The French Flamboyant Gothic and the Italian Decorative forms are happily blended in this style, to which the name of “François Premier” (Ier) has been given. This style was chiefly brought about by the employment of the Italian sculptors and architects, Serlio, Vignola, Primaticcio, Il Rosso, Cellini, and others who had been invited by Francis I. to build and decorate his châteaux and palaces. Primaticcio was also entrusted with the task of collecting a series of antique casts and copies of antiques from Rome for the gardens of the palace at Fontainebleau. This, no doubt, had the effect of helping to form the taste for classic art among French artists. Owing to all the above circumstances, French art began to show more of the influence of the Italian style. The Roman orders were henceforth invariably used, but still the new style was modified in a great measure to suit the French taste. What is known as the Henri Deux (Henry II.)[(Henry II.)] style is another French development of the Cinquecento, in which there is a preponderance of strap-work, with figures, masks, grotesques, cartouches of all kinds, and much of the conventional Saracenic ornament. The monogram of Henry II. and the arms of Catherine de’ Medici often appear in this ornament, as seen in the decorations of the Château d’Anet (1548) and on the Oiron or Henri Deux pottery.
Pierre Lescot (1510-1578) designed the western façade of the Louvre, in Paris, and Jean Buillant designed the oldest parts; these two architects and another, Philibert Delorme, brought the Renaissance to such a head in France that it became immediately the national style.
The great names in architectural sculpture of the early French Renaissance were Jean Goujon and Paul Ponce, who carved the principal figures of the façades of the Louvre. Towards the early part of the seventeenth century the architecture began to assume a more florid character, under the hands of Lepautre and Du Cerceau. It became richer, but less pure in style, an example of which is the Apollo Gallery of the Louvre, designed by Lepautre. By the time of the latter half of the seventeenth century the desire for show and the expression of magnificence, especially brought about by the “Grand Monarque,” Louis XIV., assisted by the efforts of his architects, Mansard, Perrault, Lemercier, and Blondel, who ministered to the whims of the powerful King, speedily laid the foundations for the loose and unrestrained Baroque or Rococo style which subsequently followed. The name of “Louis Quatorze” has been given to the style developed in the reign of this king. “Louis Quinze” and “Louis Seize” are names of subsequent French styles, which will be considered under the head of Renaissance Ornament.
The tame and spiritless palace of Versailles was designed by François Mansard, who invented the Mansard roofs which have been used together with this style for nearly all the palatial buildings of Europe. The purity of the Italian Renaissance was forgotten or ignored by the nations of Europe, and the stiff and pompous buildings of Louis XIV. were accepted as the patterns that all civilization was eager to copy. Even old churches and mediæval castles were transformed in some portions of their interiors into Louis XIV. imitations. In Windsor Castle the great ballroom has been vilely treated with the meaningless incrustations of this period, by the way of decorations, endeavouring, however, to make amends for its tasteless poverty of invention by the arrogant display of its rich covering of gold leaf.
In the late seventeenth and during the eighteenth centuries, the Rococo or Baroque phase of the Renaissance was in vogue in Italy and France, and indeed everywhere in Europe. The main characteristic of the Baroque style is the undue prominence given to the ornament and decoration, which arose from a gradual forgetfulness of the Roman and Greek principles of construction, and a want of order in the arrangement of the principal forms in the architecture. By degrees these forms took a secondary position: columns supported nothing or only a few mouldings, cornices and pediments were broken, brackets and consoles were inverted, mouldings ended in scrolls, hanging curtains were represented on stone carving, also wreaths of roses; pediments and gables had weak outlines of carved forms, shells and rock-work (rococo) ending in weedy scrolls, which doubtless was a Chinese inspiration, grafted on the prevailing style; in fact, the utmost license and riot in decoration seemed to be allowed, as it aimlessly sprawled over architecture, furniture, and interiors, until art had almost evaporated from the decorative productions of the age.
In spite of this, however, something must be said in favour of the Rococo: at the least it was homogeneous in its way; some of the figure work that forms part of the ornament is very fine, the finish and perfection also of the carved, painted, and gilt surfaces, from a technical point of view, leave usually nothing to be desired. The curved and broken character of the ornament is excellent for showing the play of light and shade on the gilded surface, and the effect of some interiors is very rich and brilliant; but when decoration takes the place of construction, however well executed it may be, it becomes more of an incrustation than a requirement.
Fig. 412.—Portion of the
Façade of St. Paul and
St. Louis at Paris.
Lorenzo Bernini (1589-1680) and Francesco Borromini (1599-1667) were Italian architects who chiefly brought about the Rococo in Italy. They treated the classical forms with extraordinary freedom. The column especially was degraded in its use. It sometimes supported only a few mouldings, and at other times was carried through two or three stories, when its proper function is to represent one story. One kind of architectural style a little later than this period was called the “Jesuit Style” (Fig. 412), in which churches of the Jesuit Order were built. On the vaulted ceilings of these churches a florid type of painting of sacred subjects was used as decoration.
In Spain the Renaissance, mixed with some Saracenic features, produced some very good work; the typical example of Spanish Renaissance is the Escurial, the great palace of the Spanish kings.