Other descriptions of Rouen’s monuments can be found in the general works of Henri Havard, André Michel, Louis Gonse, Émile Mâle, Paul Vitry.
Cheruel, Histoire de Rouen sous la domination anglaise au XVe siècle (Rouen, 1840); A. Fallue, Histoire de l’église métropolitaine et du diocèse de Rouen (Rouen, 1850), 4 vols.; Ch. de Beaurepaire, Notes historiques et archéol. concernaut le département de la Seine-Inférieure (Rouen, Cagniard, 1883); ibid., Dernières mélanges historiques et archéol. Seine-Inférieure (Rouen, 1909); Cook, The Story of Rouen (London, 1899); Perkins, The Churches of Rouen (London, 1900).
[339] St. Ouen derived its name from the bishop who succeeded St. Romanus and governed Rouen for forty years in the VII century, aiding the founders of Jumièges, Fécamp, and St. Wandrille. He had been blessed as a child in his father’s castle near Braine by a passing guest, the Irish missionary, St. Columbanus, and he loved to trace thence his vocation. So rich grew the abbey of St. Ouen that it ruled half the city as temporal lord. In the XV century the English expelled Abbot Jean Richard, a builder of the present nave, to substitute a prelate docile to themselves who sat as judge at Jeanne’s trial. But the pope restored Jean Richard in 1434, and he lived to entertain Charles VII in his monastery when that king came as victor to Rouen in 1449. Vacandard, Vie de St. Ouen (Paris, 1902).
[340] To a Romanesque abbatial of St. Ouen, burned in 1136, belonged the two-storied chapel called the Chambre-aux-Clercs, now set against the northern limb of the transept. In 1318 Abbot Jean Roussel, called Marc d’Argent, began the present abbatial, making its choir and transept in twenty years, as well as one bay of the nave. After a pause, two more bays were finished by 1390. Another cessation of work came during the Hundred Years’ War. Alexander Berneval set up the transept’s south rose (1439), made the pretty southern portal (1441) called after the marmosets decorating it; his son put up the north rose. Both architects repose in the same tomb in the church. Many hold the central lantern (c. 1490) to be a prime success of Flamboyant art. Flame tracery appeared in the XV-century windows, but the Rayonnant first plan was adhered to for the chief lines, so that the church, whose building extended over two centuries, is homogeneous. The abbatial was finished under Abbot Bohier (1491-1515). The Huguenots stripped it of its tombs, and lighted bonfires in the church. In the XIX century was added the mediocre west façade.
La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque. Seine-Inférieure, p. 105, “St. Ouen”; p. 129, “St. Maclou”; H. Havard, éd., La France artistique et monumentale, vol. 2, p. 79, “St. Ouen,” L. de Foucaud; p. 85, “St. Maclou”; Dom. Pommeraye, Histoire de l’abbaye royale de St. Ouen (Rouen, 1662), folio; Jules Quicherat, “Documents inédits sur la construction de St. Ouen de Rouen,” in Biblio. de l’École des chartes, 1852, vol. 3, p. 454; H. de la Bunodière, Notice sur l’église St. Ouen de Rouen (Paris, 1895); Camille Enlart, “L’architecture gothique au XIV siècle,” in Histoire de l’Art (éd., André Michel), vol. 2, partie 2 (Paris, Colin, 1914).
[341] Henry II, the first Plantagenet, made for his own residence the chapel of St. Julien in a faubourg of Rouen, Petit-Quevilly. Simultaneously Romanesque and Gothic, the small edifice is one of the most elegant specimens of Normandy’s XII-century architecture. Only the choir bay has retained the polychrome decoration which once covered the interior. St. Julien’s sexpartite vault has been replaced by a wooden roof.
Doctor Contan, Monographie de St. Julien, Petit-Quevilly, and his account, p. 239, in La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque. Seine-Inférieure; Duchemin, Le Petit-Querilly et le prieuré de Saint Julien.
[342] The church of St. Sauveur in Petit-Andely, begun in 1215, finished in 1245, contains excellent XIII-century glass. Of the same date are the façade, nave, and square-ended choir of Notre Dame at Grand-Andely. Its central tower is of the XV century; the transept is a gem of Flamboyant Gothic. The most brilliant of its windows date from 1540 to 1616. Above the smaller Andely stands Château Gaillard, the “Saucy Castle,” which Richard the Lion-hearted built in a year. Its capture in 1204 by Philippe-Auguste ended the English resistance in Normandy at that period. Five miles away are the remains of the magnificent château of Gaillon, where every master of the Renaissance in France was employed. Begun in 1454 by Cardinal d’Estouteville, it was carried forward by Cardinal George I d’Amboise and Cardinal de Bourbon. Its bas-relief of St. George and the dragon is one of the three authenticated works of Michel Colombe. A façade of Gaillon is now in the courtyard of the Beaux-Arts at Paris. Abbé Porée, Guide historique et descriptive aux Andelys; Congrès Archéologique, 1853; La Normandie monumentale et pittoresque. Eure 1, pp. 147, 163 (Le Havre, 1895); E. A. Didron, “Les vitraux du Grand-Andely,” in Annales Archéol., vol. 22.
[343] Opposite the tomb of the d’Amboise cardinals (1513-25), predominantly Gothic in character, is the purely Renaissance monument of Louis de Brézé (1536-44), seneschal of Normandy, son of the daughter of Charles VII and Agnes Sorel. The kneeling figure on the tomb is the notorious Diane de Poitiers, his widow. The critics say that if the De Brézé mausoleum is not the work of Jean Goujon, Diane’s favorite sculptor, then there must have been living here an unknown XVI-century master of the first order. Jean Goujon was in Rouen, making the wooden doors of St. Maclou, at that time.
Paul Vitry, Jean Goujon (Collection, Les Grandes Artistes), (Paris, H. Laurens, 1908); Louis Gonse, La sculpture française depuis le XIVe siècle (Paris, 1895); Léon Palustre, La Renaissance en France, vol. 1 (Paris, Quantin, 1888), 3 vols.