et iustitia." Henry III. (1574-89). Initial — H. Emblem — Three crowns. Motto — " Manet ultima ae/o." QUEENS. Catharine de' Medici. Initial— C or >K. Emblem — Comet crowned. Motto — " Fate prudentia major." Emblem (in widowhood) — Flames extinguished by tears, also broken fans and necklaces. Motto — ' ' Ardorem exstincta testantur invert fiamma." Mary Stewart. Monogram — W- Elizabeth of Austria. Initial — E. Emblem —Temple and dove. Motto — " In deo spes una.''' Louise of Vaudemont. Initial — A. Emblem — Sundial. Motto — " Aspicio tit aspiciar." CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH SOVEREIGNS. Henry VIII. [d. 1547); Edward VI. (1547-53); Mary (1553-8); Elizabeth (1558-1603). ADVANCED RENAISSANCE— INTRODUCTORY. Tilt, the end of Francis I.'s reign, and even a little beyond it, the style which bears his name continued to be practised, at any rate in provincial centres, and especially in church work. But for many years before his death a new influence had been undermining it. The advanced Roman Renaissance had been making its way into France in competition with the Lombard. The school of Fontainebleau was superseding the school of Amboise. This change of direction in the Renaissance movement was due to the combined agency of the new colony of artists whom Francis introduced into France, and of young Frenchmen who had been influenced by the newer Italian teaching in the course of their studies in Italy. The resulting style is usually called that of Henry II., a name justified on the grounds that Henry's brief reign covers approximately the central years of the period during which it prevailed, and saw the erection of some of its best edifices. It would, perhaps, have been more logical to give it the name of his Italian 114 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. queen, with whose life in France the period almost exactly coin- cides. Catharine de' Medici was married in 1533 and died in 1589, and, from the moment that she had the opportunity, till old age and straitened circumstances checked her, she was an assiduous builder. In the stage of architectural development, which forms the subject of this chapter, there are three sub periods, two of great activity, and one of relative stagnation, and again the establishment and culmination of a style of considerable restraint and refinement were succeeded by its decline into coarseness and licence. It would be convenient for the historian if these two sets of subdivisions exactly coincided ; if the purer classicism could all be assigned to the comparatively tranquil and artistically more fertile era of Francis I.'s latter years and Henry II. 's reign, the coarseness and extravagancies to the succeeding period of the Wars of Religion, with their anarchy and demoralisation. Though this is only partially the case, it may be said broadly that the advanced Renaissance was established under Francis, flourished under Henry, and declined under Henry's sons. From the first introduction of classical forms in the fifteenth century, they gradually displaced Gothic ones. In a transitional period of some twenty years, the new mingled with the old in ever-increasing proportion, till the latter were virtually eliminated ; in another period of some thirty years, classical forms clothed Gothic structure, and classic ideas began to influence the general design. It was to be expected that this process would eventually be completed by the whole design becoming classic in conception as well as detail. This was the course actually taken by events. The influence of Italy was essential to the initiation of the movement, but it is conceivable that the further development of the French Renaissance might have proceeded unaided to a culmination wholly different from that of Italy. Several causes, however, combined to tighten the bonds between the two countries, and perpetuate the direct influence of Italy in art, as well as in other spheres. A knowledge of Italian became a necessary part of good education. The French language was affected in vocabulary, pronunciation, and spelling by Italian and Latin. In literature, Italian and classical models were imitated. In science and politics, Italian theories were studied and applied. The cause is not far to seek. For sixty years French armies invaded and garrisoned the peninsula, and France was full of returned soldiers familiar with the language, ideas, and customs of Italy. Then, in a country like France, where a majority was opposed to ecclesiastical change, the links with Rome were strengthened. Again, the French kings were also rulers of Italian states, and as such able to command the services of Italians, a facility of which they were not slow to avail themselves. Finally, the Italian element at Court was strengthened by the style of Henry it 115 the advent, as Dauphiness, of a Medici princess, related to two popes and to the rulers of Florence. It would be strange had architecture not been carried along by the prevailing current. Before the end of the fifteenth century, French architects and craftsmen seldom, if ever, went to Italy for instruction ; in the early sixteenth, the practice was still rare, but gradually French architects shook off the belief in the all-sufficiency of craft-guild training and were fired with the wish to drink of the new art at its source. Since the works at St Peter's had entered on a period of renewed activity under Pope Julius II. (1503-13), Rome had become the central school of architecture for Italy and the Mecca of architectural pilgrims from both sides of the Alps. From the third decade of the century onwards, one young Frenchman after another set forth thither to pursue his studies before settling down to his career. Meanwhile the original Italian colony in France, drawn mainly from the northern cities, was supple- mented by a generation trained in the Roman school and therefore animated by a new order of ideas. The results of the persistence of Italian influence were not merely to continue the process of eliminating Gothic elements, but to imbue architecture with the new colour it had assumed in Italy. Thus the later phase was no mere intensification of the earlier, but different in character. The break with the past was completer, and the French architects were conscious of it. They regarded the style of Francis I. as showing but little advance on the barbarism conceived to have preceded it. Thus Goujon speaks of the works of "our modern masters" as "disproportioned and out of all symmetry," and attributes this to their ignorance of geometry, perspective, and Vitruvian teaching, while de l'Orme plumes himself on being the introducer of the new manner of building at St Maur-les-Fosses. Transition from Early to Advanced Renaissance. — The obsolescent style of Francis I. was being purified and perfected till, during the decade 1535-45, it combined something of the dignity and simplicity of the coming classical manner with the grace and playfulness of the first Renaissance. Architecture was undergoing a second transition. In the former one the early Renaissance penetrated into Gothic art. The process was now being repeated and the classical Renaissance was penetrating the first semi-Gothic Renaissance. There are thus two contemporary classes of work, one in which the general design is of Francis I. type with more classical feeling in the detail, and another in which the general design is beginning to be more classical, but retains early Renaissance detail. The first class corre- sponds to Bramante's second manner, and includes such buildings as the destroyed Celestine cloister in Paris (1539-45), the Hotel d'Ecoville at Caen, and the so-called house of Francis I. at Orleans (Figs. 73-76). u6 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. The second class corresponds to the type to which the Cathedral of Como belongs, and includes such buildings as the Chapel of St Romain at Rouen (Fig. 195), and the so-called Henry II. wing of the archbishop's palace at Sens (Fig. 119). This second transition is observable also in the Peristyle at Fontainebleau ; in the chateaux of Mesnieres, Landifer, and Serrant ; and in the Hotel Cabu at Orleans, by Michel Adam (now Museum). This change of character was produced by the influence of the architects of the Italian culminating phase as well as by the study of antiquity, both in its monuments and in Vitruvius. The styles in vogue under Henry II. in France and Pope Julius II. in Italy were thus closely allied, but not identical. Two points differentiate them. France had the benefit of experiments already made beyond the Alps, and had to take them into account, and in doing so she imbibed at the 119. Sens: Archbishop's Palace. Henry II. Wing. THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 117 outset a certain licence absent in the earlier work of the Italian Golden Age. Again climatic and traditional considerations obliged her to perpetuate certain unclassical dispositions. School of Fontainebleau, its Rise and Influence. — When, in 1526, Francis I. returned from his Spanish captivity, he devoted himself with renewed ardour to the extension and embellishment of his palaces, and lost no opportunity of attracting artists from beyond the Alps to his Court, whither architects, painters, sculptors, and workers in wood, bronze and the precious metals, in majolica and stucco, continued to arrive in increasing numbers. The old castle of Fontainebleau, at that time the centre of the king's interest, was undergoing extensive additions by more or less uneducated native masters. It was upon the decoration of this palace that the new- comers were principally set to work, and thus arose the so-called " School of Fontainebleau," which for half a century held a preponderating place in the artistic life of France, and was in a measure the foundation of modern French art. School indeed it was not, if the term implies a group of artists with common aims and methods. It was rather a fortuitous concourse of men representing the various tendencies of Italian art, often with divergent ideals and eager to eclipse, if not to destroy, each other's work. But collectively they constituted an epitome of their country's art and, as such, a school for the formation of French taste and of the French artists who worked with them. Moreover, what- ever their differences, the artists of Fontainebleau had this in common, they had all been trained in the great Julian age, and were all the spiritual offspring of the masters of the Roman Renaissance. This fact established a great contrast between their work and that of the builders around them, who were still following the lead of the school of Amboise and, whether French or Italian, had been nurtured on the traditions of the Lombard Renaissance. The existence and importance of the school of Fontainebleau have been the subject of the most various views. At first the Italians were credited with everything, and the most immature portions of Fontainebleau were fathered upon Serlio, Primaticcio, or Vignola. Then the patriotic critics, who claimed that the few genuine architects among the Italians had no chance of carrying out their designs, while the rest were stuccaieurs or fresco-painters, whose influence, such as it was, was regarded as having corrupted the purity of the native genius, and started French art on the downward grade. Systematic research is now putting the facts in a clearer light, and if the extent of each man's work is still uncertain, it can at least be determined what it is possible he may have done. Much of Francis' building in the palace can no longer be laid at the door of his Italian architects, whose reputation decidedly gains by being relieved n8 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 120. FONTAINEBI.EAU : CAR- TOUCHE by II Rosso in the Gallery of Francis I. of the responsibility for this infantile work, a mere echo of the Loire chateaux. To lay stress on the fact that most of the Italians were decorators rather than archi- tects, and on that ground to deny them a share in the architecture, is to misread the whole state of the arts in that age. The distinction did not exist, more par- ticularly in Italy. With hardly an ex ception every artist of note was a master in more than one medium, and it was thought as natural to place a Raphael or a Michael Angelo in charge of the building at St Peter's, as to commission a fresco from a Peruzzi, or a statue from a Sansovino. Even if it could be proved that no buildings in France are due to the second generation of Italian architects, their work there, decorative and literary, would still not be a negligible quantity. The existence of the Italian colony being admitted, its influence on French art is the necessary corollary of the qualifications of its members, even taken at the lowest estimate. FIRST SUB-PERIOD— ARCHITECTS AND BUILDINGS. Il Rosso. — The commencement of the new era may be dated from the arrival at Fontainebleau of II Rosso in 1530. Giovanni Battista di Giacopo, known in France as Maitre Roux (or Roux de Rousse) (born 1494 at Florence, died 154T at Fontainebleau), a follower of Michael Angelo and Parmigiano, was engaged by Francis as "conductor of stuccoes and paintings " at 50 1. a month, with a canonry of the Ste Chapelle and other benefices, a house in Paris and a lodging at Fontainebleau. There being no apartment of sufficient dimensions to give full scope to his talents, or to serve as a theatre for great Court functions, it may have been on his advice that it was decided to erect a gallery to connect the old Oval Court and the new forecourt (b on plan, Fig. 61). It is more than probable, at any rate, that the con- necting wing (1530-3), containing the so-called Gallery of Francis I. (or Petite Galerie) (Fig. 62) on the first floor, the royal library in the roof, and steam baths (etuves) below, was designed by him, as it un- THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 119 121. FONTAINEBLEAU : GALLERY OF FRANCIS I., KY II ROSSO. doubtedly was decorated by him and his staff of painters and stucco- workers. The wing had windows on both sides, and was broken only by a small central pavilion. The treatment of the elevations consisted in a long range of tall windows on the piano nobile, each flanked by shallow Doric pilasters, alternating with shallow panels, and surmounted by a simple unbroken entablature and tall stone dormers with quietly designed, but slightly bizarre, pediments. In repose, clarity of setting out and purity of detail, this wing was in marked contrast to anything previously built at Fontainebleau. Of the internal decorations executed by Rosso, only those in the gallery of Francis I. remain (Fig. 121), and they have been much muti- lated. The gallery is about 165 feet long and 20 feet wide and high. Above a carved and inlaid walnut dado, and below a, coffered walnut ceiling, the wall surfaces are divided into panels of various sizes and shapes in rhythmical alternation with enriched frames containing figure subjects in fresco. These are surrounded with an elaborate stucco decoration in high relief (Fig. 120), consisting of cartouche work boldly outlined and nervously drawn, interspersed with figures, mnsks, urns, shells, and swags of fruit, divided at intervals into bays by engaged columns and upright panels, painted with pendent garlands ; parts of the stucco work being left white, others coloured and gilded. This type of decoration, in which colour and relief are mingled, seems to have been Rosso's invention. The gallery was not quite completed 120 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. when he died of poison, self-administered, it is said, on the discovery that he had wrongly accused his friend Pellegrino of embezzlement. Primaticcio. — Francis I., who wished to rival the most splendid palaces of Italy, and could thus find work for more than one first-rate artist, requested the Duke of Mantua to spare him Giulio Romano. But the latter refused to leave Italy, and sent his principal assistant at the Palazzo del Te in his stead. Francesco Primaticcio (born 1504 at Bologna, died 1570), on reaching Fontainebleau (1531), entered on a career of unbroken success at the French Court. He was known in France as "le Primatice," or " Primadicy," also " le Sieur de Boulongne " from his birthplace, and " l'Abbe de St Martin " from one of the benefices later bestowed on him. His salary as "conductor or apportioner of works of stucco and painting" was at first only 25 1. a month, but was increased to 600 1. a year when he was appointed "Valet de Chambre " (1539). Of his earlier works little remains except the decoration of the archway in the Pavilion de la Porte Doree (x535)> ar>d perhaps the chimney-piece of the so-called Salon de Francois I. (really Queen Eleanor's room). Much more important was the decoration of the Great Gallery, or Gallery of Ulysses, from its containing 161 subjects from the "Odyssey," begun about fhis period with a large staff of assistants. The gallery, which was 500 feet long, occupied the upper storey in the south wing of the then new forecourt, destroyed in 1738 (c on plan, Fig. 261 ; cf. also Fig. 62). The decoration was not finished till 1570. In 1540 Primaticcio was sent to Rome to make drawings of ancient monuments and collect works of art, but was hurriedly recalled on Rosso's death to take sole charge of the works at the palace. He returned, accompanied by Vignola, with 133 chests of casts and antiques. Vignola (born 1507, died 1573) only remained a few months, and seems to have been solely occupied with casting bronzes. Among Primaticcio's further works for Francis are the decoration of the chamber of the Duchess of Etampes (1543), now forming the upper portion of the great staircase, and of the vestibule in the Pavilion de la Porte Doree (1544) and the design for the destroyed fountain-pavilion in the Fountain Court. The works of Rosso and Primaticcio are barely distinguishable as regards architectural style. Cellini, Serlio. — The year 1541 was marked by the arrival of two other distinguished Italians. The first was Benvenuto Cellini (born 1500, died 157 1) who was engaged by Francis I. as a goldsmith at 700 1. a year, with a dwelling in Paris. He then took up sculpture and made the celebrated bronze nymph of Fontainebleau, soon trans- ferred to Anet and now in the Louvre, but having fallen foul of Primaticcio and the Duchess of Etampes, he returned to Italy in 1542. The second was Sebastiano ("Bastiannet") Serlio (born 1475 at Bologna, THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 121 died 1554 at Fontainebleau). The professional heir of Baldassarre Peruzzi, he had spent much time in measuring ancient buildings and had begun the publication of a general treatise on architecture. On Primaticcio's recommendation Francis appointed him "painter and architect in ordinary in the matter of edifices at F[ontainebleau] where the said lord retained him to that end." His stipend was 400 1. with travelling allowances and residences in Paris and Fontainebleau. In appearance he was to succeed Rosso as general architect over the builders, but Francis may have merely intended Serlio's appointment as a means of facilitating the studies and literary work of the most dis- tinguished writer on architecture of the day. Be this as it may, Primaticcio remained in charge of the decorative works, and the Frenchmen probably saw to it that Serlio should have no say in building matters. The result was, as Serlio himself bitterly complains, 122. Fontainebleau: Grotto of the Pines. from a Drawing by P. Hepworth, 122 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 123. Chateau ok Ancy-le-Franc. From a Drawing by Du Cerceau. that no architectural work fell to his share. There is a possible exception in the Grotto of the Pines (h on plan, Fig. 61) at the south-west angle of the forecourt, consisting of a vaulted loggia decorated internally with painting and shell work, and faced with bold rustication on which the forms of four Atlantes emerge dimly from the rough hewn masonry (Fig. 122). Authorities differ as to its date, some placing it about 1531, in which case it must be assigned to Rosso or Primaticcio, others some ten years later, which would make it possible for Serlio to have designed it, and it certainly fits well with his manner. Ancy-le-Franc. — The influence of the Italian colony was not con- fined within the precincts of the Palace of Fontainebleau. Serlio found a private client in the Cardinal Ippolito of Este for whom he built a magnificent hotel at Fontainebleau (1544-6), of which the rusticated gateway is the only relic. The similar gateway of the Hotel de Montpensier near by, the rest of which has likewise disappeared, may also well be by him. As for Primaticcio there is no valid reason for disputing the traditional view that he was the architect of Ancy-le-Franc, begun perhaps as early as 1538 and finished by 1546. This chateau (Fig. 123) is one of the most interesting achievements of the period: not only is it one of the earliest examples of the matured Renaissance in France, but it shows a very complete, if cold, fusion of French and Italian ideas. The detail (Fig. 124) and composition of the elevations show a pure classical treatment and the plan an absolute symmetry (Fig. 125), while the court, enclosed on all sides by lofty buildings of equal height, and surrounded by open arcades, makes perhaps a nearer approach to an Italian "cortile" than any other in Prance. At the same time the French tradition is retained in the pavilions at the angles and the steep roofs. THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 123 124.' Ancy-le-Franc : Balcony over Entrance Door. Serlio's Influence and Writings. — The importance of the Italian colony cannot be entirely measured by the buildings erected by them. The style of decoration, which they introduced, forms the starting point to which all the subsequent styles are ultimately traceable. The change for the better which marks the building at Fontainebleau in the later years of Francis — the chapel of St Saturnin, the Ballroom, the Peristyle — is attributable to their influence, if not to their authorship. Further, the teaching of Serlio was perhaps a more potent force than anything he might have built could have been. The fame of his writings preceded him in France ; Francis was probably induced to take him into his service by his reputation as an authority on the theoretical side of his profession and on ancient monuments ; and during his life in France he published further instal- ments of his 7)iagnum opus. The moment of his arrival was that at which French opinion was awaking to the consciousness that the archi- tecture, which had been in fashion for a generation as representing ancient methods, was merely Gothic served up with Italian sauce, and that something more radical was needed to bring it into line with the best work of the day. He came with the reputation of being 125. 1° consisting of the two wings and their connecting screen. These are principally noticeable for the treatment of the windows (Fig. 127), whose tendency to over elaboration is redeemed by the ■ 149. Toulouse : Hotel d'Assezat, probably by N. Bachelier (1555). Entrance. THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 155 150. Toulouse : Hotel d'Assezat. Loggia in Coukt. distinction of the detail and the ner- vous sculpture of their varied car- touche motives and caryatids. Many old towns, especially Nancy, Langres, Chartres, and Orleans, contain good examples of Henry II. houses. Public Build- ings.— Among the rare instances of public buildings of this period the curious " Chance 1- lerie" at Loches, parts of the Palais de Justice at Grenoble and the following works of Bachelier 151. Toulouse : Hotel d'Assezat. Plan. i56 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. and his school, the Hotel des Viguiers at Albi, and the gate- way in the Court of the Capitole at Tou- louse may be men- tioned. Interior s. — The only systems of vaulting used in secu- lar work were simple and intersecting barrels, or domes, more or less enriched with bands or coffer- ing. The staircase for the Louvre has a splendid example of a richly decorated barrel vault (Fig. 153). The beams in wood ceilings were more frequently clothed with panel- ling, as in the King's Room at the Louvre, and the Salle de Diane at Anet ; and movable hangings were more often replaced by permanent decorations. In the treat- ment of door, shutters, panelling, and indeed all features, larger and bolder patterns were preferred, with a tendency to make of each a single centralised design with one dominant feature (Fig. 154), while the characteristic of the best rooms is the manner in which all their features were combined into a consistent whole. Colour Decoration. — The brilliancy of the colour schemes have seldom been surpassed. The panelling of walls and ceilings, often in walnut, was enriched not only with carving and gilding, but with marquetry of coloured woods, and inlays of ivory, ebony, precious metals, and even of marble. The floors were in parquet work, or paved with marbles, or with the faience tiles, now made at home in imitation of the imported Italian ones. A French peculiarity in their use was the subdivision into panels by bands of tiles, self-coloured — generally blue — or painted in running patterns, as in the Salle des Fetes at 152. Toulouse: Hotel d'Assezat. View in Court. THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 157 Ecouen. The wall surfaces were cover- ed with fresco, tapestry, or dyed leather, and these decorations were set in frames of stucco, modelled in high relief with scroll work and figures in the round. Another form of decoration was carried out in leather, modelled soft after long boil- ing and then colour- ed and gilded. Chimney- pieces. — The chimney-piece was still the most im- portant feature in a room, and was often in coloured marbles. In the Salle des Fetes at Ecouen it covers almost the whole of one wall. The general design was much what it had been hitherto, though treated in more classical forms, but the fire was usually enclosed on three sides, and the opening often framed in by an archi- trave. Examples may be seen in the museums of the Louvre (from Villeroy), of Cluny (Fig. 156), of Nancy (Fig. 155), and of Caen. 1 Si The Louvre: Vault of Great Staircase, by Jean Goujon. THIRD SUB-PERIOD— HISTORY AND ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTER. Reigns of Francis II., Charles IX., and Henry III. ; Wars of Religion. — Henry II.'s sudden death by accident in a tournament left France in a dangerous condition. His eldest son, Francis II., was a sickly boy of sixteen, and his widow devoid of political influence. Power thus fell into the hands of the Guises, uncles of the young queen, i58 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. U THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 159 - — ' -fc/SJV" — *^.<*# * V, -M a Mary Stewart, and leaders of the ex- treme Catholic faction. The Protestants, under the leadership of the Bourbons, a distant branch of the royal family, and the patriotic Coligny, and smart- ing from thirty- years of persecu- tion, were deter- mined to secure the recognition of their religion. The moderate Cath- olics, attached to the throne but anxious for con- ciliation, formed a third party — the Politiques. Outside parties stood the sceptical Catharine, trained in the school of Macchiavelli, not naturally cruel or vicious, but bent on power at any price. The short reign of Francis II. was marked by constant disturbances ; his death (1560) dispossessed the Guises and gave Catharine the regency for her second son Charles IX. On the failure of compromises three civil wars ensued (1562-70) followed by temporary pacifications. Catharine, with her Italian advisers and the Guises, then decided to end the trouble by a bold stroke, which Charles was induced to authorise (1572), but the situation was only envenomed by the massacre, on St Bartholomew's Day, of Coligny and thousands of Protestants gathered in Paris for the wedding of the young King of Navarre, Henry of Bourbon, with the King's sister, Margaret. Charles IX., though ill- balanced and violent, in his saner moments took pleasure in the society of literary men, and loved music and art. On his death (1574) he was succeeded by his brother, Henry of Anjou. Brave and gifted intellectu- ally, he was morally the worst of his family, and if matters were bad 156. Rouen: Upper Part ok Door at St Maclou. l6o RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. under his brothers they became desperate under Henry III. In pro- fligacy his court eclipsed all precedents. The king led the fashion for degrading vices, effeminate manners and costume, trivial amusements and fantastic luxury, accompanied by superstitious religious observ- ances, while the precincts of his palaces were the scene of duels and murders. The Catholic League, founded to extirpate heresy and forward the ambitions of the Guises, gained control of half the kingdom and kept alive the civil war for twenty years (1576-95), the struggle being waged with increasing barbarity. The country was overrun by marauding bands, and no man's life or property, no woman's honour was safe. In 1588 Henry III., driven from Paris by the League, caused Henry of Guise and his brother to be assassinated at Blois, and soon after took refuge with Henry of Bourbon and the Protestants. Catharine died a few days after the murder, and her son's assassination six months later ended the war of the three Henries. The King of Navarre thus became King of France as Henry IV. (1589), and at length the threads of national life, tangled and rent by generations of incompetence and disorder, were in firm hands able to unravel them and weave them again into a strong and harmonious fabric. Character of Period of Anarchy. — An era of fert-ie enthu- siasm and high endeavours is often followed by one of comparative disillusionment and sterility. In France the reaction was hastened and intensified by a prolonged anarchy, attended by demoralisation in social and political life. Society indulged in the grossest profligacy. Public affairs were governed by intrigue, corruption, and crime. All offices were for sale. Religion was marked by increased fanaticism. On one side bigotry and superstition went hand in hand with vice and murder ; on the other, harsh austerity, an illiberal theology replaced the ardour of the early Reformation ; and many of the ablest minds took refuge in an easy-going scepticism. Montaigne's essays flow on easily and without plan, preaching a philosophy of expediency. Brantome strings together vivid but scandalous anecdotes, and, accepting the low moral tone of his contemporary society, sees no shame in painting it to the life. The eager outlook and the faith in progress of the dawning Renaissance, the ordered acquirements and constructive genius of its maturity had been followed by the pococurantism of its decline. Not Rabelais' " Sursum corda " but Montaigne's " Que sais-je ? " was the keynote of the era of Henry III. The process of disintegration had its counterpart in art. The pure forms and ordered sequences of classical tradition ceased to satisfy the jaded taste, and the artist replaced simple and straightforward forms by exaggerated and abnormal types, and over-elaboration. This THE STYLE OF HENRY ft l6l tendency went hand in hand, as it had done in the last stage of Gothic, with an excessive realism in the portrayal of nature. The Court and Architecture. — The interest taken in art by royal persons, which in the early Renaissance period had been so stimulating an influence, was too much in accordance with the tendencies of the age, for the taste of the last Valois kings, though cultivated, leaned to the extravagant. Their mother has been represented as the inspirer of the arts of her time, and, according to the writer's bias, either as their good or evil genius. It is certain that she gave employment to almost every important artist of the day, but whether, as de l'Orme would have us believe, she was a skilful planner and suggested his best inventions, is a question which cannot now be settled. Effects of the Anarchy on Architecture. — The material effects of the anarchy were as disastrous to the aits, as the moral. Few new works could be undertaken, buildings in course of construction were abandoned, existing ones frequently destroyed. So long as the great courtiers of Francis I. and Henry II. lived, architectural activity did not slacken, but the du Bellays had preceded Henry II. to the grave, Diane de Poitiers followed him in 1566, and Montmorency a year later. The death of Charles IX. in 1574 closes the great building era, for, though his mother lived on till 1589, even her insatiable appetite for stones and mortar met with an effectual check in lack of funds and the general insecurity. If men had little leisure or opportunity for building perhaps they had also little need. The architectural output of the last two generations must have left the upper classes amply housed. Charles IX., it is true, not satisfied with the endless residences of his grandfather and father, undertook a vast new hunting seat of his own, but Charleval was little more than begun when he died, and was soon abandoned. Catharine, too, left the Tuileries in a fragmentary condition, partly perhaps on account of its insecure position outside the walls, while Henry III. was too poor to complete the court or galleries of the Louvre, the tomb of his parents at St Denis, or a public work of such importance as the Pont Neuf — too poor even to pay his troops. Du Cerceau gives a dismal picture of the destructive results of the anarchy in the dedication to Catharine de' Medici of " Les Plus Excellents Bastiments de France," written in 1576 during a temporary lull. "Madame," he says, "after it hath pleased God to send us by your means a peace so needful and desired of all, I thought I could do nought more appropriate than bring to light this first book of the exquisite buildings of this kingdom ; hoping that our poor Frenchmen (to whose eyes and understandings there is now presented naught else but desolations, ruins, and havoc, which the late wars have brought us) will perchance, while they breathe again, 1 1 1 62 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. take some pleasure and content in contemplating here a part of the fairest and most excellent edifices wherewith France is still to-day enriched." With the diminished demand for architectural talent the supply also declined. The great figures were thinned out one by one by death or exile, and after 1578 Jacques du Cerceau was the only one left of that brilliant company ; six years later he too vanishes from history. Thence- forward till the reign of Henry IV. only somewhat shadowy personalities flit across the stage. Well might Mayenne, writing in 1590 in reference to the appointment of Baptiste's successor as architect to the royal buildings, lament " the paucity of persons at present to be found capable of exercising the said profession on account of the misery of the times." Architects had been constantly harassed by devastating wars, and the more liable to suffer from religious persecution that they were often Protestants. In 1562 Goujon sought safety by flight to Bologna, where he died shortly afterwards, and Palissy was imprisoned ; after temporary release the latter succumbed in 1589 to the effects of four years of con- finement and ill-treatment. Jacques du Cerceau lost all he possessed in the first civil war and probably ended his days in exile (1584), while his son Baptiste twice saw his house sacked, and was obliged, accord- ing to one account, to resign his post as architect to the king from conscientious motives. In 1569 Charles IX. dismissed all Protestants in the royal employ. In short, during these troublous years no architect, certainly no Huguenot architect, could hope to carry on his calling unmolested, unless shielded by a powerful patron. To the credit of some of the most prominent Catholics be it said that they recognised and protected Huguenot talent. It was through Mont- morency's influence that Palissy was released from his first imprison- ment, through that of Catharine that he was spared at the St Bartholomew, and that of Mayenne that he escaped execution. The elder du Cerceau owed many years of quiet to the protection of the Protestant Duchess of Ferrara and also of the Catholic Duke of Nemours, while funds and facilities for his publications were supplied by the Queen-Mother and her sons. Characteristics of Style. — When the later sixteenth century is described as one of architectural decadence the expression must be regarded as relative. Extravagances were of gradual growth and do not cover the whole work of the period. Some sound and pure classical design dates at any rate from the years 1560-80, while the charge of barrenness is strictly only applicable to the following decade. Still, certain characteristics seem to mark off much of the architecture under the later Valois from that which had preceded. Just at a time when building was becoming more and more difficult, a spirit of megalomania seems to have seized the builders. Not only was scale THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 163 increased in elevations by every device, including that of the giant order, but plans became more vast. This was often accompanied by a restless striving after effect, a forcing of the note, a coarsening of detail, a cruder, more cheerless character in the colour schemes. These tendencies manifest themselves in a preference for complex, agitated, or monstrous forms over simple, quiet, and natural ones, as in the use of pediments one within another, or broken and even with their halves reversed, architraves complicated with frequent shoulders and ressauts, and lines interrupted by adventitious ornament, cornices curled up at the ends into scrolls, the frequency of curved forms for windows, dormers, and roofs, the introduction of polygonal arches and elliptical columns, the abuse for architectural functions of human and animal forms, which are sometimes composite monsters such as women with moths' wings and dogs' legs ; or else of abnormal proportions or conflicting scales. One symptom of the tendency to over-emphasis is the love for rustication applied in and out of season, as well as in strange forms, and with vermiculation carved into waves, ropes, or fbwers. Some of the above characteristics may be traced in the early phases of the Renaissance. The difference between them when occurring at the beginning and at the end of the century is (inde- pendently of the type of detail in which they are treated) that in the former case they are the result of incomplete acquaintance with classical forms, in the latter of a deliberate rejection of classical tradition with the object of obtaining more varied effects. It is not suggested that all such characteristics are necessarily reprehensible. Many of them have now entered into the stock in trade of Renaissance design and when treated with taste are capable of effective application. THIRD SUB-PERIOD— ARCHITECTS AND BUILDINGS. De l'Orme Dismissed. — The immediate result of Henry's death was a revolution in the royal office of works similar to that which had followed his accession — de l'Orme was dismissed and Primaticcio appointed Superintendent of the Royal Buildings. It has generally been represented that Catharine de' Medici sought to avenge the indignities she had suffered at the hands of her rival by wounding her in the person of Diana's protege. The annoyance which de l'Orme's disgrace would cause to Diana may have added a spice to it for Catharine, but she was ever guided rather by policy than vindic- tiveness, and since at first the Guises were all powerful, and she was in agreement with them in her dislike of Diana and Montmorency, it was natural that their dependents, including not only de l'Orme but Bullant as well, should be deprived of office. Beyond this, other 164 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. considerations may have contributed to de l'Orme's fall. In spite of his habit of self-laudation his undertakings were not always successful, and the Guise family in particular had had a bitter experience of him at Meudon (see p. 145). Again the autocratic and meddlesome fashion in which he had exercised his office had made him very unpopular. He had deprived Bullant of half his salary to increase that of his own brother, Jean, and we have only his own word for it that the contractors, whom he forced to disgorge large sums, were fraudulent. Meanwhile in spite of his disclaimers, his estate at his death is evidence that he was amassing a large fortune. The tales reach- ing the authorities may have supplied sufficient reason for again seeking a report on the royal build- ings. Be this as it may, de l'Orme does not seem to have been deprived of the benefices conferred on him, one of which gave him the right to work lucrative marble quarries, and his disgrace was a ^^^^^ short one. Within three i'tHlli" -^^^^Bfc years he was in Catharine's iljjjr **£ If]! employ, and, though he •ta^ F never regained the same ■ ' £_ position of authority, his '.- ... <• j? last years were by no means unoccupied. P r 1 m a t 1 c c 1 o ' s Ap- pointment.— That the choice of a successor should have fallen on Primaticcio can cause no surprise. If in addition to nearly thirty years' work at Fontainebleau he had carried out such important buildings as Ancy-le-Franc and Monceaux, no more competent person could be found, while the Queen's wish to have her own architect and countryman at the head of the royal buildings is extremely natural. The keen interest she took in them is in itself almost a proof that she would not appoint, or maintain in office, 157- Dijon : Oriel, 37 Rue de la Vannerie. THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 165 a man of whose competence she was not assured. One of the principal objects of his appointment was, as in de l'Orme's case, that he should design the late king's sepulture. But no mere tomb would satisfy Catharine's views, she dreamed of nothing less than eclipsing the mausoleum of her own family at San Lorenzo in Florence. It will be seen later under the head of church architecture (see pp. 200-202) in what a stately manner Primaticcio gave effect to her wish to honour in death the husband, who in life had slighted and neglected her. That Primaticcio was the designer of this so-called Tower or Chapel of the Valois was long accepted with practical unanimity, and his posi- tion as titular architect controlling the administration of the works is not questioned by any one. The similarity with the Louvre is too slight and general to be used as a ground for fathering the design on Lescot, and a conclusive proof that he was not the architect is supplied by the fact that on Primaticcio's death the charge of the works was offered to him and declined on the plea of pressure of work. Primaticcio at Fontainebleau. — To Primaticcio, then, as architect in charge, everything carried out at Fontainebleau between 1559 and 1570, the date of his death, must be attributed. The defensive char- acter of the castle had been diminished under Francis I. to a degree very unsafe in times of civil war. Charles IX. increased it again by cutting a moat, which passed across the White Horse Court, and a rusticated gateway was built for the drawbridge which spanned it (1562). This gateway may now be seen incorporated in the so-called Porte Dauphine (q on plan, Fig. 61 and Fig. 226). Shortly after the prin- cipal west front of the palace was completed (1565), and the defences supplemented by a wing running south to the lake from the old donjon (k on plan, Fig. 61). Towards the Fountain Court, which it thus enclosed, the new wing presents a stately yet simple facade, in which two great open stairs with heavily rusticated walls lead up from the centre in opposite directions to the upper storey. This contained a great festival hall from whose splendid chimney-piece erected under Henry IV. the whole wing was known as " Aile de la Belle Cheminee." De l'Orme's Later Works. — Primaticcio, under Catharine, seems to have exercised a sort of dictatorship of the arts, wider even than de l'Orme's during his period of ascendancy. No industry capable of artistic treatment was outside his province. Side by side with archi- tecture and decoration proper he gave designs for tapestry, embroidery, enamels and so forth. He must thus have been fully occupied with his multifarious duties, and it is no wonder that Catharine should have turned to a less busy man for the fresh enterprises she now had in contemplation. The immediate purposes of de l'Orme's dismissal had been fulfilled. The inquiry into his conduct had perhaps been satis- factory. Perhaps, too, she may have been influenced by a memoir, 1 66 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. which he wrote in the first bitterness of his disgrace to clear himself of the charges brought against him. The Tuileries. — In any case she commissioned him to design the new palace of the Tuileries, where, unconfined by crowded streets and city walls and yet almost at the gates of the Louvre, she could develop a scheme of airy courts and broad gardens. The site of some tileworks was purchased in 1562, and building began two years later. De l'Orme's design, only known till recently from the plan and a few details published in " I.es Plus Excellents Bastiments de France," and from the small part built, can now be studied in full in du Cerceau's bird's-eye views (Fig. 139), which explain some obscure points and exonerate him from the responsibility of the queer domed tower of later date (Fig. 297), hitherto attributed to him. Space being no object the buildings were kept low, and only the pavilions had two full storeys with dormers above in the roof, while the connecting galleries consisted of a single storey with an attic over it. The total area covered was to have measured about 875 by 540 feet, the central court measuring about 370 by 290 feet (see plan, Fig. 158). This court lay across the width of the palace and was flanked by two lesser courts, each subdivided by an assembly hall of elliptical plan. While the twelve angle and axial pavilions were to have plain pavilion roofs, these halls were to have curved roofs, doubtless constructed on the architect's system of timber-doming. His other favourite invention, the " French Order," was applied to the Ionic columns and pilasters, which emphasise the pavilions. The open arcades which ran along the outer faces of the central portion (Fig. 159) were similarly treated, while the attics here and in the main court were composed of high dormers alternating with FCFT METRFJ 158. The Louvre and Tuileries in 1580: Plan. THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 167 pedimented panels, both of great rich- ness. Thus the fan- tastic and restless elaboration of the centre was counter- acted by the stable formality of its sur- roundings as well as the beauty of its detail.* Chenonceaux. — It seems probable that de l'Orme was also employed by Catharine to scheme extensions to her chateau of Chenon- ceaux (Fig. 161), which illustrate by their vastness the ample conceptions of the age, and in which, if carried out, the original castle would have been an insignificant detail. The main block was to be flanked by two rectangular blocks rising like it out of the water, while in front and on dry land a splendid court of honour was planned with a hemicycle at each side leading to further halls of state, and approached through a great forecourt with converging sides. Only a fragment of schemes for the Tuileries and Chenonceaux was carried out before de l'Orme's death in 1570, soon after which both were abandoned. The Louvre Galleries. — Meanwhile an attempt was being made to connect the Queen's new residence with the old Louvre by means 159. The Tuileries : Part of de l'Orme's Loggia (Rebuilt in the Gardens). * See note on p. 141. According to M. Batiffol's theory, a country house on the site of the garden front of the Tuileries, and strikingly similar to the portions actually executed, formed part of Lescot's scheme for the Louvre extension prepared in 1549- De l'Orme, on this view, merely elaborated the design of the Tuileries already laid down in principle, and suggested an enlargement of it at a time when the junction of the two palaces had been temporarily abandoned. 1 68 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. of galleries carried along the Seine (Fig. 222). A one-storeyed loggia with terrace roof was built, running from the south-west angle of the Louvre towards the river. The author of this very chaste design, whose decoration consists in an alternation of smooth bevelled projecting courses, enhanced by black marble pil- asters and tablets, and in figures of Fame, "Renom- mees," in the span- drils of the arches by ^^^^ Barthelemi Prieur, is Jjjj^^^l^gjjgJ- -'-^i^i*'^"1 --'-;'-rj not known. Pierre '■*&** "Sambiche," who worked on it, pos- sibly a son of the Pierre Chambiges employed by Francis, was no more than a contractor, and Lescot may well have been the architect. This gallery came to be known as the "Petite Galerie"( Fig. 160), in contradis- tinction to the neigh- bouring "Grande Galerie " along the Seine partly built at the same time (1566- 72). The two were at first separated by an existing building on the site of the present "Salle des Antiques." The first instalment of the wing which eventually connected the two palaces reached from this to the "Pavilion Lesdiguieres," and was a one-storeyed gallery. Its decoration consists in a much enriched Doric order of pilasters with a charming sculptured frieze, and in bands of rustication either vermiculated or treated with other devices.* * See notes on pp. 141 and 167. According to M. Batiffol's view, Lescot's 1549 160. The Louvre: "Petite Galerie" (Lower Storey, 1566 ; Upper Storey, c. 1596 ; Attic, 1853)- THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 169 Bullant's Later Works. — On the death of de l'Orme and Primaticcio, Jean Bullant became architect to the King and the Queen-Mother. He carried on the work of the Valois Mausoleum, may have designed the upper storey of the Aile de la Belle Cheminee at Fontainebleau, and certainly worked at the Tuileries. At de l'Orme's death only the central portion of the garden front was built. Bullant added a pavilion at the end of the southern gallery (see plan, Fig. 158) (1570-72). In doing so, he substituted a plain order for the banded one, and introduced split and reversed pediments and a highly ornate attic storey. Catharine, however, soon abandoned the idea of going further with the building (1572), and Bullant was instructed to build 161. Chateau of Chenonceaux : De l'Orme's Scheme of Enlargement. Plan. From du Cerceau. her a smaller but still important mansion within the city walls, on the site of the present Bourse du Travail (formerly Halle aux Bles), in which the only relic of Catharine's mansion, a turret in the form of a Doric column, is incorporated. No clear idea of this last work of the master can be formed from extant illustrations. Descriptions speak of this Hotel de la Reine, or, as it was called later " Hotel de Soissons," as a gloomy pile, but commend its chapel and fountain. Du Cerceau's Later Works. — Du Cerceau seems to have obtained scheme included both the Petite Galerie (as a single-storeyed loggia) and the Grande Galerie as far as the Pavilion Lesdiguieres (designed as at present with two storeys and a mezzanine). 170 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 3EanflBlHHB0i98aMi 162. Chateau de Verneuil-sur-Oise : First Scheme. Entrance Front. (Probably by J. A. nu Cerceau the Elder.) From a Drawing by the Architect. his first considerable opportunities for active practice while residing under the protection of Renee of Ferrara at Montargis (1562-9). It has been conjectured with much probability that the Maison Blanche at Gaillon was built for Cardinal Charles of Bourbon from his designs (c. 1565). This fantastic erection illustrates some of the worst tendencies of the age, indiscriminate ornament and rustications, figures of conflicting scale, caryatids, half term, half woman, with butterflies' wings. It would, however, be absurd to be too severe on what was, after all, a mere caprice intended as the scene of an occasional summer frolic. Verneuil. — Some of the same love of the grotesque and the over- elaborate, and the same failure to keep scale characterise du Cerceau's more important works. But here, as in the case of the Tuileries, these exuber- ances are kept in check by the large and orderly framework of the total scheme, and affect only certain features. His first considerable work was the chateau of Verneuil-sur-Oise begun in 1565 and [H f i-yMm* continued on an extensively remodelled ^ ^.VvVt rV-^-4"iri^ Ji design for the Duke of Nemours, son-in- irJPai^tr1' iaw °f Ren^e 4\ ' ■ -IT ||n 11 8 fcrn:::n: I R tniiTiii.-jririin cnn * £ raj * * r fTf 0 ; R H I s R ■""If afHcnsjqifj 166. Chateau of Charleval (Probably by J. A. nu Cerceau the Elder). From a Drawing by the Architect. purely rectilinear and an extremely beautiful and stately one (Fig. 1 66). The elevations are only known in a fragmentary manner, and can scarcely be judged as a whole. The general scheme was one of brick walling with stone dressings and was divided into bays by a giant order of pilasters (Fig. 167). The giant order, though infinitely more appropriately used than was the case in Bullant's work, does not attain the simple logicalness of Monceaux, since the pediments of the THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 173 167. Charleval: Variant Schemes for Elevations by du Cerceau. 168. Chateau oe Sully-en-Bourgogne : Elevation in Court. i/4 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. upper windows are made to break into the entablature. The pilasters are rusticated not with de l'Orme's system of alternately long and short courses, or that of approximately equal smooth and enriched courses as in the Louvre galleries, but with that used in certain parts of Monceaux, where each course from top to bottom was rusticated, imparting an air of strength to the building. The win- dows, of which there is a pair in each bay, have their jambs rusticated in the same manner, and the detail elevations show an infinity of alternative treat- ments for these bays for use doubtless in different parts of the palace. They involve, certainly, some of the debased characteristics of the period, but evince an immense ingenuity and know- ledge of the possi- bilities of classical design. Baptiste du Cerceau. — Of the work of du Cer- ceau's sons at this period little is known. The elder, Baptiste, appears to have assisted his father at Verneuil and Charleval. In 1575 he entered the service of Henry III., who appointed him architect to the Louvre and Valois Mausoleum in succession to Lescot and Bullant on their respective deaths (1578). In 1584 he held the titles of Groom of the Chamber and Architect to the King, and seems to have resigned them after Henry III.'s death; he died in 1590. Though his practice in later life was an extensive one no example of his work 169. Chateau du Pailly : Elevation ok Entrance Bay in Court. THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 175 is known with the exception of the Pont Neuf in Paris. L E P a 1 L L Y, Sully. — It would seem that the works carried out at this time at the chateaux of Le Pailly and Sully-en- Bourgogne, both the property of Marshal de Saulx- Tavannes, were in the nature of a re- casting of mediaeval Ribonnier of Lansires Chateau of Tani.ay Outer Gatehouse. buildings and that the architect was Charles Both show the same mastery of proportion and fertility of resource in composition, the same crisply designed cartouche work, and the decorative use of various types of tooling. The only criticism to which they are open is a possible excess of ornament. At Le Pailly (Fig. 169), the earlier of the two (be- gun 1564), advanced classic forms are com- bined with such remi- niscences of the age of Francis I. as a charm- ing open stair turret and elaborate gables. It also has a feature afterwards used on the Louvre galleries in a row of contiguous pedi- ments. At Sully (Fig. 168), where Ribonnier's work (1567-96) is seen in the four elevations of the court, and offers three variants on the same theme, the roof line is quite unbroken except for a few dor- mers of small size, and there is no attempt at picturesqueness. 171. Chateau of Louppy. 176 RENAISSANXE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. Hotel de Lamoignon. These elevations may profitably be compared with those of Char- leva]. Other Chateaux. — The new building at the chateau of Joigny (begun 1569) has some interesting bits of classical composition very sober for the time. On the outer faces the ashlar is pecked over to make the pilasters stand out. The outer gatehouse (Fig. 170) added by Coligny to his chateau of Tanlay (1570) is an excellently pro- portioned building with effective use of rustication to give strength to the basement, the blocks being treated with patterns of anchors, waves, and ropes in lieu of vermiculation and in allusion to the owner's office of admiral. The impressive piles of Louppy (Fig. 171) and Cons-la- Grandville, built at this period in Lorraine, similar in their situation on the precipitous edge of a plateau and in their massive square pavilions with unusually lofty hipped roofs, differ in the mode of treat- ment of the elevations : the former has three orders of pilasters, while in the latter the gaunt walls are accentuated merely by the elaborate treatment of the sparsely set windows. In each, individual features afford examples of rich and striking, if coarse, decoration. Town Houses : Hotel Lamoignon. — Paris possesses an important late sixteenth century mansion in the Hotel Lamoignon Rue (Fig. 172), formerly known as Hotel d'Angouleme from Diane de France (153S- 16 1 9), Duchess of Angouleme, a daughter of Henry II. and probably of Diane de Poitiers, for whom it was built. It consists of a principal THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 177 173- Bar-le-Duc : House, Place St Pierre. 174. Dijon : Hotel Chambellan. block at the back with its entrances in short return wings at the ends, and of a perhaps slightly later left wing. Its giant Corinthian pilasters and high arched pedimented dormers are very characteristic of the period. So monumental is the total effect that one does not at first feel the unsatisfactoriness of the arrangement by which, in order to get greater depth for the dormers, their sills are brought down into the entablature, the frieze and cornice occurring only in the form of ressauts over the pilasters. The continuous architrave is thus virtually the main cornice of the house, and the unknown architect has endeavoured, with some success, to adapt it to fill this function by underlining it with a frieze of panels ranging with the capitals. The treatment of the end projections with a full attic and a curved pediment on each exposed side gives an effective finish to the elevation. Houses in Dijon, &c. — In Dijon several interesting houses of the late sixteenth century remain, generally attributed to Hugues Sambin, who, however, appears to have been rather a wood-carver and cabinet- maker than an architect. A more reasonable attribution is to Etienne Bruhee, the architect of part of the Palais de Justice. They are char- acterised by a distinctly decorative sense expressed in rather debased 178 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. forms, curiously broken pediments, vigorous but over-profuse carved ornament. Among them are 38 Rue des Forges (1561), a wing of the Hotel Chambellan (Fig. 174), 39 Rue de la Vannerie (c. 1570), with a charming echauguette or oriel (Fig. 157), a favourite feature in the eastern provinces, and a timber house, 28 Rue des Chaudronniers, known from its decoration as " Maison des Caryatides." A large number of town houses of this period in the duchy of Lorraine — at Nancy, Toul, St Mihiel, Bar-le-Duc (Fig. 1 73) — show a more distinctively architectural treatment than is the case in Burgundy. Bar is peculiarly rich in examples, where the entire front is treated as a classical composition with several orders, a low upper storey being often treated as a frieze. Houses in Toulouse and Orleans. — The most pretentious piece of contemporary domestic architecture at Toulouse is the street front of the Maison de Pierre, so called from the use of stone for a whole facade being unusual in the district. It shows all the worst features of the age, a giant order with windows breaking into its entablature, a restless row of pediments above the cornice, numerous and disconnected ressauts, polygonal arches and ornament distributed everywhere. Yet the monumental scale, the bold cornidone, and the excellence of much of the ornament raise the composition above the contemptible. At Orleans is the so-called Maison des Oves (n Rue Ste Anne), a possible work of one of the du Cerceau family, effective in its main lines, but curiously disfigured by a decoration of eggs or olives — in allusion, it is said, to the owner being an oil merchant — in lieu of rustication. Public Buildings. — In each of the few public buildings built during the period of the Wars of Religion some of the characteristics of the age are exemplified : in the additions to the Hotel de Ville of Arras by Mathieu Tesson (1572), a profusion of rather ineffective ornament and meaningless rustication ; in the facade of the Palais de Justice at Dijon by Etienne Bruhee (1570'), a rich but incoherent composition ; in the Hotel de Ville of La Rochelle (1 587-1 607), a combination of incom- patible ideas, an arcade with pendents reminiscent of the early Renaissance, a piano nobile, worthy of the best classic period, and a restless, overloaded upper portion. All, however, present points of interest in the design either of individual features or of the composition as a whole. Seldom at this period are both of equal merit. At the Palais de Justice of Besancon, for instance (Fig. 175), which presents a really fine scheme of ample fenestration, many of the features are crude and clumsy. Town Planning. — Apart from isolated public buildings, such as the above, the germ may be traced at this period of that interest in town planning and combined schemes of architecture which came so much to the fore in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 179 I I >[I»ii 175. Besancon : Palais de Justice. Elevation. Measured and Drawn by L. M. Gotch. building of the Pont Neuf in Paris, to connect the two banks of the Seine with the He de la Cite and with each other, was undertaken in 1578, but not completed till the reign of Henry IV. The masculine design of this important public work is due to Baptiste du Cerceau, while among his father's drawings are found designs for this and other bridges covered with uniform houses, for a circular "place" with symmetrical outlets, and even for the laying out of entire cities. Garden Design. — The period of the advanced Renaissance left its mark on French garden design chiefly in increased stateliness, and in the importance given to permanent architectural adjuncts. At Meudon, Philibert de l'Orme took advantage of a site steeply sloping to the Seine, to design an imposing scheme of steps, terraces, and pavilions, within which cool retreats for summer were provided in the l80 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. form of covered galleries and grottoes decorated with shell work. He seems to have schemed something of the same kind at St Germain, but it was not carried out till a later date, and then on an even greater scale. He also laid out a sunk garden surrounded by a rusticated crypto-porticus at Anet, at the end of which was a concert hall with baths below projecting into an artificial lake, and perhaps the walled pleasaunce at Vallery, with its twin pavilions and a loggia between them looking down a vista of canal. At Verneuil du Cerceau laid out, on a sloping site, a scheme of gardens in terraces, and another at Charleval, on a flat site, intersected by canals. At the former a great garden hall was so arranged that the roof formed a terrace for the mansion, and its front was built en theatre, i.e., concave, so as to form a stage for plays and pageants. At Charleval an elliptical space surrounded by pleached alleys was the central feature of the lay-out, and formed the theatre. Another probable work of du Cerceau's, the Maison Blanche at Gaillon, was a banqueting and festival hall, richly decorated within and without, and situated on an island in a lake approached by bridges. Most gardens were divided into enclosed rectangular pleasaunces, subdivided in turn into rect- angular plots, each of which contained a maze, a plantation, or parterre of a different geometrical pattern. Almost the only exception is in the semicircular gardens of Montargis, planned by du Cerceau in a radiating scheme, with the castle as centre, and trellis arbours as rays. Palissy. — Bernard Palissy (born 15 10, died 1590) is a notable figure in the history of the laying-out and decoration of gardens, and was one of the first French writers on garden design. In his " Jardin Delectable," embodying many of the ideas underlying the " landscape garden" of later times, he describes his ideal of a garden. It is a sort of wild park, laid out, however, on a general rectangular plan, and containing garden plots and arbours of clipped elm in which the trees were tortured into the form of columns, architraves, and cornices. His grottoes, one of which was at Ecouen and another at the Tuileries, but which have all disappeared, seem to have been realistic representa- tions in earthenware of natural rocks peopled with fish and reptiles, " making several movements and pleasing contortions." The grotto at the Tuileries, however, comprised certain architectural features and "plaques" with busts of the Caesars. Both his theoretical and executed works show a hesitation between the formality and obedience to rule of classical art on the one hand and Gothic naturalism and French revolt against Italian authority on the other. He declaims against a servile attitude to the past, and seems to find his artistic ideal in a literal reproduction of the works of God in nature. Yet he is unsurpassed in his reverence for Vitruvius, and introduces the orders THE STYLE OF HENRY II. iSl in the most unexpected connections. He generally arranges his com- positions in formal schemes, but fills them out with naturalistic repre- sentations of plant and animal forms with a special predilection for the monstrous and grotesque. Architectural Writers : De l'Orme. — The reigns of Henry II. 's sons were prolific in architectural literature. Philibert de l'Orme owes his great reputation perhaps as much to the writings, which the com- parative leisure of his later life gave him the opportunity of composing, as to his architecture. In addition to the apologia already referred to, he wrote " Nouvelles Inventions pour bien bastir, et a petits Fraiz " (Paris, 1561), treating of his constructive and expense-saving inventions, especially his system of wood-vaulting. This was incorporated in his "Premier Tome de l'Architecture " (Paris, 1567), the first instalment of an encyclopaedia of architecture, which he was not able to complete before his death. Though both the style and the plates are obscure, de l'Orme's writings, forming as they do a compendium of the pro- fessional knowledge of his times, have a permanent value. They may still be consulted with profit on practical points where he drew on his own wide experience, or on the Orders, which he treats not as a servile imitator of Vitruvius, but as an independent investigator who had made innumerable measured drawings, while the light he throws on the practice of architecture in his day and on his own life is scarcely more interesting than his speculative and symbolistic ideas. Bullant. — Jean Bullant, who went out of office with de l'Orme, also took to writing, since, as he says, the works at Ecouen required little attention and " to the end that I be not consumed with idleness inasmuch as the greater part of the time I remain without other occupation." Unlike his contemporary he makes but the scantiest personal references, and expresses himself with pathetic diffidence and modesty. He published a treatise on Geometry and the art of setting out sundials (Paris, 1561-2), and another on the Orders (Paris, 1564-8), both illustrated by his own woodcuts. Du Cerceau. — Du Cerceau's last years were as productive in publications as his earlier. His three " Livres d'Architecture " (1559, 156T, and 1572) are devoted to designs for chateaux and their sur- roundings, features and minor structures. Designs for arabesques, caryatids, &c, are given in his " Grandes Grotesques" (1566) and other series. In other works again du Cerceau dealt with the Orders, Roman monuments, and perspective, and in 1576 there appeared the first volume of his great work, " Les Plus Excellents Bastiments de France," consisting of illustrations and descriptions of royal and other great houses, followed by a second series three years later. 1 82 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. U THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 1 83 CHURCH ARCHITECTURE SHOWING GOTHIC INFLUENCE. Introductory. — Church architecture during the whole period of the advanced Renaissance passes through the same phases as secular work, though, as a rule, they are rather delayed. But two currents run through it side by side. The first, which hardly diminishes in force even at the end, is essentially a current of Gothic design which absorbs the various types of detail and features as they come into vogue. The second, which is traceable from the first, places the total design on advanced Renaissance lines, though not necessarily expressed in equally advanced detail. In the sixteenth century buildings designed as a whole on Renaissance principles remain extremely rare. The moment when the country had reached a stage of development at which such designs would be accepted was precisely that at which the out- break of the civil wars made their building impracticable, and the few which did come into being were almost all built for royal or other powerful persons. In the country at large, churches were more often damaged or destroyed, than built or enlarged during the anarchy, and such church-building as was done consisted principally in the comple- tion of schemes already initiated. Transition : Francis I. to Henry II. — The earliest examples of the former type — consisting in the clothing of a Gothic design and construction in contemporary detail — in which the influence of the advanced Renaissance is visible, belong to that charming second transition in which the style of Francis I. was passing into that of Henry II., already noticed in secular work. Amongst them may be mentioned parts of the churches of Cergy, Belloy, Ennery (Fig. 87), and St Maclou at Pontoise, in the neighbourhood of Paris ; the chapel of St Saturnin at Fontainebleau (remodelled 1540-5); and the western doorways of St Gervais at Gisors and Evreux Cathedral (Figs. 1 1 1 and 180); the lantern over the intersection of St Pierre at Coutances (1545-52); parts of St Pierre at Tonnerre, especially the elevations of the south aisle (Fig. no) ; the transepts at St Florentin ; the choir and chevet of the Madeleine at Montargis. Some of these examples have been mentioned to illustrate various points in the previous chapter, and as a whole they cannot be sharply defined from pure Francis I. work, from which they differ chiefly in greater sobriety of ornament and simplicity of scheme. Interiors, Piers. — In the period when fully developed classical forms were adopted and combined with designs of a Gothic type, the incompatibility being greater, happy results were less easily attained. No general rules of composition, either internal or external, 1 84 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 177. Gisors: St Gervais and St Protais. South-West Tower. can be deduced from the examples, the same variety of methods still prevailing. There is almost equal variety of pier and wall treatment as heretofore. In the north transept of Ste Clothilde at Le Grand Andely (c. 1540-60) is an early example of an interior divided into two storeys with two orders of pilasters, the entablature of the lower running above the nave THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 1 85 arcade which springs from short square pilasters, and the second rising to the springing of the clearstorey windows and vaulting At Le Mesnil- Aubry (c. 1550-60) elongated engaged Doric columns with a block of entablature take the vaulting ribs, and other shafts attached to their lower portion take the aisle vaults and nave arcade, both vaults and arches being pointed. At Berville is a closer approximation to the ancient Roman system of rectangular arcade piers with pilasters, which became the rule in the seventeenth century. Other instances occur in which single classical columns are used. The columns between the aisles at St Nicolas-des-Champs, Paris (remodelled 1576-81), are elliptical in plan. Vaults. — Most of the types of vault of the early Renaissance con- tinued in use, the ribs taking mature classical sections. The tendency was to give both ribs and arches broad flat soffits and these are some- times panelled, as in the aisles of St Aignan at Chartres (1543). There was a general preference for vaults approximating to the barrel type, exemplified in the charming coffered vaults of the baptisteries at Langres and Gisors. Arches, Windows. — Like vaults, arches and openings were in- differently pointed or semicircular. At Le Grand Andely is an isolated case of an arch which is half an upright ellipse. They are usually surrounded by architraves with projecting mouldings. In windows there is a tendency to abandon tracery, e.g., in the south-west tower at Gisors (Fig. 177), but in most cases, where it is retained, its section is square rather than moulded, and its patterns consist of combinations of pure geometrical forms and scrolls, or are of the " skeleton edifice " type. At Le Grand Andely, however, is a rose window, one of the most successful traceried windows of the whole French Renaissance, in which the bars are moulded and the pattern flowing geometrical. Use of Orders. — The most characteristic feature of the elevations is the treatment of each storey with an order. This is sometimes done in apse and aisle elevations by merely substituting pilasters for buttresses, as in the rather severe choir of Notre Dame at La Ferte Milon, and with greater playfulness in the ranges of chapels at St Maclou, Pontoise, enriched with panelling, balustrades of interlacing work, and so forth. Church Fronts. — In towerless nave and transept fronts there are usually two orders below the gable, as at Le Grand Andely (Fig. 178), where the whole arrangement of a Gothic front is very skilfully repro- duced in refined classical forms. The lofty west fronts of St Pierre, Auxerre (begun 1566), though it has three full orders below the gable, and is treated with great elaboration in the florid style of the later Valois, yet with its traceried windows, its prominent flying buttresses and abutting piers, and its general vertical emphasis, is still a predominantly Gothic composition (Fig. 179). 1 86 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. . -'/*•' V-> the style of henry n. 187 A very interesting treatment is that of the lower part of a facade added as a completion to the Gothic church of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne (I575)> which translates the mediaeval triple portal motive into advanced Renaissance forms, producing, in spite of crude detail and capricious combinations, a truly majestic effect (Fig. 1 76). In this case there is no main order except in the upper storey, the piers below being square and enriched with tiers of pedimented niches. Buttresses, Towers. — The application of orders to the sides and faces of buttresses when it was con- fined to reticent use of shallow pilasters as on the tower of St Thibaut at Joigny, was conducive to pleasant effects ; it only became incon- gruous when full shafts were added, or when a series of orders were piled one on the top of the other as on the clumsy chevet of St Germain, Argentan, or in all the storeys of a tower as at St Michel, Dijon, where the openings are as little varied as the orders, or on the south-west tower at Gisors (Fig. 177), where, however, they are redeemed by the extreme beauty of the detail and accompanying decoration. The west front of Evreux Cathedral is interesting as illustrating the attempt on the part of the builders to avoid such monotonous effects, and also of the growing feeling for structural expression accompanied by increase of scale (Fig. 180). The southern tower consists of five storeys with small orders, mostly single and detached shafts applied purely decoratively to the face of wall and buttresses. In the lower part of the later northern tower the orders are coupled and attached, and knit to the wall and plain 180. Evreux Cathedral : West Front. 1 88 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 181. St Thegonnec : Ossuary (East Side) and Porches. square buttresses by rusticated bands ; two orders corresponding to three in the former tower. In the upper portion where the bands are continued a single storey corresponds to the fourth and fifth in the other tower, and instead of coupled columns are broad single pilasters which are in effect intermediate buttresses. The fine tower of St Nicholas at Rethel was designed from the first on the more sensible lines only gradually attained at Evreux, having bold square pilasters at the angles and a shallow one in the centre of each side, with very masculine effect. Towers of this period usually had a flat balustraded top or some kind of domical termination. Breton Churches. — The remarkable school of ecclesiastical archi- tecture which developed in the western half of Brittany about 1550 and continued to flourish for over a century retained throughout its mixed character, clinging tenaciously to many Gothic elements and associating them with a rather debased type of Henry II. detail and ornament. There is such a family likeness between all these monuments that they may be grouped together here though in many cases their date is outside the period in question. Local peculiarities of custom and material combined to mark off Breton church architecture from that of the rest of France. The cult of the dead has always been a leading feature of Breton religion, and the churchyard thus being the scene of religious life, rather than the church, the decoration of the former was correspondingly greater. THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 1 89 Plan, Elevation, Section. — Then owing to local usage large sacris- ties and porches were required for the holding of feudal courts and parish meetings respectively ; while an important steeple was also traditional. The difficulty of working the native material — various kinds of granite and the black stone of Kersanton — made it unsuitable for purposes requiring fine detail and accurate fitting ; hence vaulting was generally dispensed with and only ornament of a rude character was possible. Breton churches thus consist usually of three wide and almost equal naves sepa- rated by slender arcades, often under one span, with wooden waggon roofs, and without ambulatories or chapels. They have no clearstoreys, but are lit by tall windows in gables in the outer walls (Fig. 185). They have deep porches with stone seats, and their sacristies are important structures. Churchyards. — The churchyards are walled in and approached through a decorative gateway, and usually contain an ossuary-chapel, or open charnel house, a calvary, and sometimes a sacred fountain. On all these features a wealth of coarse ornament, inscriptions, statuary, niches, and pinnacles is lavished. These curious architectural groups with " uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked," recalling now the monuments of the Roman decadence, now some of the Holy Places of India, have, in spite of their redundancies and ignorance, a weird impressiveness all their own. Roofs, Steeples. — Examples of boarded barrel vaults may be seen at Bodilis and at St Thomas, Landerneau. The church of Sizun (Fig. 185) illustrates the multiplication of gables and pinnacles and the retention to a late date of Gothic tracery. In steeples a local mediaeval practice of introducing a number of galleries, cornices, and rows of square-headed openings was perpetuated even when the termination was a spire, e.g., those of La Roche-Maurice (Fig. 184), Sizun, Lampaul, Landivisiau. From the last quarter of the sixteenth century some sort of domical termination became usual, as at Berven, Landerneau, Roscoff, and St Thegonnec (Fig. 183). Porches. — The porches are usually on the south side of the nave ; they have two stone seats, with statues of the twelve apostles above them, a stoup near the door, and a monumental facade often crowned with a domed turret. Projecting porches such as these occur at Landivisiau, Guimiliau (Fig. 186), Bodilis, Landerneau. At Lampaul and St Thegonnec, they are in the base of the tower. The sacristies are sometimes almost detached from the church and not only in two storeys, but also of very peculiar plan, as may be seen for instance at Bodilis, Guimiliau, and Sizun. Ossuaries. — In some cases the purpose of a charnel-house is served by an open loggia attached to the church as at Guimiliau and Tregastel ; or isolated as at Roscoff. The little structures at Plougasnou (161 1) and St Jean du Doigt (1577) were cemetery chapels only, but as a rule the chapel and ossuary are combined in one building, known as reliquaire, 190 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 12 0 1 2 J 1S2. Sr Thegonnec: Ossuary (North End). Measured and Drawn l>y C. W generally forming part of the boundary of the churchyard. They are oblong and rectangular buildings with two gables, but sometimes one end is polygonal with a gable on each face of the apse. The outer side is plain, but that facing the churchyard and the ends highly enriched. The principal examples are at Landerneau (St Thomas), I.andivisiau, St Thegonnec (Figs. 181 and 182)^. 1585), Sizun (Fig. 187) (1588), La Roche Maurice (1639), Guimiliau (1648), Lam- paul (1667). Calvaries. — Monu- ments of the calvary class are not confined to Brittany, but there they are of unusual elaboration as architec- tural compositions and crowded with figures. There are examples at Lampaul, Guimiliau (r. 1585) (Fig. 186), and St Thegonnec (1610). Gateways. — The cemetery entrance is rendered imposing in various manners. At St Thegonnec ( 1 588) are four massive piers (Fig. 183) loaded with pin- 'metrcs nacles, turrets, volutes, pediments, and the cen- tral opening is spanned Pike, by an arch. In other 15 -"feet 183. St Thegonnec : Church and Church- yard Gateway. 184. La Roche Maurice Steeple. 185. Sizun : East End of Sacristy. 1 92 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 186. Guimiliau : Porch and Calvary. cases, as at Sizun (Fig. 187), there is a regular triumphal arch. Their platforms were utilised for ceremonies which could thus be witnessed by thousands of worshippers. 187. Sizun : Churchyard Entrance THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 193 CHURCH ARCHITECTURE OF PURE ADVANCED RENAISSANCE. The second current of design — that in which the composition as a whole is conceived on classical lines, while the detail follows the contemporary fashion — appears first in important features, then in complete facades added to existing buildings, and finally in a few cases in entire structures. Doorways. — Doorways long main- tained their import- ance as a decorative element in elevations. At the same time the tendency to em- phasise the framework surrounding the open- ing rather than to enrich the opening itself survived. There was thus, especially in the case of new insertions, full scope for complete classical design. This is well illustrated in the series of portals due to the school of Domenico Fiorentino in and around Troyes. Classical composi- tions retaining the playful decoration of the Francis I. style may be seen in simple form in the north door of St Nizier, and on a more elaborate scale at St Andre (1549) (Fig. 105), but a fully developed Henry II. style characterises the west door- way of St Nizier and the south doorway of St Nicolas (c. 1555) (Fig. 188). This last is a composition in two orders of shallow pilasters to which restraint of treatment, a sureness of proportion, a refinement in the profiles, and a decoration of varied and delicate frets impart an air of rare distinction. The south portal of St Nicolas des Champs in Paris (1581) in bolder, less reticent forms shows that amid increasing J3 Troyes : St Nicolas. South Doorway. 194 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. licence pure classical design was not wholly forgotten, while the niche-like porch of St Nizier at Lyons (Fig. 189), attributed to de l'Orme, is an example of the fully matured Renais- sance. Porches. — The narthex- porches added to the chapel at Champigny - sur - Veude (Figs. 190- 192) and the Made- leine church at Ver- neuil are, again, ex- amples of advanced Renaissance design, the former with beautiful detail and decoration of an early type, and the latter of the soberer Henry II. manner. Projecting porches — rare as ever— are exemplified by the charmingly detailed one of Livilliers, and the florid and grotesque one of the Carmelite church at Dole. Gables. — In facades the gable is sometimes the first portion to be affected by newer method of design, as in the double transept at Magny-en-Vexin (c. 1548) and the front of St Pierre, Auxerre (Fig. 179), which show in miniature some semblance of the classical basilica front with high pedimented centre and scroll wings that became the rule for entire church fronts in the next century. The new screen facades erected by de l'Orme for the chapel at Compiegne in a re-entering angle over one of the town gates, whence its name of " Porte Chapelle," is a somewhat similar feature (Fig. 193). Facades. — There is but a step from such large features or groups of features as those just quoted to entire facades composed on classical lines, though belonging to structures of an earlier type such as that of the church at Le Mesnil-Aubry (c. 1580), which may be from the designs of Jean Bullant (Fig. 194). It has two orders of pilasters, and 189. Lyons: St Nizier. West Doorway. THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 195 190. Part Elevation. scale: for. plan , ■ S 10 «* I I I I i I I I I I 1 SCALE fOR DETAIL'S 191. Plan. CHAMPIGNY-SUR-VEUDE: NARTHEX OF CHATEAU CHAPEL. Measured and Drawn by L. M. Gotch. I96 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. SCALE OF J METRES 192. Champigny-sur-Veude : Chateau Chapel. Long Section through narthex (part). Measured and Drawn by L. M. Gotch. its gable storey, whose decoration, however, suggests a later date, has a segmental pediment and bold scroll wings. The southern aisle has perhaps the earliest example in France of the use of a curved wing-wall in lieu of a half-gable. The cathedral of Auch which has twin towers projecting in front of the aisles offers an example of that type of facade, which, in the seventeenth century, formed the alternative to the basilica type. Though the bulk of the west end was not carried out till the reign THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 197 of Louis XIV., the main lines of the design were laid down about 1560 by the architect Jean de Beaujeu. The square towers have no buttresses, but are treated in each storey with a coupled order and a central arch. In the lowest storey the arches are pierced and, with the third arch, which connects the towers, form a narthex the full width of the front. Complete Chapels. — It would by this time be almost possible to compose a complete advanced Renaissance church from such scattered parts as those men- tioned, but meanwhile a few com- plete ecclesiastical edifices had been executed in full classical design, though none of these ex- ceeded the dimensions of a private chapel or mausoleum. One group 193. Compiegne : " Porte Chapelle." shows various kinds of vaults and ceilings ; another is domical. Although detailed in the manner of the Lombard Renaissance, the Bishops', or St Ursula's, chapel on the north side of Toul Cathedral (c. 1530- 40) should, from its general proportions and its departure from Gothic precedents, be reckoned as the earliest fully Renais- sance church building in France. It is square with two orders in height and two bays in each side ; flat-headed arches, springing from the dividing piers and intersecting at the centre, carry the flat, coffered stone ceiling. Akin to this, but in rather more advanced detail, is the oblong Baptistery of Langres Cathedral (1549) which has a coffered waggon vault. Two tower-like structures, both still V-* Vs- ■ ■" retaining Francis I. reminiscences in detail «** and ornament, also illustrate this stage. 194. LeMesnil-Aubry: Parish A circular chapel at Vannes (1537) has Church. West Front. two superposed orders and a cornicione 198 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. with niches below and round-headed windows above ; it is carried out in forms whose clum- siness contrast strongly with the elegance of those of the rectangular chapel of St Romain, or Haute Vieille Tour, in the market- place at Rouen (1542), which con- sists of an open two- storeyed pavilion (Fig. 195), in the upper one of which a prisoner was re- leased on Ascension day on thrice raising the saint's shrine, " la Fierte de St Romain." Above is a graceful lantern in three stages. Mausoleum Chapel, Anet. — Of quite another order is the chapel built at Anet out- side the chateau as a mausoleum for Diane de Poitiers and her children. In plan it is an aisleless basilica with waggon-vaulted nave terminating in a small apse, a rectangular chapel or sacristy north and south of the nave near the east end making it approximately cruciform (Figs. 197 and 198). Built probably between 1560 and 1566, this chapel is not likely to be by de l'Orme, who was then working for the Queen- Mother, and whose style it does not recall, but may be by Jean Bullant, the architect of the Duchess' old ally, Montmorency. The facade (Fig. 196), which, though of no great size, is very monumental in effect, is also finely detailed, consists of one full storey and an attic. The former is almost identical in composition with the lower storey at Le Mesnil-Aubry. 195. Rouen : Chapel of St Romanus, or "Haute Vieii.le Tour.*' THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 199 Domes. — Domes on a compara- tively small scale were several times attempted in the sixteenth century. The earliest extant example of any importance is the All Saints' Chapel on the south side of Toul Cathedral; probably by the same architect as that of St Ursula, but a little later (1535-45), and exhibiting the same stylistic characteristics. In this case the square has canted angles, and arches carried on corbels in the en- tablature of the second order reduce the space to an octagon, and carry a circular stone dome of elliptical sec- tion and a stone lantern. Of the various chapels designed by Philibert de l'Orme three at least were domical. That in the forest of St Germain was hexagonal in plan, and seems to have had a low elliptical dome. The so-called "temple" in the rark at Villers-Cotterets (Fig. 199) consisted in a circular nave with apses on three sides, each a little more than semi- circular, roofed with semicircular domes or portions of domes, and an entrance on the fourth through a columnar pedimented portico, probably the first of its kind in France. It was in connection with this feature 196. Anet : Mausoleum Chapel. West Front. 197. Section. 198. Plan. Anet : Mausoleum Chapel From du Cerceau. No Scale. 200 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE 5$ Yll.LERS-COTTEKETS : "Temple" in the Park, by Ph. de l'Orme (Now De- stroyed). From a Drawing by du Cer- ceau. that the impossibility of finding monoliths for the columns led to the invention of the banded "French Order" (cf. Fig. 159). Chateau-Chapel, Anet. — A more im- portant example of dome construction is the still existing chateau-chapel at Anet, whose plan is a circle extended into a Greek cross by four short arms, with rectangular turrets in the angles containing stairs and sacristies (Fig. 200). The chapel was entered from the cloister of the court of honour by an 199- open narthex. In the three disengaged arms the outer wall is convex and concentric with the circular nave. The latter has a semi- circular stone dome carrying a lantern ; its stonework is exposed and of such excellent construction as to have stood unimpaired to this day ; flights of steps are carried up its face from each angle to the lantern. Internally it is coffered in a diagonal converging pattern which is reproduced in the marble pavement. The arms of the cross have panelled barrels or deep arches, whose faces cut into the circular drum, and are thus in winding with very unpleasant effect. Another blemish is that the win- dows cut through the entablature which forms the springing of the arches without even re- turning its members. The sculptured decora- tion was largely carried out by Jean Goujon, the stained glass by Jean Cousin, and a series of figures of the apostles in Limoges enamel by Leonard Limousin. Valois Mausoleum, St Denis. — The history of dome construction in the sixteenth century ends with the noblest and _ _ -z most harmonious ex- Chateau Chapel, by Ph. de Plan from du Cerceau. amPle- Catharine de No Scale. Medici had, as stated 200. Anet l'Orme. THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 201 above, given instructions to Primaticcio immediately after her husband's death to design a mag- nificent mausoleum at St Denis. The remainder of his life (1559- 70) was largely spent in perfecting the design, preparing models, col- lecting precious marbles for the decoration, and in superintending the staff of sculptors, bronze founders, and masons at work on the statues, reliefs, and other or- namental portions. Among the artists employed at various times for the mausoleum and tomb were Girolamo della Robbia, Uomenico Fiorentino, and Ger- main Pilon, and the builder was Louis Le Rambert, who had worked under Primaticcio at Fontainebleau. The foundations do not appear 201. St Denis : Mausoleum. Plan of the Valois From J. Marot. riftitfi 10 -"METRFS SCAtepptJ 9 I V *> g 5Qr 202. Elevation. 203. Section. St Dents: Valois Mausoleum or Tour des Valois, by Primaticcio (Now Destroyed). From J. Marot. 14 202 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. to have been actually laid till the latter had been succeeded by Bullant (1570-8). The building advanced rapidly under Baptiste du Cerceau's supervision (1578-90), but was not ready for the reception of the tomb and the body of Henry II. till 1594; those of Catharine and Henry III. were brought there from Blois in 1609. The Bourbon dynasty neglected the building, which never received its attic and outer dome, and it grew so ruinous that it was pulled down in 17 19 and the materials dispersed. The tomb found its way into the adjoining Abbey, some of the statues to various Paris churches ; of the marble columns some went to the Regent Or- leans' garden, and may still be seen in the Pare Monceau. This Chapel or Tower of the Valois, as it was called, stood against the north transept of the Abbey church from which alone it was entered, and was circular in plan, whence its alterna- tive name Notre Dame la Rotonde (Fig. 201). The total diameter was about 100 feet, and that of the central chamber about 42 feet. The space be- tween this and the outer walls was occupied by two tiers of six radiating trefoil chapels. The central hall was covered by a semicircular stone dome pierced by six round-headed windows. Externally was an attic of the height of this dome, and above it a semicircular timber dome, the first of its kind in France, and a lantern (Fig. 203). The interior and the tombs were entirely carried out in marble — black, grey, white, and red — with enrichments in bronze. Internally there were two orders, Corinthian and Composite. Externally there were a Doric, an Ionic, and an attic order. The design as a whole, in which are embodied reminiscences of unexecuted designs by Bramante and Raphael for the apses, and San Gallo's model for the 204. St Denis : Tomb of Francis I. by Ph. de l'Orme. THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 203 dome of St Peter's, is one of the purest works of the Roman school (Fig. 202). It attains that per- fection of propor- tion, that rhythmic harmony and effort- less repose which are characteristic of the Italian master- pieces of the Julian age, and of which French work in spite of — or perhaps on account of — its own peculiar quali- ties seldom rivalled, and it possessed in addition a charm of plan unsurpassed even in Italy. Tombs: Tomb of Francis" I. — The actual tomb of Henry II. and Catharine was of that shrine or canopy type, of which that of Fran- cis I. was the most splendid example in the advanced Renaissance style. The latter, begun 1548 and finished after 1559, was de- signed by de l'Orme and the sculpture principally executed by Pierre Bontemps. It is in white marble with black marble panels in the frieze and a grey marble base. It is graceful in proportion and tasteful in detail, and, regarded apart from its purpose, is a very beautiful com- position (Fig. 204). But assuming as it does the form of a Roman triumphal arch it only permits the recumbent effigies to exhibit their extremities to the view, and they can only be seen by passing along the 205. Rouen Cathedral: Tomb of Louis de Breze in Lady Chapel (Attributed to J. Goujon). 204 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. narrow side-passages ; while it is ill suited as a platform for the kneeling figures of Francis, Claude and their children, which are of another scale, but may not have been in accordance with del'Orme's intentions. Sixteen putti in- tended to crown the columns were diverted to other uses. Tomb of Henry II. — The tomb of Henry II. avoids these defects to a great extent. Its oblong plan with openings wider at the sides is better adapted for the re- ception of the gisants, and its mass, which does not repro- duce a complete edifice in miniature, is better suited as the pedestal for the priants and also better proportioned. The sculpture is by Germain Pilon and others, the figures left unfinished at their deaths by Ricoveri and della Robbia not having been utilised. The tomb is in white marble, with grey columns and red panels in the base. Breze Tomb, Rouen, &c— The finest example of a wall-tomb of the advanced Renaissance is that of Louis de Breze at Rouen (1535-44), probably designed and in part executed by Jean Goujon in black and white marble, with the corpse-effigy below between pairs of Corinthian columns, an equestrian statue above between pairs of caryatids, and under an arch, crowned by a seated allegorical figure in a niche (Fig. 205). Other examples of tombs are those of Guillaume du Bellay in Le Mans Cathedral (1544-50); and of the brothers Gouffier (1558-60) at Oyron, probably by Juste de Juste. The Holy Sepulchres at St Maclou, Pontoise, and St Nicolas, Troyes, are interesting examples of Henry II. design. Church Accessories. — Among the finest Henry II. church doors are those ascribed to, and perhaps partly the work of, Jean Goujon at St Maclou, Rouen (Fig. 154), and those of St Pierre at Avignon. The castle chapel at Ecouen once exhibited a rich set of fittings all probably designed and partly executed by Jean Goujon. They comprised the beautiful black and white marble altar and the marquetry stalls, now removed to Chantilly, and an organ gallery exquisite in its proportion 206. Laon Cathedral: Chapel Screen. THE STYLE OF HENRY If. 205 207. Akques : Rood Screen. and detail carried on stone corbels with a panelled wooden front enriched with carved ornament and miniature Ionic columns, which is still in situ (Fig. 126). Examples of screens are to be found in a splendid series extending all round Laon Cathedral (Fig. 206), and that enclosing the Baptistery in Troyes Cathedral; in the chapel of the Palais de Justice at Dijon is a richly-wrought wooden screen made by Hugues Sambin (1570). The rood-screen at St Germain l'Auxerrois by Lescot and Goujon has been destroyed, but a beautiful example of somewhat similar design exists at Arques (Fig. 207); that of St Etienne, Toulouse, belongs to the end of the period and verges on the style of Henry IV. Examples of stall work are found at St Saturnin, Toulouse, and Bayeux Cathedral ; of a pulpit at St Thibaut, Joigny ; of organ cases at Bernay and Chaource. That the style of Henry II. is distinguished by an increase of accuracy in reproducing classical detail and a more logical and systematic use of architectural members is obvious, but its services to architecture cannot be measured by these facts. They include a keener sense of proportion, a broader view of the grouping of masses and voids. The old haphazard method of running up a wing here, a gallery there, as utility or caprice might direct, gave place to balanced schemes of planning, clearly thought out as a whole from the outset. Architecture, like literature, scholarship, and religious thought, declined in imaginative power, in freedom, in buoyancy. On the other hand it showed better organisation and firmer grasp of the problems attacked. What it lost in variety and daintiness, it gained in restraint and distinction. ■ 2o8. Chateau of Rougemont. CHAPTER IV. STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. (1590-1660). KINGS. Henry IV. (1589-1610). Initial — H. Emblem — - Hand of Justice with sword. Motto — " Duo protegit units" Louis XIII. (1610-43). Initial — L. Emblem — Two Figures of Hercules, or Club. Motto — " Erit hoc quoque cognita monstris. " Louis XIV. (1643-1715). QUEENS. Margaret ok Valois. Initial— M. Emblem — Pentacle. Motto — " Sa/us." Maria de' Medici. Initial — M.. 01 monogram P*J. Emblem (as Regent) — Crowned Eagle. Motto — " Tegit virtute minores. " Anne of Austria. Initial — A. Em- blem (in widowhood) — Pelican. CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH SOVEREIGNS. Elizabeth (1603), James I. (1603-25), Chari.es I. (1625-49), Commonwealth (1649-60). HISTORICAL SKETCH. Character of the Seventeenth Century. — The succession of the Bourbon dynasty to the throne was a turning point in French history. In the reaction from the anarchy produced by the excessive individualism of the sixteenth century there grew up in the seventeenth the conception of the rights of society as a whole as represented by the State, and the State in France took the form of an ever more centralised and absolute monarchy, absorbing and controlling more and more all the energies of national life. The process, initiated in a conciliatory THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 2.0J spirit under Henry IV., was completed with increasing harshness under Richelieu and Louis XIV. At the same time the counter-Reformation put new life into the Roman Church, and, step by step, as she regained her influence she, too, became increasingly centralised and absolute. But the Renaissance and Reformation had established the rights of the human intellect, and the seventeenth century was pre-eminently the age of reason. The movements in Church and State were successful principally because they enlisted reason on their side. They culminated both in their completeness and in their despotic character in the middle of the reign of Louis XIV. Up to this point the history of France in politics, religion, literature and arts is the history of the successful struggle of the central authority to establish itself over all local or individual opposition, and this success was obtained as much by the inclusion and adoption of the more moderate opposing elements as by the destruction of the more extreme. Not only did the administration tend to be centralised in the monarchy but, the seat of government being more definitely fixed in Paris, and the Court seldom moving outside the He de France, the capital assumed an importance in national life not hitherto attained. The fashions and opinions of Paris, as the social and intellectual centre of the nation, began to exercise a decisive influence on thought and taste throughout France. Meanwhile France remained under the influence of the classical studies which had now held sway for a century. Huguenot and Jesuit education was alike founded on classical literature. Artists steeped them- selves in ancient masterpieces. Architects read Vitruvius and measured ancient monuments. Principles in art and literature continued to be based on the study of classical models, and supported by appeal to classical precedents. But affected, as it was, by the same conditions as political and religious ideas, the classical influence began to assume a new complexion. Another side of it came to be emphasised. As individualism gave place to the social spirit, so art and literature saw the complete fulfilment of the tendency already observable in the sixteenth century to subordinate the part to the whole, the beauty of decorative detail and individual features to that of the total composition, complexity to unity. As in education Latin thrust Greek into the background, so in art it was rather the Roman qualities — majesty, power, and law — than the Hellenic of subtle proportion and delicacy of detail which assumed prominence. Again the joyous sestheticism and optimism of the Renaissance declined, and artistic conception assumed something of the same ascetic complexion as the contemporary theology and philosophy, while the increased influence of the Protestants under Henry IV. enhanced the tendency to austerity. Thus the classical spirit manifests itself chiefly in belief in law and order and conformity to reasoned canons, in clear, logical 208 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. presentment and perfection of form obtained by rigid self-criticism and elimination of the unessential. Centralised absolutism was only established by the civil power by gradually suppressing the political aspirations and rights of the feudal and legal aristocracies, the middle classes and the Huguenots. The ascendancy of ultramontanism and the Jesuits, and complete religious uniformity was only reached by crushing Protestants, Gallicans, and Jansenists alike. In literature the triumph of the classical spirit was equally slow and laborious. The sixteenth century had closed with a model of disorder, disproportion, and heterogeneousness in the Essays of Montaigne. The seventeenth opened with the formulation of Malherbe's canons which insist on order, balance, unity of conception, concise statement, correct syntax, and impeccable versification, while restricting vocabulary to that of Parisian society, and literary forms to a few types selected for their dignified character. That Malherbe's doctrine bore immediate fruit is shown in the dramas of Corneille, who, however, found great difficulty in fitting his romantic and extravagant plots into the scheme of the classical unities. While this new conception of literature steadily gained ground, it was not till an age of bad taste had been traversed in which euphuistic preciosity flourished side by side with gross burlesque, that it triumphed. Its victory was materially assisted by the influence of the Academie Francaise, an informal literary association which, after receiving official incorporation from Richelieu (1634), began to exercise a censorship over the language and an organising and centralising influence over literature. The triumph of Malherbe's principles was complete when they were adopted and amplified by Boileau in the palmy days of Louis XIV., the Classical Age par excellence in literature. In art, and especially in architecture, the classical spirit, which had been obscured under the later Valois, gradually reasserted itself, and the century was one of constant struggle and compromise between the two tendencies which may be described as Palladianism and Barocco. At first the purer school was represented by a union of Huguenot austerity and Roman grandeur, the free classic by the traditions of the School of Fontainebleau. About 1620 the latter were reinforced by the influence of the Flemish barocco, which during a period, corresponding roughly with the age of bad taste in literature, threatened to be completely triumphant. But classical studies, which had at no time been altogether abandoned, became increasingly strenuous, and reasserted their influence under the regency of Anne of Austria, more especially in the purification of detail and decoration. In the political sphere unity and efficiency attendant on an irresis- tible central government were secured, but only by crushing out some of the vital forces of national life. Literature gained in precision 209. ENTRANCE PAVILION OF THE LUXEMBOURG PALACE, PARIS. TH£ STYLES OF HfiNRV IV. AND LOUlS XIII. 209 and brilliance but lost in elasticity and colour ; while in prose the Classical Age is unsurpassed, its poetry, apart from the perfection of form, shines rather in the qualities which it shares with prose, and "the true lyrical cry was hushed for nearly two centuries." Architecture in the same way loses in delicacy and picturesqueness, and triumphs in clearness, order, balance, majesty, and unity of conception. It was an age of reason rather than imagination, of exposition rather than suggestion, of concentration, uniformity, and law, rather than of pro- fusion, variety, or liberty. And it is in the achievement of excellence in these qualities that its greatness lies. This chapter deals with the movements in architecture from the accession of Henry IV. to a little beyond the death of Louis XIII. with special reference to the Flemish barocco influence, while the growth of the classical reaction will be reserved for the following chapter. Reign of Henry IV. — Henry of Bourbon, King of Navarre, became legally King of France on the assassination of his cousin Henry III. of Valois, but it was long before he was undisputed master of his kingdom. After the defeat of the Leaguers at Arques (1589) and Ivry (1590), the disaffected elements began to join the moderates in rallying to him. His conversion to Catholicism (1593) removing the principal barrier to his general recognition, he received the sub- mission of Paris and other great cities (1594), and of the great nobles of the League (1596), while the war with Spain was terminated by the Treaty of Vervins (1598). After more than a generation of wars and tumults, France had peace and unity once more. Unlike the Valois princes whom he succeeded, Henry understood kingship not solely as a means~"to personal enjoyment, but also as a trust for the benefit of his subjects, and set on foot the needed work of re-organisation and appeasement even before his final triumph. His minister, Sully, reduced the finances to order and created a revenue, while diminishing taxation. He promoted agriculture and industries, trade and colonisation. In- ternal communications were improved by means of bridges, roads, and waterways, and by the creation of public posts. The conditions of city life were ameliorated by better sanitation and water supply, the widening, correcting, and paving of streets, the building of new quarters and rebuilding of old ; by the erection of hospitals and asylums, of municipal and other public buildings. The general security was assured by a reorganised army and navy, by fortresses, arsenals, and harbours. Moral well-being was promoted by the encouragement of art, literature, and education, the foundation of libraries and colleges, the building and reopening of places of worship and reforms in the Church. The administrative unity of the kingdom was increased by curtailing the powers of nobles and cities, and the extension of the royal justice, administration, police, and taxation. 15 210 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 210. Paris: Place Royale or des Vosges, by Claude Chastillon (1604) Central Pavilion on South Side. Elevation. A great part of Henry's task was the healing of wounds inflicted by civil and religious dissension by conciliation and compromise. He curbed the nobles, but attached them to the monarchy by lucrative posts. He won over the Catholics by his conversion and the recall of the Jesuits. He appeased the Protestants by the Edict of Nantes (1598), which secured to them the exercise of their religion. He allowed the Jesuits to open colleges, but promoted non-clerical education. He came to terms with Spain and married Maria de' Medici, niece of the THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 211 Grand Duke of Tuscany, but also allied himself with England and Holland. Reign of Louis XIII. and Minority of Louis XIV. — When Henry was assassinated by a fanatic in the streets of Paris (1610), his wise government had restored France to a state of prosperity and order at home and of prestige abroad, and royalty to a degree of popularity scarcely known for a century. These results were compromised by the weak and spendthrift regency of Maria de' Medici, but Louis XIII., on attaining manhood, gave all power into the hands of his astute minister, Cardinal Richelieu (1624), who revived Henry's policy with equal vigour, but less humanity and economy. He checkmated Spain and the Empire, and increased the royal power, extending its control into all departments of life, but in doing so not only curbed the aristocracy but crushed the Huguenots (1628-30), and destroyed constitutional liberties. His death (1642) occurred but one year before that of Louis XIII. Under the regency of Anne of Austria (1643-51) a last stand was made against the abso- lutism of the crown by the Parlement and the "Court nobles in the risings of the Fronde (1648-53), which were quelled by a supple Italian, Giulio Mazarini, whom Richelieu has raised to the ministry and car- dinalate, and who maintained himself in power by adroit diplomacy and his ascendancy over the Queen-Mother. He continued the work of his predecessors to such purpose that at his death (1661) he was able to hand over to Louis XIV. a sovereignty feared abroad and unchallenged by any rival power at home. Bourbon Policy in Art Matters. — The changed conception of royalty under the Bourbons reacted upon the arts. The Valois, animated by a strong personal enjoyment in art, had done much, though fitfully, to encourage it. The Bourbons regarded art as one of the means of giving dignity, and consequently efficiency, to the State, and, beyond that, aimed at extending the control of the administration over artistic, as well as other, matters. This policy reached its fullest development in the reign of Louis XIV. under Colbert, but nearly all this minister's methods had been initiated by Henry IV. and Sully, and continued to some extent by Richelieu and Mazarin. Henry IV. was as ardent a builder as any of his predecessors, and almost to the end of the monarchy there was little slackening in the royal building operations. Occupation was thus afforded for a large number of architects, decorators, and craftsmen of all sorts, and the conduct of these works became a highly organised department of the administration. He attempted to reform the trade and craft guilds, introduced and fostered new manufactures of an artistic order, such as those of stamped and gilded leather and of silk fabrics, and founded the royal carpet and tapestry factory of the Savonnerie. He instituted the 212 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. practice of giving free quarters in the waterside galleries of the Louvre to artists of various kinds, who, while not working exclusively for the crown, entered into direct relations with the sovereign and enjoyed special privileges. Measures were also taken to attract artists from other countries, both foreigners and Frenchmen who had studied abroad, to promote architectural education, and to obtain good rnodels for artists at home. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE STYLE OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. Origins : Utilitarian and Austere Character. — When Henry IV. ascended the throne, architecture — like the State — was a welter of conflicting tendencies pulling in different directions and without central guidance. The ensuing period was marked by a process of fusion and compromise between them analogous to that which Henry's policy effected in the political and religious spheres. The necessity for economy, moderation, and discipline was the guiding principle which reduced the various influences to some degree of harmony. Material prosperity had to be re-established : practical, inexpensive, durable building was encouraged, brick construction popularised — perhaps by the rela- tions entertained with Holland — and the rustication which was its accompaniment prevailed. Friv- olity and lawlessness, luxury and display were repressed : a serious, sober style arose appropriate to a trend of opinion inspired partly by economic, partly by moral con- siderations. The austere cast of the age was in a measure of Puritan origin, for not only did Huguenot influence reach high-water mark under Henry IV., but the leading architects of the day were in many cases Protestants, and as the result of the counter-Reformation there was also a Catholic Puritanism, affecting both morals and art. The desire for practical unadorned building was enforced by another current of thought, which crops up again and again as a factor in SCALE OF 211. Paris: Elevation of Houses in Place Dauphine, by C. Chas- TILLON (l6oo). THE STYLES OF HENRY lr. AND LOUIS XIII. 213 French architectural evolution, and was especially strong on the threshold of the Age of Reason ; the conception of architecture as a rationalistic expression of the uses and construction of a building without any such ideal element as that supplied by the orders. Economy, sobriety, and reason are admirable as steadying forces, but they are insufficient as an inspiration, and it was still to Rome that artists of all religions and parties turned for models. Classical Influence. — Both Protestants and Catholics were equally disposed to accept the teaching of antiquity. The former, as modelling themselves on the primitive Church, and the latter, because Rome was the headquarters of the classical revival, could find elements in Roman or neo Roman art appropriate to their purposes. The tendency to a severe classicism was strengthened by the intercourse of Protestants with their Dutch allies, and of Catholics with the Holy See and Italian princes. The Reformation, the child of Humanism, and the counter-Reformation, it remoter offspring, were thus at one in following the Roman chool in its stricter tendency. Barocco Influence. — But while the pure classic traditions of the great days of Henry II. were not dead, and were strengthened by renewed studies in Italy, a contrary tendency had also to be reckoned with, and for a time almost swamped them. To many, the traditions of the decorators of. Fontainebleau and the licence in the use of classical forms, which had been associated with their influence, were more congenial. They found their natural affinity in the barocco school, which, inaugurated by Michael Angelo in Italy, had spread thence to Belgium, and there, modified to some extent by Spanish influence, was reaching a strong and characteristic develop- ment. The visits of Rubens to Paris (1622-6), to decorate the Luxem- bourg Palace, gave a great impetus to the development in France of the emphatic manner of which his art was the highest expression. Resulting Style.— The resultant of these various forces was a widely spread style, recognisable for its practical, sober, masculine, and sturdy character. It is most often unadorned, and depends for effect on the simplest means. In general, without delicate nuances or refinement of detail, it seldom approaches the distinction of Henry II. work, but sometimes attains an antique Roman grandeur of conception. On the other hand, when a society, whose refinement was less than its desire for sumptuousness, sought means of display, and when the Puritan influence declined, a type of decoration gained ground, vigorous and luxuriant, but coarse in taste. A peculiarity of the style is that it used almost exclusively a combination of characteristics which were not individually novelties. Many of these can be paralleled from the time of Henry II., and 214 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE £N FRANCE. almost all from the time of the civil wars, more especially from the works of Jacques Androuet du Cerceau the elder, who, by the popularity of his published works, and the traditions handed down to his sons and grandsons, as well as to other architect families which sprang from Verneuil, such as those of Metivier and du Ry, exercised a profound influence on the formation of seventeenth century architecture. Henry IV. Phase. — It is a question how far a sharp distinction can be drawn between the styles of Henry IV. and Louis XIII. If a division into two periods be made, the earlier one, which may be called the age of Henry IV., though it extends for some years after his death, is one during which the architects were men trained under the later Valois, and the arrangements of the six- teenth century remained unchanged, but out of a number of conflicting tendencies a sober, homogeneous, architec- tural style was formed, culminating in the work of Salomon de Brosse, while in decoration a tendency towards the barocco manner of Flanders was confirmed by the visit of Rubens. Louis XIII. Phase. — In the later period, which may be called the age of Louis XIII., coinciding with the ministry of Richelieu (1624-42) and the troubled years before the final triumph of Mazarin (1643-53), tne altering requirements of social life considerably affected the accepted ar- rangements, 3nd, while the style established in the previous period per- sisted in the main, it 212. Chateau des Ifs {<: 1612) : Doorway. underwent modifications SCALE OP 1- THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 215 of two kinds. On the one hand the Flemish barocco reached its climax, on the other a classical reaction began to show itself in efforts towards concentration and refinement, constituting the begin- nings of the style of Louis XIV. Plans in Henry IV. Phase. — In the period of Henry IV. plan- ning underwent no appreciable change. During the long anarchy, society had grown less, not more, refined, and the arrangements of the sixteenth century sufficed for its needs. The fortified aspect of the castle, however, tended more and scALt or rttr . 213. Design for Town House by Pierre le Muet: Section A— A. CKOUMD PLAh 214. Design for Town House by Pierre le Muet : Plan. more to disappear, though the system of projecting pavilions in the main block and of an indepen- dent gate pavilion continued in use, while the moat, if retained for decor- ative purposes, was often dry, and treated as a sunk garden, and the court is sometimes represented by a mere walled or balustraded en- closure. Both in town and country mansions the division into a number of small suites of rooms was main- tained, and the state staircase, being placed in the centre of the main block, prevented the possibility of an uninterrupted suite of reception rooms. Plans in Louis XIII. Phase. — One of the results of more settled government was a new growth of refinement in the habits of society, one manifestation of which was a desire for greater privacy and com- fort, and to this were due several changes in. house planning, which 2l6 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. took place in the second and third decades of the century, not merely in palatial residences, but even in small middle class houses. In Le Muet's " Maniere de Bien Bastir pour Toutes Sortes de Personnes" (Paris, 1623), which gives model plans of town houses with frontages ranging from 13 to 78 feet, the offices, stores, j r . . J stables, and inferior rooms are usually J in a front block, separated by a court from a back block containing the principal living rooms, with a garden behind it, an eminently suitable ar- rangement in view of the narrowness, noise, and filth of the streets (Figs. 213 and 214). The two blocks are connected by a narrow wing usually containing the staircase. Much care is devoted to the arrangement, inter- communication, and aspect of the rooms, and hints are given for the dimensions of the various apartments and other matters. In the larger town houses of the time the service-buildings were gene- rally grouped round one or more basecourts at the side of the court of honour, while the reception block occupied the full width of the site behind them, and thus had the greatest possible extent of garden front (Fig. 215). Great ingenuity is displayed in making confined and irregular sites yield the maximum of convenience and symmetry. The improvements introduced at this time in mansion planning have been ascribed by aristocratic writers to the invention of Madame de Rambouillet, who is represented as drawing her own plans. The incident of the plan drawn, and the credit for its success taken by the client, occurs, no doubt, in the experience of architects of all ages. The layman can always teach the professional man his business. The marquise, however, may have given her architect suggestions, and undoubtedly helped by the meetings in her Salon Bleu to popularise innovations called into being by the needs of a society which owed much to her influence. Towards the end of Henry IV.'s reign she began to hold those receptions which have made her name famous. By opening a salon, where society and the world of art, letters, and learning could meet on an equal footing, she compassed a double 215. Paris : Hotel de Bouillon or llancourt, rue de seine, by s. de brosse (1614). now DESTROYED. FROM MAROT. THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 217 216. Paris: Hotel de Longueville, or d'Epernon, Rue St Thomas du Louvre (c. 1615). Now destroyed. From Marot. object. The former gained culture and the latter urbanity by mutual contact. She devoted much care to making her house a suitable place for these reunions, and the Hotel de Rambouillet as transformed by her (1615-18) became a model for all who aimed at refinement and comfort rather than mere grandeur, and at providing elegant, well-lit apartments of moderate size, suited to intimate intercourse, as well as suites adapted only for large receptions. These suites were approached from an entrance-hall {vestibule), a new feature, and were no longer cut in two by the draughty splendour of the grand staircase. This was removed, and, a distinction being now often made between private and reception rooms, could take its place on one side of the court between the state and private wings, and be balanced on the other by a secondary stair between the state and service wings. The great bed-chamber (chambre de parade) was the culminating point of the principal suite, it being the fashion for great ladies to receive while reclining on their beds. This custom led to the popularity of the "alcove," which as then understood meant, not, as now, a cupboard-like recess little larger than the bed itself, but a portion screened from the rest of the room by balustrades, columns, and curtains, and always hung with stuffs, what- ever the surrounding decoration might be, forming a cosy sanctum round the bed within the great state chamber, the spaces on each side of the bed being termed "ruelles." The remainder of the suites consisted in a multiplication of the closet {cabinet), which always accompanied the chamber, and in the greater houses generally com- prised a long gallery. Though the terms antechamber, back-closet, summer and winter closet occur, there was as yet little specialisation 218 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. in the uses to which- various rooms were put. Meals were served, dancing indulged in, music and plays performed, according to the host's fancy, or wherever the company happened to be sitting.* Entrances. — Even in important mansions there was little attempt to make a display in the public eye. Shops were even sometimes introduced in the front blocks, which otherwise usually presented a forbidding blank wall, at least in the lower storey, where a monu- mental coach entrance is the only thing to proclaim the presence of a great house. The entrance-pavilion disappears in hotels and tends to do so even in chateaux. But the gateway was often, as in the Hotel de Longueville (Fig. 216), a very elaborate feature. A severer fashion introduced by Francois Mansart in the gateway of the Hotel de Conti — still in existence in the Impasse Conti — was much admired and followed {cf. Fig. 217). It is treated as a great rusticated niche, to which sculpture in the tym- panum or on the skyline, or pilasters and a pediment might be added. In the court of honour the archi- tecture became more genial than externally, though often kept small in scale as befitted what was, in effect, an open- air room, while only in the garden front, which was re- served for the eye of the family and honoured guests, and where space permitted a more monumental scale, were the fullest splendours unfolded. \. /kink -**** 217. Chateau de Courances: Entrance Pavilion. Drawn by P. Ilepworth. * The desire for greater com- fort did not always conduce to better sanitation. The practice of replacing the old privy, open to the air, by a night stool [chaise percte), placed in a sometimes unventilated cabinet, or garde- robe, came in at this time in the better houses, and both words have become synonymous with W.C. in modern French, THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 2IQ 1 — c „ -x — _ % 7- Wes>t Zi^UVAtmm ate "Plan at FtesT Flooi 101 a 3 * 5 SCALE OF^^""^ 1 1 1 1 -J METRES 5 0 5 10 15 20 SCALE OF' .iii — I 1 1 1 — 'FEET 218. CHATEAU OF OYRON : Part of Garden Elevation. Measured and Drawn by L. M. Gotch. 220 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 219. Chateau of Oyrox : Garden Front. Brick and Stone Architec- ture.— The style of Henry IV. de- pends little, as a rule, on the orders, which are treated without much dis- tinction, and re- served for works of peculiar impressive- ness, or to accen- tuate important features. It is above all a brick style relying for its decoration on the combination of brick and rustication. Both had an utilitarian object. Brick was an economical material : coigns, bands and piers of stone served to stiffen and knit together the brick walling (Fig. 210). As so often happens, a treatment which was the outcome of circumstances and appropriate to one set of materials was soon re- produced in another. Thus side by side with a brick and stone architecture there arose a stone architecture depending for effect on the same devices as the brick. The character of the whole period in its desire for stability and usefulness is reflected in the massive char- acter of the buildings and their features, their piers, their arcades, and their chimneys, while the mouldings lose the sharp crispness of Henry II. 's time and assume a heavier, more rounded type. Rustication, " Chaines." — Rustication under Henry IV. was used in a characteristic manner. Not only was it applied continuously to entire basements and plinths, and to the coigns of external angles and openings, in courses either of equal length or more frequently alternately long and short, but lengths of wall were broken up by vertical strips of rustication, similar to the coigns, and known in French as chaines, while the dressings of openings were carried continuously from top to bottom of the elevations, Generally, too, the spaces of walling left between the chaines and strings, or between the upper and lower openings, were decorated in some manner. If in brick, they were often patterned with brick of another colour, and, whether brick, ashlar or plaster, treated, as in the Francis I. style, as a panel with a central motive, which took the form of a niche or raised tablet (Figs. 211 and 212). These niches were often round or oval and contained busts, and the tablets of various shapes, especially oblong with curved ends. THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 221 220. Chateau of Beaumesnil (1634-40). Again, in coigns and chaines, raised stone bands were used alternately with flush, or flush ones with brick, while rustication was often extended to arches, niches, pilasters, chimneys, and dor- mers. That type of it in which the ver- tical joints are as strongly marked as the horizontal, and the diamond point type are seldom found after the early years of the century. The stones forming the rustication are usually square edged, and sometimes bevelled or rounded. Vermiculation, common at first, gradually became rarer. The Medici Grotto in the Luxembourg gardens, often ascribed to Rubens, shows one of the earliest examples of congelations, a kind of rustication simulating icicles or dripping mosses, which had a great vogue subsequently for similar works (see Fig. 377). Other combina- tions besides these more natural ones of brick and stone are found. Thus in the Cour Henri IV. at Fontainebleau stone coigns are used with plastered rubble walling; on the Galerie des Cerfs (Fig. 225) and the Hotel Montescot at Chartres brick is used for coigns. Roofs. — In the earlier period roofs lost nothing of their height or steepness, or of the elaboration of their epis and crestings. The system of roofing each block independently, and the frequent use of curved forms, including square domes, persisted both under Henry IV. and Louis XIII. In the latter's reign the so-called Mansard roof was popularised in the works of Francois Mansart, though not invented by him. It seems to have been in occasional use in the sixteenth century, for instance in Lescot's Louvre. The system consisted in breaking the slope in two, with the lower portion steep and the upper either at a low pitch or almost flat, an arrangement which permitted a better utilisation of the roof space, and, while giving a less picturesque outline, altered the proportion of roof and wall in the total height in a manner more consonant with classical practice (Fig. 235). Windows, Dormers. — Windows under Henry IV. grew larger, but still retained their mullions and transoms. Vertical lines of windows connected by chaines were generally crowned by a stone or brick dormer and dormers only half emerging from the wall line were also frequent 222 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IX FRANCE. Chatkau of Beaumesml: Detail of Windows. (Fig. 225). Tall dormers with rectangular open- ings and pediments often alternate with short ones with ceils de bceaf and curved tops (Fig. 240). Under Louis XIII. the desire for better lighting and the complete disappearance of the old prejudice against large openings in outer walls led to a further increase in the size of windows, which often extended from the floor almost to the ceiling (Fig. 216). Stone mullions and tran- soms, too, began to be abandoned for wooden ones, and lead cames for wooden sash-bars. In inferior rooms, however, oiled linen was still used instead of glass. This was the case, even in the palace of Fontainebleau, as late as the reign of Louis XIV. Dormers which, under Henry IV., were generally of sober outline were often treated with great richness in the Flemish barocco spirit. But the popularity of Mansard roofs, which could be lit by inconspicuous dormers, often covered with metal (mansardes), led to the gradual disappearance of the monumental stone dormers, hitherto so characteristic of French architecture. Limits of Barocco Influence. — While the barocco manner principally affected internal decoration it was not entirely confined to it. Pediments broken and voluted, or even reversed, polygonal arches, florid leather work cartouches, and grimacing masks make their appear- ance on the exterior here and there from the first, side by side with the semi-dormers and semi-giant orders, which were relics of the time of the civil wars. These barocco elements do not appear to have increased in any appreciable degree after Rubens' visit, except as regards the decoration of particular features such as doorways, e.g., those of the Hotel de Chalons, Rue Geoffroy l'Asnier in Paris, and the Chateau des Ifs (Fig. 212). The movement even at its height was with few exceptions always kept within bounds by the essential modera- THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 223 tion and reasonableness of the French temperament, and while it avoided the worst excesses into which it fell in other lands it also failed to attain either the impressive vehemence of the Flemish or the poetical abandon of the kindred Italian style. France can thus scarcely be said to have a true barocco style of her own. Buildings designed as a whole in the extreme barocco manner, such as the church of Ste Marie at Nevers (Fig. 257), are extremely rare, and indeed scarcely to be found elsewhere except along the Flemish border. THE ARCHITECTS. Biard, Chastillon, du Perac. — The architects of the buildings erected in Henry IV.'s time can only rarely be determined with certainty. On the death of Baptiste du Cerceau (1590) there was a dearth of trained talent. No important work can be assigned to Pierre Biard (1559-1609), his successor as Architect and Superintendent of the Royal Buildings, except the rood-loft at St Etienne du Mont (Fig. 86), and he seems to have been principally occupied with sculpture. Claude Chastillon (1547-1616) was employed by Henry IV. to design public buildings and city improvements, and as a military engineer. His architecture was of the rather pedestrian order typical of the times. Etienne du Perac (c. 1 540-1601) was a man of greater culture. He spent many years in Italy, where he practised as architect and engraver, and etched some of the designs for St Peter's and the ruins of Rome. On his return in 1582 he was employed by Henry III. and Henry IV. He seems to have taken a large part in the additions to the royal palaces, and brought in a bolder type of garden design. While at St Germain and Fontainebleau his work is not above the average of his time, at the Louvre it rises to a classic nobility. T. and L. Metezeau, Jacques II. du Cerceau. — Apart from these men the royal favours seem to have been monopolised by the families of Androuet du Cerceau and Metezeau. Thibaut Metezeau (c- I533"96), son of Clement I., master-mason at Dreux, was employed by Henry III., may have worked on the Grande Galerie of the Louvre, and made the first scheme for joining the Louvre and Tuileries into a single palace, shown in a fresco of the Galerie des Cerfs at Fontainebleau.* Between his elder son Louis (1559-1615) and Jacques II. du Cerceau (1545-1614), brother of Baptiste, there was a somewhat embittered rivalry. Louis Metezeau, who was appointed Architect in Ordinary to the King and Superintendent of the Royal Buildings (1594), probably worked at the Louvre, i.e., on the eastern half of the Grande Galerie. At his death his salary was 2,400 1. a year, * See notes on pages 141, 167 and 168. According to M. Batiflol's theory this scheme is that prepared by Lescot in 1 549. 224 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IX FRANCE. and he was Keeper {Concierge) of the Tuileries. Jacques du Cerceau was placed in charge of buildings at the Louvre in 1595, and in 1602 was Controller and Architect of the King's Buildings at 1,200 1. a year. He completed and restored the chateaux of Monceaux and Verneuil for the king's mistresses, Gabrielle d'Estrees and Henriette d'Entragues respectively. He may have had some part in the western half of the Grande Galerie, and completed the junction between it and the Tuileries after du Perac's death. It is possible, too, that he was the architect of the Hotel de Mayenne rather than his nephew Jean to whom it is usually attributed, since it seems to have been built before 1610. De Brosse. — As the reign of Louis XIII. advanced there is rather fuller information about the architects. The traditions of the two great architect families of the last reign were kept up under Maria de' Medici's regency, and beyond it. Of the three leading architects of that time two were grandsons of Jacques I. du Cerceau, Jean du Cerceau (born before 1590, died after 1649), son of Baptiste, and Salomon de Brosse (born 1562 or earlier, died 1626), son of Jehan de Brosse, clerk of works at Verneuil, and of Julienne, daughter of Jacques I. du Cerceau, and the third a younger brother of Louis Metezeau, Jacques Clement II. (1581-1652). Salomon de Brosse was certainly the greatest architect of the early seventeenth century. His early training was, no doubt, on the works of his grandfather and uncles at Verneuil and elsewhere, but whether he went to Italy is not known. His belief in the need of a good classical grounding is proved by the fact that he found time, amid the pressure of an extensive practice, to re-edit Bullant's " Regie Generate " (1619). Uniting a sound taste and judgment with a great family tradition, and the culture of a scholar with practical experience, he was peculiarly fitted to take a leading part in the settling of the national architecture in a period of divergent aims. He gathered up all that was best in contemporary efforts into a consistent manner, which his Huguenot antecedents tinged with seriousness, and his classical studies with a feeling for Roman majesty, and thus raised architecture out of the quagmire of utilitarianism. The earliest building attributed to him is the first "Temple" or Protestant Church at Charenton (1606, burnt down by the mob 1621). His other principal works are the aqueduct of Arcueil (1612-24), the Hotel de Bouillon or Liancourt (16 13), the chateaux of Coulommier (16 13) and Blerencourt (16 14), the facade of St Gervais (16 16-21), the Luxembourg Palace (1615-24), the Capuchin Church at Coulommier (1617-25), the Palace of the Parlement of Brittany at Rennes, the rebuilding of the Grand' Salle of the Palais de Justice in Paris (1618), the second Temple of Charen- ton, and in all probability the royal hunting box of Versailles (1624), THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 225 a charming example of the fashionable brick and stone manner (Fig. 299). In the year 1616 he already held the post of Architect General of the Buildings of the King and Queen-Mother at a yearly salary of 2,400 1., and during the last fifteen years of his life was the unquestioned leader of his profession. J. C. Metezeau, Jean du Cerceau. — By this time the feud between the two families seems to have been healed, for Jacques Clement Metezeau (1581-1652) was supervising architect under de Brosse at the Luxembourg (161 5-18). He acted in the same capacity, or perhaps as architect in chief, for the nave of the Oratoire Church (1624-7), and seems to have carried out on his own account the important Hotel de Longueville (c. 1620), and several chateaux. On his brother's death he succeeded to his post as architect to the King, and in 1624 his salary was the same as that of de Brosse. Jean du Cerceau was also architect to Louis XIII. at a salary of 800 1., and had one of the largest private practices of his day. He was the architect of the important Hotels de Sully and de Bellegarde, later Seguier (1612-30). He also entered into speculative undertakings, such as the rebuilding of the Pont-au-Change with the houses on it. Le Mercier. — Soon after de Brosse's death, Jacques Le Mercier (1585-1654), who was already one of the King's architects at 1,200 1., in 1 6 18, succeeded to his position in regard to the royal works, and in 1639 became First Architect to the King at 3,000 1. He was also Cardinal Richelieu's private architect. A member, probably, of a family of master-masons, practising at Pontoise and Paris, Le Mercier represents the more traditional and conservative tendencies of his day. Taking up the national style at a point to which de Brosse had carried it, he used it with vigour and amplitude, but made no advance on his great predecessor, whom, in spite of a protracted sojourn in Italy (1609-13), he equalled neither in refinement nor in scholarship, while he scarcely kept abreast with the improvements in planning of his contemporaries. That the completion of the old Louvre (1624-54) should have been placed in the hands of one so reverent of the past is most fortunate ; a man of stronger individuality might not have been content to be guided to the same extent by the older work. His highest original achievements are in church architecture, in which domain important tasks fell to his share, and his church of the Sorbonne (1635-53) is one of the most impressive buildings of the time. Le Mercier may be regarded as the most typical architect of the age of Louis XIII. Le Muet. — His contemporary, Pierre le Muet (1 591-1669), was likewise a follower of de Brosse, under whom he worked at the Luxembourg. Though he was one of the King's architects, his practice appears to have been chiefly a private one. His works included the 16 226 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. chateaux of Ponts and Chauvigny and additions to that of Tanlay. He long practised a manner very similar to that of Le Mercier, but, younger and more open to new ideas, he kept up with, and perhaps promoted, the progress in internal planning, and yielded to the growing classicising current, so that his latest works may be reckoned as examples of the Louis XIV. style. F. Mansart. — While the du Cerceau and Metezeau dynasties were coming to an end, two new ones, which were to hold an even more prominent place in French architecture, and to be united by various ties, were being founded by Jacques I. Gabriel, a humble practitioner of Rouen, and Francois Mansart (1598- 1666), the greatest figure on the architectural stage during the rule of the cardinal-ministers. Of obscure origin and training, he is believed to have conducted the works at St Gervais under de Brosse. He owed much to the latter's influence, as may be judged from a comparison, for instance, of his work at Blois with the Luxembourg and the chateau of Coulommier (Figs. 228, 230, and 234). More original and fastidious than Le Mercier, he exhibits in his earlier work the culmination of the style of Louis XIII., and, becoming increasingly penetrated with the classical spirit, helped largely in preparing the way for the style of the Grand Reigne. His repeated refusal to palter with the dictates of his artistic conscience is as creditable to his character as it was injurious to his worldly advancement, but the independent spirit which lost him important works was allied to an inordinate vanity, which prompted him to a display more suitable to a duke. He caused a pedigree to be drawn up, according to which his ancestors had been architects to every king of France, from Hugh Capet in the tenth century downwards, and drove about in a coach drawn by horses trained to a rhythmic step. Mansart's earliest known work is the chateau of Balleroy (1026-36), followed by the church of Ste Marie, Rue St Antoine (1633-4), the Hotel de la Vrilliere (1635-8), the new wing at Blois (1635-40), the chateau of Maisons (1642-50), and the remodelling of the Hotel d'Argouge (1662). It was in connection with the convent and church of the Val-de- Grace (begun 1645) that the disagreement with his royal employers occurred which deprived Mansart of their favour. It was known that, at Maisons, he had pulled down some of the work as soon as built, in order to improve the design, but not that the employer's consent had been obtained before doing so. Anne of Austria, fearing a repetition of these costly methods, insisted on the work at the Valde-Grace being carried out in accordance with the accepted scheme. Mansart preferred to throw up his post rather than bind himself to a design which, in his maturer judgment, might require modification, and the conduct of the building was transferred to Le Mercier. Later on he lost the opportunity of completing the Louvre THE STYLES OE HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 227 by refusing to make a final choice among the alternatives he had sub- mitted at Colbert's request, remarking " that he could never consent to tie his hands, and that, so as to deserve the honour His Majesty intended for him, he wished to reserve the power of always doing better." Le Vau. — Some of the early work of his younger contemporary, Louis Le Vau or Le Veau (16 [2-70), who became one of the chief architects of Louis XIV., still belong to the Louis XIII. style. SECULAR ARCHITECTURE. The Louvre and Tuileries. — Henry IV. was almost as enthusi- astic a lover of the arts as Erancis I., and no less intent on building. Almost all the royal palaces were enlarged by him, if he created none. The history of his buildings at the Louvre and Tuileries has not yet 222. Louvre Grande Galerie : Elevation. Erom Blondei.. No Scale. been thoroughly disentangled. The upper storeys of the eastern half of the Grande Galerie and possibly those of the Petite Galerie seem to have been carried out under Louis Metezeau. Du Perac was prob- ably the architect of the western half of the Grande Galerie, which was nearly completed at his death (1601), with some degree of assist- ance from Jacques II. du Cerceau, to whom the Pavilion de Flore at the south-west angle of the palace is possibly, and the Galerie de Diane connecting it with Bullant's block at the Tuileries certainly, due (160 1-9). Whether he designed the central pavilion of the Tuileries with its elliptical dome and its angle cupolas is not known. Grande Galerie: Eastern Half. — The architectural tendency of these various buildings, only a small portion of which is now in existence, is diverse (Fig. 222). In the portions assumed to be Louis Metezeau's work existing buildings largely determined the character of the design. The original Grande Galerie was intended to be a single storeyed build- 228 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. ing with a terrace roof, and was divided into some thirty hays by engaged coupled columns. A mezzanine with panels, instead of an order, was introduced above it to make the floor of the new upper gallery level with that of the Petite Galerie. In this upper storey the coupled order is resumed, but the number of bays reduced by half in a very successful manner. The windows are replaced by niches in every other bay, and the windowed bays have pediments, alternately pointed and segmental, connected together by a balustrade. The best traditions of the late Valois period still predominate in this com- position.* Grande Galerie: Western Half. — The arrangement, which here grew quite naturally out of the conditions, seems to have suggested the treatment of the western extension of the galleries. The entablature and bay-system with alternating pediments were retained, but, the mezzanine not being required, the more normal arrangement of two storeys over a basement was substituted ; and, freed from hampering conditions, the architect sought an enhanced scale, proportioned to the great length of the building and the open space before it, by the adoption of a giant order with wider bays and pediments, as may be seen in the replica of this facade built by Percier and Fontaine on the north side of the Place du Carrousel (Fig. 451)- Unfortunately he found himself obliged to carry the heads of the tall upper windows up through the architrave and frieze of the entablature. In spite of this solecism, which is avoided in the eastern portion, this elevation has something of the austere grandeur of a Roman work, and may well be the fruit of du Perac's Italian studies. Pavilion de Flore, &*£. — The ordinance of the Pavilion de Flore and the adjoining part of the Tuileries followed that of the Grande Galerie as far as the order is concerned (Fig. 297). The simple and gigantic mass of the pavilion gives a satisfying solidity to the angle of the vast palace. Though the defects of the gallery are emphasised by the order being single and the entablature thus broken into discon- nected fragments, and though the height of the attic is disproportionate, the old Pavilion de Flore was as superior as the old water-side gallery to the florid inventions of Lefuel, which have replaced them since the fire of 187 1. Except in the additions to the Petite Galerie (Fig. 160) with their rusticated coigns and scrolled ail-de-banf dormers, the peculiarities of the Henry IV. style are almost absent from the new portions of the great metropolitan palaces, which follow the purer classical traditions suggested by pre-existing buildings. * See notes on pp. 141 and 167. In M. Batiffol's view the whole design of this half of the Grande Galerie, as completed under Henry IV., was already laid down by Lescot, but he intended placing a large pavilion between it and a less important western extension, not, as was done, on the site of the Pavilion de Flore. THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 22Q 223. Louvre Court: Pavillon de l'Horloue or Sully, uy J. Le Mercier (1624-30). From Mariette. Louvre Court. — Louis XIII. had small love for the Louvre, and preferred his little hunting-box at Versailles, but Richelieu had higher ideas of the dignity of the monarchy and deemed that the royal palace in the capital should be placed beyond all competition from those of the nobility. Lescot's scheme, whatever its artistic merits, could not strike the imagination by overwhelming size, and it was decided to 230 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 2?4. St Germain-en-Laye : Chateau Nbdf (1594). From an Old Print. double the length of each side, thus quadrupling the extent of the court. Le Mercier, with admirable self-restraint, allowed himself to be guided in almost every detail by the existing work. The western and southern wings with the intervening angle pavilion were completed. He merely reproduced them towards the north, interposing, however, the " Pavilion de l'Horloge" or "Sully" between the old and new work in the axis of the enlarged palace, thus providing a new entrance from the west. This was the one opportunity he allowed himself for expressing his own ideas, but even here he followed the general lines of the old angle pavilion, varying it by substituting a square dome for the hipped roof, and by the different treatment of the fourth storey (Fig. 223). Since the enrichment, required to bring the latter into harmony with its sur- roundings could hardly be effected by an order, which would have stood awkwardly over the attic order of the third storey, he solved the difficulty by using caryatids. The composition, in which these female figures, executed by Jacques Sarrazin (1588-1648) and his assistants, form so striking a feature, is one worthy of its position, though open to criticism in more than one point. The fussy triple pediment, perhaps suggested by de l'Orme's Tuileries, can hardly be defended, while the excessive scale of the caryatids and the ponderous dome conspire to produce a top-heavy effect.* St Germain. — More characteristic of the times than those at the * See notes on pp. 141 and 167-9. M. Batiffol contends that Le Mercier was merely commissioned to carry out the extended scheme adopted by Henry II. in 1549, but ob- tained permission to modify the central pavilion by making it wider, and by introducing he caryatids and dome. The original design is shown on a medal struck in 1624. THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 23 1 Louvre are Henry's additions to St Germain and Fontainebleau. The extent of Philibert de l'Orme's scheme for the lay-out of the terraced gardens at St Germain and the state of advancement it had reached before Henry's time are not certain, but it is clear that they were remodelled and the Chateau Neuf very much enlarged under Henry IV. by du Perac, who added a court on either side of the original one (1594) (Fig. 224). The buildings were mostly of one storey with brick dressings and enriched plastered walling. The extended river front terminated in pavilions with square domes, one of which is almost the only relic of the palace. In front of this he laid out a stately scheme of terraces, under which ran crypto-porticoes, and of steps leading down to an enclosed parterre. His great influence on garden design is acknowledged by Claude Mollet, the king's gardener, who says that du Perac was the first in France to show how a parterre might be laid out in a single comprehensive design, instead of dividing it into a number of unrelated squares each different, and to introduce parterres de broderie, consisting in flowing floral patterns, like those of embroidery, outlined with box-edging. Fontainebleau. — Few details are known of the history of Henry's buildings at Fontainebleau, which completely altered the aspect of the palace on the north and east, and seem to have been spread over the greater part of the reign. They fall into three groups — the enclosure of the Queen's Garden, the opening up of the Oval Court, and the new forecourt (see plan, Fig. 61). Orangery Court. — The Queen's Garden was surrounded by three wings finished about 1600 — the "Galerie des Chevreuils" on the west (m on the plan), decorated with hunting scenes; the aviary on the north (n on the plan), later transformed into an orangery, which gave its name to the court, each with a single storey and small ornamental dormers ; and the " Galerie des Cerfs " on the east (o on the plan), with a second gallery over it, " Galerie de Diane," in the attic. This wing (Fig. 225) is the only one of the three now standing. It is not improbable that du Perac designed the various buildings of this court, which recall the new courts at St Germain by the use of brick and plaster and of tall semi-dormers with broken and voluted pediments. Oval Court. — Remy Collin, Architect for the Buildings of Fontaine- bleu, appears to have designed the remainder of the works, whose object was to make a new and more noble approach to the royal apartments. For this purpose the eastern end of the Oval Court was opened out, the two sides being slightly set back and refaced, and a screen substituted for the oval guard-room, in the centre of which was a stately gateway (q on the plan) with a vaulted arch under a pediment and square dome ; it was known as the " Porte Dauphine," and after 1606, at which date the heir to the throne was christened under it, as 232 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. ill" 5*" 4 THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 233 226. FONTAINEBLEAU : PORTE DAUPHINE OR BAPTISTERE DE LOUIS XIII. (c. 1600). From a Drawing by P. Hepworth. the Baptistery of Louis XIII. (Fig. 226). The moat in the White Horse Court, no longer needed after the cessation of civil war, was emptied, and Primaticcio's drawbridge gateway was removed, to be utilised as the lower storey of the Porte Dauphine, which now became the main entrance. Henry IV. Court. — In front of it a new forecourt, "Cour des Offices," or "Cour Henri IV.," was erected to contain the servants' offices (finished 1609). The bulk of the buildings have but one storey, 234 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 227. FONTAINEBLEAU ; HORSE-SHOE STAIR, BY JEAN DU CERCEAU (1634). only the pavilions having two ; but the extent of the court being considerable, viz., about 225 feet square, the traditional arrangement of angle and central pavilions would have produced an insignificant effect, and a new device was therefore adopted to remedy it : the central pavilions were flanked by a pair of smaller ones. The walling is covered with plaster, and the dressings are in stone. The main entrance facing the town on the north side, which is entirely in stone, is treated as a gigantic heavily rusticated niche with semi-dome of majestic effect (r on the plan), and very similar in design to the gateway at Courances illustrated in Fig. 217. Horse-Shoe Stair. — The rebuilding, or remodelling, of de l'Orme's Horse-Shoe Stairs (1633) was the only work apart from decoration carried out under Louis XIII. (s on the plan, and Fig. 227). Long ascribed to Le Mercier, this work is now known to have been designed by Jean du Cerceau. It consists of two arms carried on ingenious ramped vaulting, and with its subtly flowing curves and graceful balus- trade forms a noble approach from the White Horse Court to the royal apartments on the upper floor. Its curvilinear plan constitutes a curious anticipation of the rococo manner of the next century. Coulommier. — The early years of Maria de' Medici's regency gave Salomon de Brosse the opportunity of summing up in a grave key a century's experience of classical building as adapted to French require- ments, in several princely residences. The Luxembourg Palace remains almost intact, the chateau of Coulommier-en-Brie is known from engravings, while about the chateau of Blerencourt there appears to be no information. The plan of Coulommier (Fig. 229), built for Catharine of Gonzaga, Duchess of Longueville, resembles that of the first scheme for Verneuil (Fig. 163) in the arrangement of double THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 235 SCALE OFl 228. Chateau of Coulommier-en-Brie, by S. de Brosse (1617-25); Now in Ruins. Front Elevation. From Marot. pavilions projecting on each side of the angles, and in the domical entrance pavilion in the centre of the one-storeyed screen-gallery (Figs. 162 and 228). Entrances in the centre of each wing led direct to the staircases. The upper end of the court was slightly raised in a manner usual throughout the century, and the inner angles of the building at each end of the terrace were rounded off by a curved colonnade, initiating a method of treating one or other end of the court which was largely imitated subsequently. The three wings and side pavilions had two storeys, but the front and back pavilions three. The external elevations were heavily rusticated, but not the internal which with the front were treated with orders of coupled pilasters, sculpture, and other enrichments. Above the main cornice a cresting of elaborate oeils- de-bceuf alternating with equally elabo- rate pinnacles made the entire circuit of the building. The total effect must have been magnificent in the extreme. The Luxembourg. — The Lux- embourg (Figs. 230 and 231), though in many respects similar to Coulom- mier, and equally grave, does not rival it in richness or variety of outline. 229_ chateau of Coulommier The entrance pavilion and screen are Plan. From Marot. 236 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. SCALE OF METRES SCCTIor-" A-B SCALE OF FEET 230. Luxembourg Palace, Paris, by S. de Brosse (1615-24): Section A — B. From Blondel. almost identical. Single pavilions of three bays are used instead of double ones with two, but since the back wing has a pavilion at each of its angles there were six in all instead of eight, all with three storeys, while the side blocks have two and the back wing two and an attic. On the garden front a loggia ran between the pavilions, interrupted in the centre by a domed chapel immediately behind the great staircase. A sober and massive breadth of treatment is the main characteristic of this design, which is totally devoid of effort or elaboration, and almost of ornament. The only playful features are the graceful cupolas over the entrance (Fig. 209) and chapel. The roofs being of the Mansard type, and the dormers small and masked by a stout balustrade, the effect of the upper part of the build- ing is far simpler than at Coulommier; as for the walls, they are uniformly rusticated in- cluding their coupled pilasters, a treatment which has often been condemned for its mono- tony, but which imparts an air of sturdy strength, not inappro- ... priate to a royal residence built SCALE OFMETRES r J 109 &fltiofffcET 1P° " *n turbulent times outside the 231. Luxembourg Palace: Plan. protection of city walls. Maria THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 237 de' Medici is said to have instructed her architect to take the Pitti Palace, the home of her girlhood, as his model, and she certainly sent to her kinswoman the Grand Duchess of Tuscany for drawings of it. The only point of contact between the two designs is, however, the system of rustication adopted by de Brosse. Yet, while this is suf- ficiently similar to that of Ammanati's garden and court elevations to give the appearance of compliance, it hardly differs from the common French practice of the day, with which the chateau conforms in other respects. Richelieu. — Both of these works of de Brosse were eclipsed in size, if in nothing else, by the great chateau of Richelieu, built by Le Mercier for the cardinal-minister (1627-37) on a scale of royal splendour, and completed by the erection of a walled city at its gates. The latter has maintained a somnolent existence, but a small fragment of the dependencies is all that remains of the palace itself. A semi- circular sweep of wall opposite the town gate led into a vast base- court, separated by a screen from lateral courts containing stables and kennels, and by a balustrade from a forecourt, only less vast, flanked by offices and servants' quarters (Fig. 233). Beyond this stood the chateau proper within its moat. It had a screen and entrance pavilion like the examples described, three wings and four angle pavilions with an additional central one in the back wing, but in several respects the design was less advanced than its immediate predecessors. The plan was simply that of a sixteenth century chateau, with little groups of apartments and no suites of reception rooms. Projecting cabinets carried on trompes small pavilions flanking the large ones, and square domes alternating with pavilion roofs introduce an element of complexity which sits ill on the rigid formality and ponderous pro- portions of the scheme (Fig. 233A). Apart from a range of dormers enriched with sculptured dolphins in allusion to Richelieu's office as admiral, the treatment of the elevations consisted, externally at least, almost wholly in their coigns and chaines, though enlivened towards the court by niches between the windows. Although the architect of Richelieu was inferior as an artist to the architect of Coulommier and the Luxembourg, his grouping of the various parts of the huge residence in an ordered and stately scheme, ever increasing in interest as the centre is approached, betrays talents of no mean order. Blois : Orleans Wing. — A theme which under the rather uninspired treatment of a Le Mercier leaves one cold was to prove capable, when touched with the master hand of a Mansart, of exciting feelings of the liveliest admiration and awe. The so-called Orleans Wing at Blois (see plan, Fig. 48) is part of a vast scheme designed for Gaston, Duke of Orleans, the intriguing and treacherous brother of Louis XIII. (1635-40). It has long suffered obloquy owing to its lack of harmony 238 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 24O RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 234. Chateau of Blois : Orleans Wing, by F. Mansart (1635-40). Elevation to Court. Measured and Drawn by L. M. Gotch. with more romantic and popular neighbours, which owe their continued existence only to the fact that lack of funds prevented its completion. Considerations such as these, which are foreign to its intrinsic merits, may be set aside in judging Mansart's work. The new chateau of Blois is in effect a revised version of the Luxembourg, influenced by Verneuil, and by Coulommier, which it closely resembles in the plan of its main block, and probably of the unbuilt remainder which was to consist of lower wings enclosing the existing court and the Place du Chateau as well, and to be approached from the town by monumental stairs at the east. The treatment of the elevations is in many respects simpler than at the Luxembourg (Figs. 234 and 235). No balustrades, dormers, or divisions between the blocks break the quiet simplicity of the great mansard roofs. The sheer height of the storeys, the breadth of spacing, and the boldness of the masses need no fuss of rustication to convey an impression of dignity and repose, enhanced, it is true, by the nature of the site, for Gaston's palace, standing as it does, terraced on cliff-like retaining walls, rivals many a feudal keep in its air of defiant strength. The orders of coupled pilasters with which the elevations are treated are detailed with a vigour to which the absence of rustication gives full value. In the court, the curved colonnade, tentatively sug- gested at Coulommier, is used with greater assurance, and leads invit- ingly by quadrant sweeps to the entrance, while the central bay is THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 24I 17 242 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. Blois : Orleans Wing. Carved Stone Decoration of Staircase Hall. emphasised by a semicircular pediment enclosing a cartouche and buttressed by trophies, a motive borrowed from Verneuil. Internally little is left of Gaston's splendour but the vigorous decoration of the staircase hall (Fig. 236). Ponts, Chauvigny, Tanlay. — Louis XIII. chateau architecture reached high-water mark in the Orleans Wing at Blois, which for a combination of breadth, majesty, and forceful simplicity is unsurpassed. While in its plan, its proportions, and its arrangement of masses it is typical of its age, in its abandonment of rustication as a leading element of decoration it indicates that a change was impending. Meanwhile Le Muet, who was far behind Mansart in his methods of composing eleva- tions, was contributing to advance in another direction by the greater care he bestowed on questions of planning, as may be judged from his "Augmentations de Nouveaux Bastiments ... en France" (Paris, 1647) containing the chateaux of Ponts and Chauvigny built by him, and that of Tanlay which he remodelled. The two former consist of three wings with angle pavilions and a screen. The principal entrance in the main block leads into a vestibule or gallery and through it into the garden ; large staircases being placed at the inner ends of the return wings and small ones at their outer ends, and internal passages being arranged at various points, a degree of privacy and a facility of inter- communication hitherto unknown were obtained. In external treatment THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 243 Le Muet showed none of the concentration of his great contemporaries, but worked by picturesque, though symmetrical, complexity of grouping, thrusting out pavilions boldly beyond the general line. For this he had precedents. At Chauvigny he followed the arrangement of the first scheme at Verneuil and of Coulommier. At Ponts his additional pavilions were arranged, like those of the first Versailles (see plan, Fig. 300), angle to angle with the main pavilions. He also showed much ingenuity in varying the accepted chaine and panel elevation system of the day. At Ponts, for instance, each panel of brick walling is enclosed in a frame of rusticated stone coigns radiating from the centre like voussoirs, and in the court of Chauvigny the chaines are replaced by clusters of pilasters repeated in three storeys in a manner recalling the style of Francis I. Le Muet closed his court in front with a single arcaded screen, not a gallery as was usual. That at Tanlay (Fig. 4) has been removed since, but the entrance pavilion, whose sturdy dignity is so appropriate to its purpose, remains, as well as the garden front remodelled at the same time. Persistence of the Style. — Though at the death of Louis XIII. the architec- ture, which goes by his name and that of his father, was begin- ning to assume a new complexion, it was long before it gave way entirely to an- other, as may be seen in an unbroken series of examples extend- ing over more than a century, in which brick or plastered rubble walling is of common occurrence, and panels, chaines, coigns, and rusticated bands supply the decoration, with the occasional addition 237. Dijon: Hotel de Vogue (1607-14). Entrance. 244 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 238. Dijon: Hotel de Vogue. Loggia in Court. of diapering, orders, cartouches, or floral motives. The general similarity of style throughout, as well as the difference between the plainer and generally earlier, and the more florid and generally later types may be judged by comparing, for instance, the houses of the Place Royale, or the Place Dauphine in Paris (Fig. 210 and 211), or the chateaux of Courances and Rougemont (Fig. 208), with those of Les Ifs (Fig. 212) and Beaumesnil (Figs. 220 and 221). Examples of Chateaux. — The style is illustrated in various ways by the chateau of St Loup-sur-Thouet (c. 161 5) and the original one of Versailles (1624), probably by de Brosse (Fig. 299); the chateaux of Wideville and Vizille (c. 1620); Balleroy (1626-36) and Daubeuf (1629), early works of Mansart ; Cheverny; Cany Barville (1640-6); Bussy Rabutin — the main block (1649). Miromesnil (? c. 1650) has a charming treatment of brick walling with a giant order of stone pilasters carrying vases. At Oyron (Figs. 218 and 219) the low central block appears to be of about 1630-40, but the two lofty angle pavilions betray the age of Louis XIV. by their flat, balustraded roofs, trophy- crowned angles, and more refined detail, and though they were probably not built till about 1690, they show an interesting adaptation of Louis XIII. wall treatment curiously irregular in its spacing; even Menars, rebuilt by Madame de Pompadour and her brother (1760-5), shows little divergence from the type. THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 245 Examples of Town Houses. — Town houses great and small of a similar character are to be found in most old towns : e.g., a house in Rue Grosse Hor- loge, Rouen (1601) ; the Hotel Mont- escot, Chartres ; the Pavilion des Arque- busiers, Soissons; the Bishop's Palace (now Tribunal) at Lisieux, a remark- ably fine example ; the Abbot's Lodg- ing (now Hotel de Ville) at St Amand, strongly influenced by Flemish barocco (1630); the Hotel Caulet (1634) and the court of the Maison de Pierre, Toulouse. Hotel de Vogue, Dijon. — An evolution paral- lel to that traced in the great chateaux can be observed in the great hotels. One of the most interesting town mansions of the early seventeenth century is the Hotel de Vogue at Dijon (1607-14), which, by its refinement, delicate fancy, and variety of treatment, recalls the best days of the earlier Renaissance. The elevations are undivided by orders, panels, or chain's, but depend entirely for effect on the happy placing of the openings each beautifully de- signed and tastefully decorated with sculpture (Fig. 239). Rustica- tion indeed enriches the entrance (Fig. 237), but it is rather in the manner of the Hotel d'Assezat at Toulouse than in that of Fontaine- bleau or the Luxembourg, and an order is used only for the internal face of the screen-loggia (Fig. 238), while the decoration of the m 1 ,..,i " ""j ' j ,i" ' 239. Dijon : Hotel de Vogue. Dormer. 246 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN PRANCE. 240. Paris : Hotel de Conde (c. 1600) ; Now destroyed. Elevation to Court. From Marot. guard-room is the only part which partakes of the heavier character of the age. Hotel de Conde, Paris. — Paris affords a more typical series. There the court elevations, which are usually the most interesting, are varied by ringing the changes on combinations of niches and panels, chaines and orders with the tall square-headed windows and the two types of dormers. Pavilions are but seldom used. In one of the earliest of the century built for Jean Baptiste de Gondi, acquired by the Conde family {c. 16 10) and destroyed under Louis XVI. to make room for the Odeon theatre, the court was closed towards the street by a screen consisting of a full storey and an attic with arched semi-dormers, and pierced in the centre by a polygonal rusticated carriage archway under a broken pediment and cartouche. The sides of the court (Fig. 240) were set out in an effective manner without chaines or orders but with architraves to the openings. The lower windows were set back in a blind arcade whose piers were formed into niches acting as pedestals for trophies ; in the upper storey the windows were divided by brick panels behind the trophies. The dormers were tall and short in alternate bays. Hotel de Longueville, Paris. — In the Hotel de Longueville (also known as de Chevreuse, and d'Epernon), Rue St Thomas du THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 247 241. SCALE OPluuumJ 1 I L__|__ipEET Paris : Hotel de Sully, Rue St Antoine. Elevation to Street. From Marot. Louvre (c. 1615-20), probably by Clement Jacques Metezeau, the openings had rusticated coigns instead of architraves, and they were separated by coupled pilasters (Fig. 216). At the sides an open arcade occupied the lower storey ; at the back a niche was intro- duced between each pair of pilasters. The dormers were grouped so that one short one came at either end of each side, the intervening ones being tall. The order was carried across the front of the screen-wall whose gateway was surmounted by a polygonal pediment with car- touches and sculpture. Hotels de Mayenne and Sully, Paris. — Two extant examples, both in the Rue St Antoine — the Hotel de Mayenne (or d'Ormesson), by Jacques II. or Jean du Cerceau (c. 1600-10), and the better known and better preserved Hotel de Sully, probably by the latter (c. 1630-40) — well illustrate the massive dignity and the lack of refinement in ornament and detail which characterise this period. The former is an example of profuse pilaster treatment, the latter of a chdine treatment of great simplicity in its main lines, but supplemented by statue-niches and much enrichment of the pediments and rather squat dormers (Figs. 241 and 242). Another and much more considerable work of Jean du Cerceau was the H6tel de Bretonvillers at the eastern point of the lie St Louis of which only one pavilion remains. Hotel de Liancourt, Paris. — Salomon de Brosse left his mark on the design of the town mansion as in other domains. His Hotel de Liancourt (previously de Bouillon, later de la Rochefoucauld), Rue de Seine (161 3), was one of the first where the main building was planned to occupy the full width of several courts so as to have an extended garden front, and where the court of honour was curved at one end. The elevations of this were designed with a refinement of pro- portion not very usual at the period. They had a low rusticated ground storey with plain square openings forming a basement to the piano nobile, with its order of single Doric pilasters and tall windows, above which respectively stood finely designed dormers and vases. Palais Cardinal. — One of the most important Paris mansions of the reign of Louis XIII. was the Palais Cardinal, built by Le Mercier for Richelieu (1629-36) and bequeathed by him to the King, whose son, Louis XIV., changed its name to Palais Royal. It consisted of two 248 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 242. Hotel de Sully: Principal Front in Court. courts in depth. The narrow fore- court was soon after flanked right and left by additional blocks, one of which contained a theatre (1639-41), and the plain rusticated front which the palace pre- sented to the Rue St Honore was thus of unusual length. The wider court of honour was divided from the garden by a massive arcaded screen, an unusual arrange- ment, and decorated with panels bearing prows and anchors in allusion to the cardinal's office of admiral, whence the only portion of these buildings now exist- ing is known as Galerie des Proues. Mazarin (originally Hotel Palais Mazarin, &c. — The Palais Tubeuf, now incorporated in the Bibliotheque Nationale), built probably by Le Muet (1633), is one of the most pleasing examples of the straight- forward brick and stone style to which a touch of richness was given by a semicircular gable in the central block carved with trophies, and a domed stair turret on each side of the entrance. This front was altered by Mollet in the early eighteenth century. Francois Mansart, who later added a gallery in the same style, which now contains the Cabinet des Estampes, also carried out a number of Parisian hotels. While in the Hotel Fieubet (later Lavalette), Quai des Celestins (?c. 1640), he employs the brick and stone style enriched with grotesque cartouches, scrolls, and so forth, other examples of his work show markedly the growth of the saner classical influence, and will in con- sequence be referred to in the next chapter. Town Planning. ■ — It was characteristic of Henry not to be content with building palaces for himself, but also to promote the comfort and THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 249 welfare of his subjects by public institutions and schemes of town planning. In Paris three new re- sidential quarters were planned on uniform schemes by Claude Chas- tillon, all of which show the charac- teristic brick and stone treatment with chaines and panels and only a minimum of pilasters. The trian- gular Place Dauphine (Fig. 211), consisting of middle-class houses with shops, was formed (1600) by utilising two waste islets as an approach from the Pont Neuf (finished 1604) to the Palais de Justice. While only traces of its treatment are now visible, the Place Royale (1604), a square of small aristocratic "hotels" (Fig. 210) with a common garden, and a cloister walk round it in their lower storey, 243. Paris : Porte de la Con- ference, NEAR TlJILERIES Gardens (1634) ; Now de- stroyed. From Perelle. is still intact. The Place de France, a semicircular space facing a new gate between those of St Antoine and the Temple from which eight streets radiated, was aban- doned soon after commencement and has left no trace. The Grande Place at Montauban was also begun. In the next reign schemes of the same kind were applied to the rebuilding of bridges with houses on them: the Pont St Michel (1616-24), with eight identical pavilions each containing two houses; the Pont Marie (1614-33), and the Pont au Change (1639-47), the last by Jean du Cerceau and others. The example thus set was followed by nobles and statesmen, and resulted in the foundation of complete towns on symmetrical plans — Hen- richemont, founded by Sully, in which a radiating system is combined with the rectangular ; Charleville, founded by Charles of Gonzaga, and Richelieu by the cardinal (1627), and designed by the architect Le Mercier, both rectangular. Town Gates. — The sturdy character of the Henry IV. style was well adapted to the architecture of defence. It may be seen applied to this purpose in the old gates of Nancy, Porte de la Craffe (1598), St Georges and St Nicolas (1606), and others at Cassel, Cambrai, Riche- lieu. Several of the gates of Paris (Portes St Bernard, St Honore, de la Conference) (Fig. 243), long since disappeared, and the Paris Arsenal were also of this age and character. Public Buildings.— Among peaceful public works two of the noblest were Salomon de Brosse's Aqueduct of Arcueil (1612-24), inspired by those of Rome, and the Palais des Etats, or du Parlement (now Palais 250 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 244. fontainebleau : interior of trinity chapel. South End (Decorated 1608-15). de Justice), of Rennes (1617-25), a building which in an austere classical spirit tells its own tale with directness. The Grande Salle, with timber barrel ceil- ing, which occupies the whole upper storey between the end projections, determines the design by its range of lofty arched windows and its expanse of slated roof. The Grande Salle of the Palais de Justice in Paris was also rebuilt by him after a fire (1618-23) in his severe Roman manner with two long barrel vaults in stone, carried by an arcade springing from eight square pilastered piers. The court of the Capitole at Toulouse, built under Henry IV., shows alternate bands of brick and stone running through the pilasters. The old Hotel de Ville of Rouen, Rue de la Grosse Horloge, designed by Jacques I. Gabriel (1605), but never finished, is a massive structure, not devoid of dignity, almost covered with bands of rustication. The Hotel de Ville of Verdun (1623-30) is typical of the soberer work of the period, while that of Troyes by Louis Victor Louis (begun 1624) and in a much greater degree that of Rheims (begun 1627) and the Bourse of Lille (1652) show the florid influence of Flemish barocco. This series of municipal buildings closes worthily with the Hotel de Ville of Lyons (1646-54), the largest of its kind yet seen in France, designed by the city architect Simon Maupin, and restored after a fire by J. H. Mansart (1674). It stands free on all sides and open arcades afford a vista from back to front through its two courts. Decoration. — The old line of Italian decorators had come to an end _,:^ SCALE fnliit'iliif. SCALE 'h— -t — i — i — i — * METRE 245. DOOR IN VESTIBULE TO TRINITY CHAPEL, PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU. From a Drawing by Philip Hepworth. THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 251 before the accession of Henry IV., but Frenchmen and Flemings were taking their place. The character of the earlier phases of the Renaissance was long retained here and there in decoration, as, for instance, in Maria de' Medici's chamber at the Lux- embourg (c. 1620), though the tendency was towards the in- fluence of Flemish barocco. In all but the most splendid apartments the bare plaster and beams were exposed, though often decorated, the former with frescoes and the latter with small painted pat- terns, as in the Gale- rie des Cerfs at Fontainebleau and the Guard-room at 246" Chateau of Lasson: Chimney-piece (c. 1630). Cheverny (c. 1640). The views of the royal palaces in the former are attributed to Toussaint de Breuil (1561-1602), who decorated the Galerie des Rois in the Louvre (the present Galerie d'Apollon) with portraits of all the kings of France. The Fleming Ambroise Dubois (1543-1614) was also employed in the royal palaces, especially at Fontainebleau, where he decorated the Galerie de Diane and the Chambre Ovale. In the latter the main girders are visible, but the joists between them and the upper parts of the walls are concealed by a stucco decoration in large panels containing figure subjects, while the intervening portions, girders, and piers are decorated with cartouches, foliage, and swags similar to those of the Italians. The lower part of the walls is wainscoted in small panels painted with landscapes and natural flowers, an innovation of the period. In the fine decoration of the Trinity Chapel (1608-15) carried out by Martin Z^ RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 247. Design for Chimney-piece by J. Barbet. Freminet (1567- 1619) the tendency to heaviness of handling and over emphatic ornament is more pronounced (Fig. 244). The Barocco Manner. — This manner eventually became dominant under the masterful influence of Rubens. Its chief charac- teristic is the im- portance of the " cartouche " motive, which had undergone a change both in its application and structure since the days of Francis I. From its primary function as the frame of a shield or tablet it now furnished the decoration of almost every architectural feature from a pedi- ment to a pier, or even took the place of a corbel or pilaster. Further, from the con- sistency of stiff, sharply slashed strap-work, it acquires that of pliant hide or clay, bossed and coiled, when soft, into strange forms, recalling bats' wings or dogs' ears. Sometimes the mantlings round a shield have a series of swellings like the vertebrae of a spine, or the segments of a gigantic caterpillar. The shields themselves are of a bulging ovoid form. In association are found grotesque masks, chubby cherubs, and ponderous draperies ; massive and serried swags composed of fruits, and small asters and marigolds ; curly palm branches and volutes ; broken and contorted pediments ; a multiplication of frames one within the other, repeatedly broken and intricately connected by scrolls and flourishes ; bold and rather coarse mouldings with prevalently convex sections. The merits and demerits of this decorative style may be especially judged in doors and chimney-pieces. The former are often splendid THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 253 examples of woodwork finely schemed and exhibiting immense variety and richness of design. As examples may be mentioned the doors of the upper vestibule to the Trinity Chapel at Fontainebleau by Gobert (1629-44) (Fig. 245), and those of the Paris churches of Ste Marie and St Louis (Fig. 259), Rue St Antoine, St Louis en File, and St Gervais. While the tendency to reduce the fire opening continued, the chimney-piece remained a monumental structure, the upper portions being enriched with sculpture, panelling, and cartouche work, as may be seen in most of the following buildings which possess rooms decorated in the Louis XIII. manner: the chateaux of Dangu, Wideville, Lasson (Fig. 246), Cheverny, and Oyron ; the Palais de Justice at Lisieux ; the Hotel de Ville at Lyons. The manner survived in the provinces much longer than in Paris, e.g., in the woodwork of the Hospital Library at Rheims (1678) and that of the Hotel de Ville at Aix (1672-1731) designed by Jean Bernard Toro, a pupil of Puget. The vogue of this coarse and overcharged manner was at its height between 1630 and 1650, when the designs for altars, doorways, chimney-pieces, and so forth of J. Barbet (Fig. 247) and Alexandre Francini appeared, and immediately preceded the final triumph of the classical spirit. In the same way at this time the decline of the Hotel de Rambouillet into the far-fetched sentiment and pedantic conceits satirised in the " Precieuses Ridicules," and the scurrility of Scarron and the " Mazarin- ades," immediately preceded the great Classical Age in literature. Thus, too, the factiousness and mock heroics of the Fronde were the prelude to the absolutism of the " Grand Reigne." CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. Religious Character of the Period. — One of the most marked features of the seventeenth century was its religious character. The Huguenots secured toleration and even considerable political and social power, and though Protestantism gradually ceased to be a force, much of its spirit passed into Catholicism. The Church, meanwhile, no longer absorbed in externals and temporalities, but reanimated by a spiritual revival, re-established her influence over the laity, less by hypnotising their consciences with sensuous and emotional forms of devotion than by convincing their intellects by cool reasoning and education. French Catholicism was illustrated by many great names : St Vincent de Paul, founder of the Sisters of Charity : Berulle, founder of the Oratoire for the better training of priests ; the mystical teacher, St Francis de Sales ; the saintly Port-Royalists and their brilliant champion, Pascal ; the eloquent preacher and controversialist, Bossuet. There was a widespread growth of religious life and of 2 54 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. interest in theology ; reforms were attempted in Church patronage and in clerical education and morals ; innumerable orders and missions sprang into being. Ecclesiastical Architects. — Great activity ensued in the build- ing not only of churches and convents, but also of educational and charitable institutions founded by the Church herself, or by the civil power under its new sense of responsibility. Most of the secular architects of the day had much work of this kind and some were almost exclusively employed in it. The principal among these was the Jesuit, Etienne Martellange (i 569-1 641) who carried out works for his Order in all parts of France. He appears to have been of Italian origin, and though born at Lyons, spent many years in Italy, returning to France with the Jesuits in 1603. While adopting some- thing approaching the Henry IV. style in the more utilitarian buildings he was called upon to erect, his leanings were to the severe Roman School, when occasion called for more monumental treatment. On the other hand, his colleague, Francois Derand (1588-1644), who was born near Metz, felt the influence of Flemish barocco, and his work in consequence more nearly approximates to what is generally understood by the term Jesuit style. Another ecclesiastical architect with a considerable practice in the Rhone valley was Francois des Royers de la Valseniere (1575-1667), a member of a family of Piedmontese architects settled in Avignon. One of his principal works was the Chartreuse du Val-lez-Avignon, a sumptuous set of buildings in an emphatic barocco style, influenced by Italy rather than Flanders. Later in life he adopted a severer manner. Colleges, Hospitals, &c. — Most of the scholastic and charitable institutions of the period, together with the bulk of the conventual buildings, were of the sober Henry IV. type. The College de France was rebuilt by Chastillon under Henry IV., the Sorbonne by Le Mercier (1629), and a large number of new colleges were built in many cases by Martellange for the Jesuits, such as those at Moulins (1606), a very attractive building of stone and patterned brick ; at Cahors, with a pretty octagonal brick tower; at Rouen (1609); Abbeville, and Eu {c. 1630-40). Typical of the charitable institutions are the Hospital of St Louis in Paris by Chastillon, founded by Henry IV. for decayed officers and gentlemen j the Hospice de la Charite at Lyons, an Asylum for the aged and infirm, by Martellange (1616), planned with quadrangles of which all but the central one had one open side, and provided with arcaded galleries turned towards the sun ; the Hotel-Dieu, or hospital, at Lyons by Laure (1623). Protestant Churches. — The Edict of Nantes permitted the erection of Protestant churches, known in France as "Temples," but of these little is known, since almost all were destroyed after its revocation THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 255 SCALE OFI 248. Charenton : "Temple" or Protestant Church, by S. de Brosse (1623, DESTROYED l686). SECTION AND PLAN. FROM MAROT. (1685) if not earlier. At Quevilly, near Rouen, the "temple" was a twelve-sided timber building with galleries. The " temple " at Charen- ton, which served the Protestants of the capital, was in a sense the cathedral of French Protestantism, and exercised considerable influence on the design of Protestant churches on the Continent. It was designed by the royal architect Salomon de Brosse in 1623, on the site of the earlier one (Fig. 248). Since Protestantism claimed to be a return to 256 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. primitive Christianity, it was natural that he should have based his design on that of a Roman basilica. It was a rectangular building about 117 by 72 feet, roofed in one span, lit on all sides by three tiers of windows, and entered at each end. In the interior, two tiers of galleries, running entirely round an open central space, were carried on a giant order of columns. These were continued above the second tier by a short attic order, from which sprang wooden barrel vaults. A staircase was placed in each angle. This church accommodated about three thousand persons. Catholic Churches : Persistence of Mediaeval Traditions. — Catholic church building was marked at first by indecision even more than secular work. In the latter the break with the Middle Ages was complete, in the Church a spark of mediaeval tradition lingered. Thus in the rebuilding of the cathedral of Orleans (choir and chevet, 1601-22) the style was Gothic, though a Gothic modified by the spirit of the age. In other cases, as at St Eustache at Paris, at St Florentin, and at St Pierre, Auxerre, works in the styles of Francis I., Henry II., and Henry III. were carried forward. Again, in the facades of St Etienne du Mont (1610-25), a verv picturesque composition (Fig. 251), of the cathedral at Chalons-sur- Marne (1628), and of Notre-Dame at Havre ; in the chapel of the Jesuit College at Rouen, where there is an in- teresting and original interior, in the church of the Minims at Tours (Fig. 252) (1627-30), and in the north-west tower and south transept of St Pierre at Dreux (c. 1600), there is a piquant mingling of the vigorous but rather clumsy classic of the day with late Gothic, and in the later portions of St Remy at Dieppe with Francis I. elements. A completer fusion of two styles may be seen in the college chapel at Eu, where, though the detail THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 257 250. Eu : College Chapel. West End. throughout is contem- porary classic, the plan and structural system remain mediaeval (Figs. 249 and 250). An illustration of the economical methods of this period is found in the employment of wood instead of stone for the ceiling of earlier churches then under- going completion. For instance, the choir at Brienon, l'Archeveque, has a flat panelled ceil- ing carried on caryatids in the angles of the apse, while St Pantaleon, Troyes, and St Aignan, Chartres, have wood vaults. Classical and Jesuit Influence. — Soon, however, the general tendencies of the century asserted themselves, and church-building settled down on classic lines. Yet great as are its achievements, it is impossible not to feel that France never obtained in this domain all that the Renaissance promised. This is the outcome of circumstances by which her archi- tects were dominated. The advanced Renaissance of the sixteenth century had been debarred from producing church architecture on an extensive scale, and there scarcely existed a native tradition to follow. On the other hand, when models were sought in Italy, the interest of Catholics of the counter-Reformation centred on the post-Triden- tine churches, and more particularly, owing to the wide influence of the Jesuits, on the Gesu, their metropolitan church in Rome. Thus Vignola, as represented by this not very interesting work, with a facade modified for the worse by Giacomo della Porta, was much more widely followed than any other architect of the whole Italian Renaissance. When, therefore, one considers on the one hand the limitation in quality and range of their sources of inspiration, and on the other the somewhat heavy and uninspired character of con- temporary national architecture, the excellence of the work of church architects is more surprising than its shortcomings, of which a uniformity, even greater than that of secular work, is the most striking. 18 258 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. X 251. Paris: St Etienne DO Mont. Facade (1610-25). Almost the only rival model to the Church of the Gesu was St Peter's, but while St Peter's supplied the idea of the dome and little else, the greater influence of the Gesii is manifest by the universality of its system of superposed small orders, its facade and other elevations, its section and its plan. The term, "Jesuit style," is often used as equivalent to the most extravagant type of barocco. This is misleading, THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 2 59 for neither is this manner confined to ecclesiastical work, and still less to that of the Jesuits, nor is it universal in their churches. Except for certain features of its internal decoration, the Gesii itself is an example of pure classical design. The severer side of Jesuit culture, based as it was on classical studies, was more congenial, than its sensuous elements, to the cool reasoning spirit of French Catholicism. In France, too, the Jesuits were forced to compete in austerity with Huguenots and the Jansenists, and not only their secular buildings but even their churches, especially externally, were often of a severe character. Plans. — The typical plan of the conventual church was inscribed in a rectangle, and consisted of a nave and side chapels (the latter often carrying galleries over them), transepts and square choir, with chapels, sacristies, or vestibules on each side of it. A projecting apse was sometimes added to the choir, as in the Jesuit church in Paris (Fig. 254), and less often to the chapels or transepts, as in the College Chapel at Rouen (Fig- 253)- In parochial churches the arrangements were similar, with the addition of aisles and ambula- tories, and occa- sionally of circular or elliptical Lady Chapels or retro- choirs (Fig. 320). Sections, In- teriors.— The nave walls were pierced by an arcade spring- ing from an impost or from the entabla- ture of a minor order of pilasters. Against the rectan- gular piers was the ^ TouRS. chapel ok the Minims Monastery principal order of (NOW Lycee). West Doorway (1627-30). 26o RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 253. Rouen : Chapel of the Jesuit College (now Lycee) (c. 1610). pilasters on whose entablature, running below the clearstorey windows, rested the more or less stilted semicircular barrel-vault, divided into bays by trans- verse arches and intersected by the cross-vaults over the clearstorey windows (see Fig. 329). The vault was sometimes, its arches almost always, coffered or panelled, the windows usually round-headed and sometimes, especially the lower ones, almost flat-headed (see Fig. 324). Over the intersection a dome, either concealed in the roof or raised above it on a drum, was often introduced. Elevations. — The typical facade, an approxima- tion to which had already appeared at Le Mesnil Aubry (Fig. 194) had two orders and a pediment in the high central portion corresponding to the nave, and one order in the low side portions corresponding to the aisles, the transition between the two being contrived by means of curved wing walls or reversed volutes; a similar feature over the aisle arches or chapel walls served the purpose of buttresses to the nave-vault. That this variety of the basilica facade, which first occurs in Alberti's front at Sta. Maria Novella in Florence, rather than that in which the aisle fronts had half-pediments, and the nave front sometimes a giant order, as in Palladio's Venetian churches, was almost exclu- sively used in France is one of the results of the influence of the Gesii. In accordance with the growth in the scale of design and of unity of con- ception characteristic of the period, the doorway in such facades becomes a relatively insignificant detail, so as not to compete with the total effect. This is illustrated by the fact that the French apply the term portail to the whole of such fronts, not to the mere doorway. St Gervais, St Paul and St Louis, Paris, &c. — The church of the Jesuit novitiate (1617-30) by Martellange, the first entirely classical church in the capital, and the Jesuit church at Avignon probably by the same architect (1615-55), were designed on the lines above described. De Brosse had, however, anticipated the former, as far as the 254. Paris : Jesuit facade is concerned, in the noble front added by Church (now him to the Gothic church of St Gervais (1616-21) (Fig. 255). Monumentally conceived, surely pro- portioned, and happily grouped, if heavy in detail, this is a study in Roman architecture of an St Paul and St Louis), Rue St Antoine (1625-41), by F. Derand. Plan. THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 26l 255. Paris : St Gervais. Facade 256. Paris : St Paul and St Louis, by s. de brosse (1616-21). by f. derand (1625-41). facade. austere and massive type, yet it has something of a Gothic quality, not merely in a traceried window, which is a concession perhaps to ecclesiastical conservatism, but by its strong vertical emphasis. By recessing the central portion of the nave front, but not of the segmental pediment, the suggestion of a great niche is given. The admiration excited by the fagade of St Gervais greatly contributed to the establishment in France of the type it represents. It differs, how- ever, from the generality in possessing three orders instead of two, a peculiarity shared with the church of the Jesuit College (Rue St Antoine), now St Paul and St Louis, carried out by Derand (1625-41) after the rejection of a design by Martellange (Figs. 254, 256, and 259). The facade closely resembles that of St Gervais, but the horizontal 262 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. lines are more strongly insisted on and the decoration is more florid. The interior is a good example of the Jesuit type, with three apses, and a high dome on an octago- nal drum lit by four windows. In spite of its undoubted merits, it is difficult nowadays to under- stand the enthusiasm which this edifice aroused at the time. Evelyn, who visited it shortly after its completion, refers to it as " that noble fab- riq, which I esteeme to be one of the most perfect pieces of ar- chitecturein Europ." Another church ex- ample of a three- order front by De- rand is seen in the ungainly and ill-pro- portioned Jesuit church at Blois (St Vincent de Paul, 1625). Mansart first attracted attention by the facade which he designed for the church of the Reformed Cistercians, known as "Feuillants" (1629), on the site of the present Rue Castiglione, a reduced variant on the two upper storeys of that of St Gervais. The Oratoire, Paris; Church at Richelieu. — The history of the " Oratoire," the church of the Oratorian Fathers in the Rue St Honore, now a Protestant church, is a little obscure. The most probable account is that the choir (162 1-4) is by Le Mercier, the nave (1624-7) by Jacques Clement Metezeau, and that the elliptical domed retro-choir was added later by Francois Mansart. The church itself follows the usual formula of a monastic church. The transepts, how- ever, emerge only above the ground floor level, the chapels being 257. Nevers : Ste Marie. Facade. THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 263 continuous. In spite of many awkwardnesses the interior is monu- mental and spacious in ef.~2ct. The fagade was not built until the eighteenth century, and the rest of the exterior not being intended to be seen, is gaunt and devoid of charm. Le Mercier's parish church at Richelieu (1629-33) 's one °f the most successful of the type, especially internally. It has an unobtrusive example of the basilica front and the unusual feature of a pair of eastern towers with leaded spires on each side of the apse. The detailing throughout is good and severe, and the decoration consists of good Louis XIII. cartouche work interspersed with cherubs' heads and swags. Barocco Influence. — The influence of Belgian barocco which was specially felt on the northern and eastern borders also spread to the neighbouring provinces. It is observable, for instance, in the Carmelite church at Dijon (1630). Again the facade of Ste Marie at Nevers (c. 1640) is of so pronounced a Belgian barocco type that it looks as if it had been transported bodily from Mechlin or Louvain, and seems to postulate a Belgian architect (Fig. 257) such as the con- temporary seminary chapel at Cambrai undoubtedly had. Cambrai, however, was not at that time incorporated in the French dominions any more than St Amand, near Valenciennes, where the abbey church (1630-3) shows an equally exuberant but less developed variety of the style, manifested not only in the decorative treatment, but in such an arrangement as the arcade springing direct from the capitals of columns, which is frequent in Spain. Its single western tower is also contrary to contemporary French practice. Types of Facade. — Although the Vignolan facade in some form or other was almost universal, the alternative of the twin-tower front survived, especially in the provinces, and regained popularity later in the century. It was adopted, with five and three orders respectively, at Rennes in the Cathedral (1613-1700), and in the Toussaint (1624-57). The chapel of the Hotel-Dieu at Lyons (1637-45), by Guillaume Ducillet, has another interesting variant on this type. Domes : Ste Marie, Paris. — Domical design had not been greatly developed in the sixteenth century. It had, indeed, been almost con- fined to relatively small chapels. It continued to be used for this purpose in the seventeenth. At Nancy, for instance, the mausoleum of the Dukes of Lorraine (1607-32) consists of an octagonal chapel decorated internally with black marble columns and sarcophagi, and surmounted by a coffered octagonal dome. Again, though domes often occurred over the intersection in churches of the Gesu type, they were a mere adjunct. The church of the Sorbonne, which is essentially a development of this type, was not finished till 1656 though begun in 1635, and may be reckoned as belonging to the next period. The earliest church in which the dome is the determining factor in 264 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 258. Paris : Church of the Visitation (Ste Marie), Rue St Antoine (1632- 34), by F. Mansart. Plan. From Marot. the plan is an early work of Francois Mansart, built by him for the nuns of the Visitation of St Mary (1632-4) in the Rue St Antoine, and known as St Mary of the Angels, now a Protestant church (Fig. 258). The plan ingeniously covers an irregu- lar site, the design consisting in principle of a circular dome rising out of a quadrangular space. A projecting vestibule on the north leads into the circular nave, which opens by wide arches into chapels on the east and west, and into a choir on the south, all three of quasi-elliptical plan and raised several steps above the nave. Narrow door- ways open into other chapels or sacristies in the angles of the site. The interior has remarkable charm of lighting and proportion, and is decorated with effective, if coarse, sculpture. The treatment of the elevations affords an instance of the rationalistic tendency. An order is used for the entrance doorway, but nowhere else. The portal is crowned by a semicircular pediment formed by bending the entire entablature of the porch over a circular window, a feature often subse- quently used (cf. Fig. 370). The square dome and lantern over the vestibule are squeezed rather confusingly against the drum of the main dome, which is divided into bays by bold buttresses, the cornice break- ing round them ; yet the whole group, culminating in the slate- covered dome, is not devoid of picturesqueness. Church Fittings. — Many of the churches mentioned contain fittings and decoration of the period, notably the two chapels of Fontainebleau and the church of Richelieu. The rood-screen and pulpit of St Etienne-du-Mont, a screen in Bordeaux Cathedral, the stalls in St Pierre at Toulouse, and the Hotel-Dieu at Compiegne may also be mentioned as good work of the period. The reconstruction of the screens round the shrine of St Remy at Rheims, destroyed during the civil wars, was carried out under Louis XIII. in a sumptuous manner in white and coloured marbles with much carved ornament. Many designs for altars of a typically Louis XIII. type are to be found in the works of Barbet and Francini. Tombs in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. — After the sixteenth century tumular architecture tends to become of minor interest. It was of value to study every manifestation of the style during the period when the Renaissance was being established in France, and such a series of monuments as those provided by the royal tombs and others of equal splendour could not have been passed over in silence. So far as royal sepulture is concerned the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have little to offer. Under the Bourbon dynasty members of THE STYLES OF HENRY IV. AND LOUIS XIII. 265 the royal family were buried in the vaults at St Denis and the Val-de- Grace, and were not commemorated — at least after Henry IV., whose splendid tomb no longer exists — by any such stately monuments as those of their Valois predecessors, and though their subjects were as lavish as ever in their expenditure on sepulchral art, the interest of such monuments tended to become more and more concentrated on the statuary. This was no doubt largely due to the great increase in the number of competent sculptors. Elaborate architectural treatment for private tombs was, however, still far from uncommon in the seventeenth century, and most of the types of tombs of the sixteenth may be seen reproduced. The commonest form of memorial for personages who would have been, or have thought themselves, inadequately com- memorated by a mere wall-tablet, was to transform an entire side chapel into a mausoleum, dividing it from the church by a screen of more or less elaboration such as those in the chevet of Le Mans Cathedral, and to place the monument proper, generally more or less of the wall-niche type, with orders, cartouches, sculpture, and a pro- fusion of coloured marble against the outer wall. Such, for instance, is the monument of Louvois at Tonnerre and most of those mentioned among the works of the sculptors referred to in the following chapter (p. 292). Sometimes, too, the screen itself was so designed as to constitute the monument. The canopy tombs of Henry of Guise and his wife Catharine of Cleves in the college-chapel at Eu, placed in the arches of the choir, may be classed with this type. 259. St Paul and St Louis : Lower Part of Facade. 266 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. But in most cases, as in the tombs of Richelieu and Mazarin in the churches of the Sorbonne and College des Quatre Nations respectively, the statuary was everything and the architecture reduced to a mere sarcophagus. The same may be said of the tombs of Stanislas Leczinski by Vasse, and his wife Catharine Opalinska by Adam, at Nancy, in the style of Louis XV., and of Marshal Saxe at Strasburg in that of Louis XVI., the masterpiece of Pigalle, though they differ in the fact that, instead of standing free, as in the case of the cardinals' tombs, they are placed against a wall with a pyramidal slab of dark marble as a background. If the average buildings of the age of Henry IV. and Louis XIII. rarely possess the finer qualities of distinction and grace, they derive a certain charm from that air of repose, solidity, and substantial comfort which they share with the domestic architecture of England and Holland of a little later date, while in the hands of the greater masters the style is capable of considerable grandeur. Its system of decoration is undeniably grotesque and lacking in refinement, but equally un- deniably it has genuine decorative qualities of a vigorous and original character. UNIVERSITY OF * i 'FORN' ' LIBRAPV >iflll- QH pj M iFnf UIV _ _/A. St 7A iS > vJ1 w .V^ 3 v*^ J&*& ^xZ ^2); On N A 000 451 563 1 < — *>S vaaiw ^wy ■^t'