Plate 65. House in the rue St. Jean, at Caen.
To the house at Caen[135] (figured in plate [sixty-five]) are attached no historical mementos; nor is any record preserved as to its founder or possessor. It is not even honored by the slightest mention in the Abbé De la Rue's recent publication, or in those of De Bourgueville or Huet. In all probability it owes its existence to some wealthy citizen, during the reigns of Charles VIII. or Louis XII. as “it was principally at that period, that the practice prevailed in France, of ornamenting the fronts of the houses with medallions. The custom died away under Francis I.”[136]—According to this theory, the houses at Caen and at Fontaine-le-Henri may be placed in exactly the same æra, and about forty years anterior to that at Rouen.
Caen can show another remarkable instance of domestic architecture, a castellated building, which, it has been remarked, might easily mislead the studious antiquary. This building, commonly known by the name of the Château de la Gendarmerie, but more properly called the Château de Calix, is generally believed by the inhabitants of the town to have been erected for the purpose of commanding the river, while it flowed in its ancient, but now deserted, bed. According, however, to the Abbé De la Rue, no fortification of any description ever existed in the same place; but the structure, however martial in its appearance, was in its character altogether pacific, and was built during some of the latest years of the fifteenth, or earliest of the sixteenth, century, by Girard de Nollent, then owner of the property.[137] Two statues, apparently intended to represent heathen divinities, but now absurdly called Gendarmes, frown over its battlements, which, like those of the adjacent wall, and like the face of the principal tower, are still charged with medallions, though the ebullition of revolutionary enthusiasm has destroyed the arms of the Nollents.
Previously to dismissing this subject, it may be worth while to remark, that the ogee canopy, surmounting the window placed between the two medallions in the house in the Rue St. Jean, at Caen, is nearly a fac-simile of that which is still seen over the door that led to what was once the great hall in the Conqueror's palace, adjoining the abbey of St. Stephen. The resemblance between them is so great, that it would be difficult to believe that they are of very different dates. But the palace was unquestionably the production of more than one æra; and in the scarcity of materials for the forming of a correct opinion upon the subject, it is impossible to say, whether the door in question may not have been inserted some time after its erection, or even whether the ornamental part may not have been added to it at a period subsequent to its formation.
FOOTNOTES:
[129] The house at Caen, is that which is here alluded to.—It has already been mentioned, that the Great House at Andelys has suffered the same fate. Since the account of that circumstance was written, the author of the present article has been favored with the following extract from a letter from Lord Compton, dated in August last:—“The noble grande maison d'Andelys, is now, alas, no more! We made a détour by a horrible road, for the purpose of visiting it; but great was our mortification to find only a small piece of unornamented wall, the sole vestige which the barbarians had left standing; and that is now probably destroyed—and ‘green grass grows where Troy-town stood.’ I need hardly say, that I derived a great deal of pleasure from a three-days' stay at Rouen; after which we made an excursion to St. Georges de Bocherville and Jumieges, and were highly interested and pleased by both.—Oh! that the Vandals would leave the abbey of Jumieges, even in its present state of dilapidation! In a few years, with the mellowing tints of time, and the ornament of a little ivy and vegetation, it would be one of the most picturesque and beautiful ruins in Europe; but, alas! it is in vain to hope it. Cotman's representations of Jumieges and Andelys will now be doubly valuable.”
[130] Figured and described in Britton's Architectural Antiquities, II. p. 105.
[131] See Turner's Tour in Normandy, I. p. 157.