CHAPTER VII
COLOURED ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE
IN France the traditional custom of colouring as applied to the exteriors of buildings was continued and maintained throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period, but it had gradually declined in the reign of Louis XIII (1610-42), and was practically non-existent in the time of Louis XIV. In the Gallo-Roman era public buildings and monuments in France were coloured inside and out. Gregory of Tours (539-93), and Frodoard (894-966) make mention of churches and palaces that were decorated with paintings in their time. The Church of Saint-Savin, near Poitiers, dating from 1023, has the oldest monumental paintings in France, which were executed a little after the church was built. The façade of Notre Dame in Paris still bears slight traces of painting. According to Viollet-le-Duc’s researches the three doors with their arches and tympana were painted and gilded, also the niches, the “galerie-des-Rois,” the arcades under the tower, and the great central rose of the façade were all “radiant with bright colour and gilding.” This colouring occurred principally on the mouldings, columns, sculptured ornament and figure work. The outside colouring was much more vivid than the inside work. There were bright reds, crude greens, orange, yellow ochre, blacks and pure whites, but rarely blues, outside, the brilliancy of light allowing a harshness of colouring that would not be tolerable under the diffused light of the interior. The large gables of the transept also bear traces of old painting. There is also evidence that the greater portion of similar edifices of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in France, were decorated in colour.
Enamelled tiles, pottery plaques and gilded leadwork were largely used at the beginning of the Renaissance. Enamelled pottery and terra-cotta decoration were introduced into France by Girolamo della Robbia, who was invited in company with Primaticcio, Serlio and many other Italian artists by François I. Girolamo decorated the Château-de-Boulogne with glazed earthenware; this building was demolished in 1792, and some of the earthenware plaques are now in the Cluny Museum at Paris. During the reigns of François I and Henri II, in the sixteenth century, the architectural colouring was mostly a development of that of the Middle Ages, but towards the end of the century the taste for colour decoration rapidly declined, and from the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV the marble, and cold white stone style of building, introduced from Italy, became the fashion in France. This applies more particularly to the exteriors of French edifices, for during the reign of the Grand Roi the interiors continued to have a goodly share of coloured decorative paintings.
In the “Louis-Quinze” period (1715-74) colour was still used, but more sparingly, on the exterior and interior of buildings. Some ceilings and doorhead panels were painted in colours, but as a rule white relieved with gold was the common scheme of decoration, or sometimes pale and weak tints of colour were used.
In the period of the “Louis-Seize” style (1774-92), the schemes of decoration were almost as colourless as in the former period, although some exceptions must be noted, as in the case of some exquisitely decorated boudoirs painted for Marie Antoinette and her ladies of the court, examples of which are the Queen’s boudoir at Fontainebleau, and one which was formerly that of one of her maids-of-honour, a beautiful specimen of its kind, which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington. (Plates [22] and [23].) From the days of the Republic to the end of Napoleon’s reign, 1792-1814, the architecture and decoration became still more cold and austere, and except in isolated instances there was not much employment of colour to relieve the conventional formality of the so-called “Empire” style.
The Romantic School of artists, poets, and
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[Victoria and Albert Museum.