IN this chapter we must consider an epoch of transition for northern Europe. Chapter VI dealt with the time of change in Italy; but there was only a brief era of transition there, so rapid and direct was the change. The Italians were ready to accept an imitation of classical architecture, in the hope that the real classical architecture would follow. No matter how poor the imitation, how inadequate the study had been, to the Italians it was so natural that architects should study that which they, the Italians, had always considered the best architecture, that they were willing to forgive mistakes. In the North things were as different as possible. The mighty Gothic school was as vigorous and full of energy as it had been at any time since the middle of the thirteenth century, that is to say, since the day of its first brilliant culmination: and every one, every mason, every carpenter, every bishop or abbot, every noble or great officer, knew what a building or a detail ought to be without asking the opinion of any student of the Roman past. The North, generally, was as reluctant to admit the importance of any such studies as the South was ready to insist upon them. So it was that only the bodily transportation of the court for many months from France to central Italy, and this at a time when the Risorgimento in architecture was at its most glorious height, could suffice to turn the nobles of the court to care for the stately methods of design introduced by the modern students of antiquity. It was in 1494 that Charles VIII started for Rome: for five years from that time the nobles of his court saw much more of Italy than they did of their own country. They came back little by little, after the accession of Louis XII, full of the glories that they had seen. To them it was evident that the Italian palace with its grandiose staircase, its stately ordonnance of windows on the front, its dignity, its rather cold reserve, was more worthy of a prince than the more homely and natural buildings they had left behind them in France—buildings which were of the same style and spirit as the village churches, and of the houses even of the less wealthy citizens.
And yet there is a living proof of the difficulty which even at this late date the classical styles had to establish themselves in France. Plate L shows that wing of the château at Blois which was built about 1500 and which is called the wing of Louis XII. Plate LI shows the adjoining stretch of building, that which was built about 1525 and which is known by the name of François I. In the earlier wing shown in Plate L, although the Italian war had been going on for years before a stone of it was laid or cut, there are no signs of any study whatever of classical details. The building is what it would have been had there been no invasion of Italy by the preceding king—had no French nobleman dreamed of bringing home Italian workmen and Italian ideas. The pointed arch is pushed to one side and replaced by the three-centred arch and by the lintel, but altogether from reasons of convenience, and without the slightest thought of pleasing thereby the students of antiquity. The high and steeply pitched roof remains, the simple and obvious fenestration with openings put where they are needed, and only a secondary reference to delicacies of proportion; the uneven lengths of the quoins and chaînes[48] of the window jambs, the traceried parapet and sunken panels, and even the foliated sculpture, all is of the middle ages; nor is there anywhere a pilaster, a classical column, or the suggestion of an entablature.
So in the building of the next reign, that of Francis I, shown in part in [Plate LI,] the progress of study towards antiquity is visible. Here there are pilasters but such as a Roman of the empire would have thought very odd ones, and, in a way, there is an entablature between the second and third row of windows; and so the capitals have a little touch of the Ionic style, at least in the flat wall to the right of the great staircase. But in every respect, in the high roof, the huge and richly ornamented chimneys, the free treatment of the fenestration, the still more free and easy handling of the staircase, with its ramps and openings treated with an obvious eye to spirited effect, and with but little care for classical gravity of proportion, all is still mediæval. The reader will understand that the arches on the left of the staircase, with Roman engaged columns between them and the entablature which they carry, were an addition of the time of Gaston of Orleans, about 1640: all this has been swept away by the restoration under Duban: for the object of that restoration was mainly the putting of these two great divisions of the palace into the state they were in in the reign of Henry III, for instance, when the States General were held in one of its great halls, namely, the one of which a small part is seen on the left in Plate L.
The student, as he approaches either of these interesting buildings, has to remember that the style of the earlier one, [Plate L,] was compelled to make room for the newer style, as that in its turn was soon out of fashion and was replaced by the more severely classical buildings which are mentioned below. The evolution was not perfect, the growth was not merely natural and inevitable, the style did not ripen, growing slowly from point to point of development, from simpler to richer, from less to greater pitch of complication. It was the constant influx of fresh appeals from Italy and from Italianized travellers, sometimes nobles of the great court, like the Constable of Montmorency, sometimes princes of the church, like the two cardinals of Amboise, and sometimes scholars only, humble students of Greek and Latin,
