Fig. 115.—Part of the court façade of Blois.
In those parts of the vast châteaux of Blois and Chambord that were built in the time of Francis I a richer phase of this early French Renaissance architecture is found. The eastern wing of Blois, which had been begun by Louis XII, illustrates this. On the side facing the court the walls are panelled, not as they sometimes were in the earlier buildings, as at La Rochefoucauld, by interpenetrating mouldings of Flamboyant profiling, but by three superimposed orders of pilasters, in which a continuity of upright lines is given by shallow ressauts in the entablatures (Fig. [115]). The pilasters are here irregularly spaced in conformity with the window openings of the work that had been begun, and considerably advanced, under the preceding reign; and have the novel addition of ornamented bead mouldings set on the edges of the pilasters, and along the under edges of the entablatures, while in each of the panels thus framed the salamander and crown are carved in relief. In the deep and elaborate cornice, dentils and modillions and the egg and dart are worked in with Gothic gargoyles and a corbel-table; while a rich parapet crowns the whole, and dormers of picturesque form, with pseudo-classic orders surmounted by gables and pinnacles, rise against the vast high-pitched roofs which are further broken by ornamented chimney-stacks. A survival of the later Gothic habit of design is further shown in the continuity of upright lines obtained by the ressauts already remarked. But the most remarkable feature of this façade is the great polygonal staircase tower that rises through it. Four vast piers like buttresses, reaching from the ground to the main cornice which is carried out so as to crown them, are treated like colossal pilasters with rich Corinthianesque capitals, and are banded above the middle with mouldings of classic profiling. Yet on the face of each of these members is a corbelled niche, with a rich canopy and statue in late Gothic style. These piers are connected by three stages of ramps with panelled parapets elaborately ornamented with small pilasters, carvings in relief, and gargoyles issuing from their base mouldings. The whole composition is crowned with a dormer having a square opening on each side, grouped pilasters on the angles, an entablature with compound ressauts over the pilasters, and with gargoyles reaching from the cornice, and a balustrade over all.
The reader should consider well the meaning of all this, and observe how the persistence of the native French habits of design, without the logic of the former time, was still giving a largely mediæval aspect to works in which details from the Italian Renaissance, modified and combined in strangely new ways, were being more and more freely introduced.
On the garden side this wing of Blois has a different design, and shows a survival of the Flamboyant depressed arch in the window openings necessitated by the form of the earlier façade, which is incased in that of Francis I.[118] The windows of this earlier façade were spaced and proportioned so as to make wide and narrow voids and solids alternate in a very irregular manner. In the work of the sixteenth century, which overlays this, superimposed pilasters are set in pairs on the wider solids, and single ones adorn the narrow piers. The pilasters of the lower order rest on tall pedestals supported on spurs rising out of the batter wall of the basement, while the upper order is set on plinths resting on the entablature of the order beneath. This upper order has a plain corbel-table in place of an entablature, with a simple cornice, and gargoyles over the pilasters. Over this is the novel feature of an open gallery covered by an extension of the main roof which is held up by columns of no distinct order, with a balustrade in each interval. Similar galleries were afterward in some instances produced by extending the roofs over originally uncovered terraces below the eaves, supporting the extension on wooden posts—as at La Rochefoucauld.
The walls of Chambord, the next vast château of the early French Renaissance, are adorned with pilasters as at Blois, though the design below the cornice is much simpler. Above the cornice, however, it is the richest of all the great French châteaux, and with its steep roofs and manifold dormers, chimneys, and central lantern, it presents an aspect which for multiplicity of soaring features resembles a late Gothic building. It is not worth while to give an extended analysis of its redundant details which, with its vast chimneys adorned with free-standing orders, niches, panelled surfaces, and pinnacles; its dormers with overlaid orders of pilasters, pediments, scrolls, and endless filigree ornaments; and its great lantern with inverted consoles on entablatures forming flying-buttresses (where there is nothing to be buttressed), make up a bewildering complex without structural meaning or artistic merit. Viollet le Duc has well remarked that “Chambord est au château féodal des XIIIe et XIVe siècles ce que l’abbaye de Thélème est aux abbayes du XIIe siècle: c’est une parodie.”
The same general character, though in less florid development, marks those parts of Fontainebleau which are contemporaneous with Blois and Chambord. This is true also of Écouen, where the architectural scheme is comparatively simple. Instead of superimposed orders the walls of Écouen are adorned with continuous pilasters banded by the mouldings of entablatures that crown each of the stories. These details are in very shallow relief, the wall spaces enclosed by them are not panelled as at Blois and Chambord, and the windows have no framing members. Even the dormers have a marked sobriety of design, though they are framed with small orders, and crowned with fantastic pediments made up of classic elements and filigree ornaments.
The architect Bullant, who appears to have had a large part in the design of Écouen, was among the first French architects of the Renaissance to travel in Italy. In Rome, as he tells us in his book,[119] he had measured some of the ancient monuments, and in the great portico of the court he reproduced the order of a Roman temple.[120] This portico embraces both stories of the building, and is, I believe, the earliest example in France of the reproduction of an ancient order without any admixture of mediæval details, or Italian corruptions. In the main body of the building it was natural that the architect should modify and adjust his neo-classic details in the prevailing manner of his time; but this colossal portico gave him an opportunity to carry out fully the classic Roman ideas which he appears to have imbibed during his Roman sojourn. It was impossible, however, to make any organic connection between this ancient scheme and the building to which it is attached, and it stands against the façade as an utterly foreign interpolation.
An exceptional building of the early French Renaissance is the château of St. Germain en Laye. The top story of this building is vaulted, and to meet the vault thrusts a series of deep buttresses is ranged along each façade. These buttresses are connected by arches at the level of the floor of the principal story[121] and beneath the main cornice, and entablatures, which crown the basement and the principal floor, break around them. They are adorned with pilaster-strips of Romanesque proportions, connected by small blind arches, capped by ressauts of the main cornice, and pierced with water-ducts ending in gargoyles. The arched windows are in pairs (one pair in each story between each pair of buttresses), and are framed with pilaster-strips and entablatures surmounted with pediments. The balconies formed by the ledges over the lower arches are enclosed with balustrades, and balustrades connect the buttresses over the main cornice. The roof is very low and invisible, thus there are no dormers, but large chimneys ornamented with blind arcading break the sky line.
Such is the early Renaissance architecture of France. Notwithstanding its factitiousness, and its ornamental incongruities, it still has, as I have said, a distinctly French expression, though it has not the reasonable character of the native art of the Middle Ages in its integrity. But the departure from their own ideals and traditions was destined to be carried further, and at length to reach results which should still more profoundly contradict the true native spirit. This further transformation was wrought during the second half of the sixteenth century under the influence of several noted architects who stand in relation to the French Renaissance very much as Vignola, Palladio, and their followers stand in relation to that of Italy. The art of these men will be considered in the next chapter.