STYLE OF FRANCIS I. Early in the reign of this monarch, and partly under the lead of Italian artists, like il Rosso, Serlio, and Primaticcio, classic elements began to dominate the general composition and Gothic details rapidly disappeared. A simple and effective system of exterior design was adopted in the castles and palaces of this period. Finely moulded belt-courses at the sills and heads of the windows marked the different stories, and were crossed by a system of almost equally important vertical lines, formed by superposed pilasters flanking the windows continuously from basement to roof. The façade was crowned by a slight cornice and open balustrade, above which rose a steep and lofty roof, diversified by elaborate dormer windows which were adorned with gables and pinnacles ([Fig. 178]). Slender pilasters, treated like long panels ornamented with arabesques of great beauty, or with a species of baluster shaft like a candelabrum, were preferred to columns, and were provided with graceful capitals of the Corinthianesque type. The mouldings were minute and richly carved; pediments were replaced by steep gables, and mullioned windows with stone crossbars were used in preference to the simpler Italian openings. In the earlier monuments Gothic details were still used occasionally; and round corner-towers, high dormers, and numerous turrets and pinnacles appear even in the châteaux of later date.
CHURCHES. Ecclesiastical architecture received but scant attention under Francis I., and, so far as it was practised, still clung tenaciously to Gothic principles. Among the few important churches of this period may be mentioned St. Etienne du Mont, at Paris (1517–38), in which classic and Gothic features appear in nearly equal proportions; the east end of St. Pierre, at Caen, with rich external carving; and the great parish church of St. Eustache, at Paris (1532, by Lemercier), in which the plan and construction are purely Gothic, while the details throughout belong to the new style, though with little appreciation of the spirit and proportions of classic art. New façades were also built for a number of already existing churches, among which St. Michel, at Dijon, is conspicuous, with its vast portal arch and imposing towers. The Gothic towers of Tours cathedral were completed with Renaissance lanterns or belfries, the northern in 1507, the southern in 1547.
FIG. 176.—STAIRCASE TOWER, BLOIS.
PALACES. To the palace at Blois begun by his predecessor, Francis I. added a northern and a western wing, completing the court. The north wing is one of the masterpieces of the style, presenting toward the court a simple and effective composition, with a rich but slightly projecting cornice and a high roof with elaborate dormers. This façade is divided into two unequal sections by the open Staircase Tower (Fig. 176), a chef-d’œuvre in boldness of construction as well as in delicacy and richness of carving. The outer façade of this wing is a less ornate but more vigorous design, crowned by a continuous open loggia under the roof. More extensive than Blois was Fontainebleau, the favorite residence of the king and of many of his successors. Following in parts the irregular plan of the convent it replaced, its other portions were more symmetrically disposed, while the whole was treated externally in a somewhat severe, semi-classic style, singularly lacking in ornament. Internally, however, this palace, begun in 1528 by Gilles Le Breton, was at that time the most splendid in France, the gallery of Francis I. being especially noted. The Château of St. Germain, near Paris (1539, by Pierre Chambiges), is of a very different character. Built largely of brick, with flat balustraded roof and deep buttresses carrying three ranges of arches, it is neither Gothic nor classic, neither fortress nor palace in aspect, but a wholly unique conception.
FIG. 177.—PLAN OF CHAMBORD.
The rural châteaux and hunting-lodges erected by Francis I. display the greatest diversity of plan and treatment, attesting the inventiveness of the French genius, expressing itself in a new-found language, whose formal canons it disdained. Chief among them is the Château of Chambord (Figs. 177, 178)—“a Fata Morgana in the midst of a wild, woody thicket,” to use Lübke’s language. This extraordinary edifice, resembling in plan a feudal castle with curtain-walls, bastions, moat, and donjon, is in its architectural treatment a palace with arcades, open-stair towers, a noble double spiral staircase terminating in a graceful lantern, and a roof of the most bewildering complexity of towers, chimneys, and dormers (1526, by Pierre le Nepveu). The hunting-lodges of La Muette and Chalvau, and the so-called Château de Madrid—all three demolished during or since the Revolution—deserve mention, especially the last. This consisted of two rectangular pavilions, connected by a lofty banquet-hall, and adorned externally with arcades in Florentine style, and with medallions and reliefs of della Robbia ware (1527, by Gadyer).