A Text-Book of the History of Architecture / Seventh Edition, revised

by A. D. F. Hamlin

THE ADVANCED RENAISSANCE. By the middle of the sixteenth century the new style had lost much of its earlier charm. The orders, used with increasing frequency, were more and more conformed to antique precedents. Façades were flatter and simpler, cornices more pronounced, arches more Roman in treatment, and a heavier style of carving took the place of the delicate arabesques of the preceding age. The reigns of Henry II. (1547–59) and Charles IX. (1560–74) were especially distinguished by the labors of three celebrated architects: Pierre Lescot (1515–78), who continued the work on the southwest angle of the Louvre; Jean Bullant (1515–78), to whom are due the right wing of Ecouen and the porch of colossal Corinthian columns in the left wing of the same, built under Francis I.; and, finally, Philibert de l’Orme (1515–70). Jean Goujon (1510–72) also executed during this period most of the remarkable architectural sculptures which have made his name one of the most illustrious in the annals of French art. Chief among the works of de l’Orme was the palace of the Tuileries, built under Charles IX. for Cathérine de Médicis, not far from the Louvre, with which it was ultimately connected by a long gallery. Of the vast plan conceived for this palace, and comprising a succession of courts and wings, only a part of one side was erected (1564–72). This consisted of a domical pavilion, flanked by low wings only a story and a half high, to which were added two stories under Henry IV., to the great advantage of the design. Another masterpiece was the Château d’Anet, built in 1552 by Henry II. for Diane de Poitiers, of which, unfortunately, only fragments survive. This beautiful edifice, while retaining the semi-military moat and bastions of feudal tradition, was planned with classic symmetry, adorned with superposed orders, court arcades, and rectangular corner-pavilions, and provided with a domical cruciform chapel, the earliest of its class in France. All the details were unusually pure and correct, with just enough of freedom and variety to lend a charm wanting in later works of the period. To the reign of Henry II. belong also the châteaux of Ancy-le-Franc, Verneuil, Chantilly (the “petit château,” by Bullant), the banquet-hall over the bridge at Chenonceaux (1556), several notable residences at Toulouse, and the tomb of Francis I. at St. Denis. The châteaux of Pailly and Sully, distinguished by the sobriety and monumental quality of their composition, in which the orders are important elements, belong to the reign of Charles IX., together with the Tuileries, already mentioned.

FIG. 180.—THE LUXEMBURG, PARIS.

THE CLASSIC PERIOD: HENRY IV. Under this energetic but capricious monarch (1589–1610) and his Florentine queen, Marie de Médicis, architecture entered upon a new period of activity and a new stage of development. Without the charm of the early Renaissance or the stateliness of the age of Louis XIV., it has a touch of the Baroque, attributable partly to the influence of Marie de Médicis and her Italian prelates, and partly to the Italian training of many of the French architects. The great work of this period was the extension of the Tuileries by J. B. du Cerceau, and the completion, by Métézeau and others, of the long gallery next the Seine, begun under Henry II., with the view of connecting the Tuileries with the Louvre. In this part of the work colossal orders were used with indifferent effect. Next in importance was the addition to Fontainebleau of a great court to the eastward, whose relatively quiet and dignified style offers less contrast than one might expect to the other wings and courts dating from Francis I. More successful architecturally than either of the above was the Luxemburg palace, built for the queen by Salomon De Brosse, in 1616 (Fig. 180). Its plan presents the favorite French arrangement of a main building separated from the street by a garden or court, the latter surrounded on three sides by low wings containing the dependencies. Externally, rusticated orders recall the garden front of the Pitti at Florence; but the scale is smaller, and the projecting pavilions and high roofs give it a grace and picturesqueness wanting in the Florentine model. The Place Royale, at Paris, and the château of Beaumesnil, illustrate a type of brick-and-stone architecture much in vogue at this time, stone quoins decorating the windows and corners, and the orders being generally omitted.

Under Louis XIII. the Tuileries were extended northward and the Louvre as built by Lescot was doubled in size by the architect Lemercier, the Pavillon de l’Horloge being added to form the centre of the enlarged court façade.

CHURCHES. To this reign belong also the most important churches of the period. The church of St. Paul-St. Louis, at Paris (1627, by Derrand), displays the worst faults of the time, in the overloaded and meaningless decoration of its uninteresting front. Its internal dome is the earliest in Paris. Far superior was the chapel of the Sorbonne, a well-designed domical church by Lemercier, with a sober and appropriate exterior treated with superposed orders.

PERIOD OF LOUIS XIV. This was an age of remarkable literary and artistic activity, pompous and pedantic in many of its manifestations, but distinguished also by productions of a very high order. Although contemporary with the Italian Baroque—Bernini having been the guest of Louis XIV.—the architecture of this period was free from the wild extravagances of that style. In its often cold and correct dignity it resembled rather that of Palladio, making large use of the orders in exterior design, and tending rather to monotony than to overloaded decoration. In interior design there was more of lightness and caprice. Papier-maché and stucco were freely used in a fanciful style of relief ornamentation by scrolls, wreaths, shells, etc., and decorative panelling was much employed. The whole was saved from triviality only by the controlling lines of the architecture which framed it. But it was better suited to cabinet-work or to the prettinesses of the boudoir than to monumental interiors. The Galerie d’Apollon, built during this reign over the Petite Galerie in the Louvre, escapes this reproach, however, by the sumptuous dignity of its interior treatment.

VERSAILLES. This immense edifice, built about an already existing villa of Louis XIII., was the work of Levau and J. H. Mansart (1647–1708). Its erection, with the laying out of its marvellous park, almost exhausted the resources of the realm, but with results quite incommensurate with the outlay. In spite of its vastness, its exterior is commonplace; the orders are used with singular monotony, which is not redeemed by the deep breaks and projections of the main front. There is no controlling or dominant feature; there is no adequate entrance or approach; the grand staircases are badly placed and unworthily treated, and the different elements of the plan are combined with singular lack of the usual French sense of monumental and rational arrangement. The chapel is by far the best single feature in the design.

Far more successful was the completion of the Louvre, in 1688, from the designs of Claude Perrault, the court physician, whose plans were fortunately adopted in preference to those of Bernini. For the east front he designed a magnificent Corinthian colonnade nearly 600 feet long, with coupled columns upon a plain high basement, and with a central pediment and terminal pavilions (Fig. 181). The whole forms one of the most imposing façades in existence; but it is a mere decoration, having no practical relation to the building behind it. Its height required the addition of a third story to match it on the north and south sides of the court, which as thus completed quadrupled the original area proposed by Lescot. Fortunately the style of Lescot’s work was retained throughout in the court façades, while externally the colonnade was recalled on the south front by a colossal order of pilasters. The Louvre as completed by Louis XIV. was a stately and noble palace, as remarkable for the surpassing excellence of the sculptures of Jean Goujon as for the dignity and beauty of its architecture. Taken in connection with the Tuileries, it was unrivalled by any palace in Europe except the Vatican.