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A Chronology of Architectural Styles in France
Following more or less upon the lines of De Caumont's territorial and chronological divisions of architectural style in France, the various species and periods are thus further described and defined:
The Merovingian period, commencing about 480; Carlovingian, 751; Romanesque or Capetian period, 987; Transitional, 1100 (extending in the south of France and on the Rhine till 1300); early French Gothic or Pointed (Gothique à lancettes), mid-twelfth to mid-thirteenth centuries; decorated French Gothic (Gothique rayonnant), from the mid-thirteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries, and even in some districts as late as the last decade of the fifteenth century; Flamboyant (Gothique flamboyant), early fifteenth to early sixteenth; Renaissance, dating at least from 1495, which gave rise subsequently to the style Louis XII. and style François I.
With the reign of Henri II., the change to the Italian style was complete, and its place, such as it was, definitely assured. French writers, it may be observed, at least those of a former generation and before, often carry the reference to the style de la Renaissance to a much later period, even including the neo-classical atrocities of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Bizarre or baroque details, or the style perruque, had little place on French soil, and the later exaggerations of the rococo, the styles Pompadour and Dubarri, had little if anything to do with church-building, and are relevant merely insomuch as they indicate the mannerisms of a period when great churches, if they were built at all, were constructed with somewhat of a leaning toward their baseness, if not actually favouring their eccentricities.
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