On the morning of his death, when the king came into the room, the dying man tried to raise himself on his couch to welcome him, but the effort was too much; he sank forward, and would have fallen but for the timely arms that rescued him. Francis laid the venerable old head upon his breast, and there it lay till Leonardo breathed his last.
The artist had been pursued for months before his death by a morbid terror of being buried alive, and had implored Francis to let him be kept three days before the coffin was closed. The king complied with the wish, and caused his friend to be exposed with royal honors, and the body laid in state for three days. He was buried in the Church of S. Florentin, near his own abode at Amboise.
Benvenuto Cellini is another shining stone in the pedestal of Francis I. Discontented with the recognition that his genius met with at home, he too was enticed from the blue skies of Florence to the colder but more genial atmosphere of Fontainebleau, and was petted by the graceful king only in a less degree than Da Vinci. But Benvenuto, who knew so many things, who excelled almost equally as a poet, a sculptor, and a painter, was lamentably ignorant in the art of being a courtier. The Duchesse d’Estampes was queen of the gay palace of Armida, and all the great men that frequented it bowed before her; but this bold Florentine, who had a dash of the brigand in his composition, thought he might dispense with her patronage, and refused to do homage at the common shrine; he knew that he had had the bad luck to displease the haughty fair one by his untutored manners from the first, and, instead of trying to conciliate, he determined to conquer her. The duchess was a liberal and enlightened patroness of art, and seems to have merited in some degree by her personal accomplishments the flattering title bestowed on her by one of her protégés of “the most beautiful of savantes and the most learned of belles.” Her sway over Francis rested, therefore, on something stronger than the ephemeral tenure of mere beauty; but, had it been otherwise, what chance was there for Benvenuto against the favorite of the king? He, foolish mortal, braved her so far as to ask the king direct, without having recourse to her intervention, for an order to cast a bronze statue for the great gallery which was in process of completion, and Francis gave him the order, with carte-blanche for the execution. The statue was finished, and a day appointed for the king to see it. This was a precious opportunity for a woman’s vengeance; the duchess knew that the triumph of the artist depended altogether on the first impression produced on the king, and that the triumph of the work depended mainly on the light in which it was seen: Cellini had named an hour when the sun would pour in soft, full floods of light down the gallery; and, long before the appointed time, he was there, watching every changing shadow that it cast upon his statue, counting the minutes impatiently, while his friends and all the court flocked in to assist at the king’s entrance, and witness the triumph or the humiliation of the sculptor. But the hour passed, and another, and another, and there was no sign of Francis; the sun was gathering up its light, and speeding away to the west, and the brown twilight was creeping into the gallery. Benvenuto grew nervous, then outrageous. He paced up and down before his Jupiter like a man gone mad. Where was the king? Would no one take pity on him to go and call the king? But Benvenuto knew full well that none in that courtly crowd would be guilty of so rash an act. Not even he himself would dare to do it. He knew whose fault it was that the king was not forthcoming, and he gnashed his teeth in savage but impotent rage. But genius, like prophecy, has a ready handmaid in inspiration. “Let fall the curtains, and bring lights,” cried the sculptor, with a sudden bound from despair to triumph. The partisans of the “belle savante” groaned, and stood still; the friends of Cellini flew to obey his orders. It mattered not that they did not understand: the master did. In less time than it takes to tell, the gallery was illuminated from end to end; lamps, torches, waxlights, every luminary that hands could carry, was put in requisition, till Jupiter shone out magnificent, terrible, and dazzling in the blaze of an impromptu illumination more weirdly effective than the brightest daylight could have been.
Cellini’s spirit rose to frenzy. He ran hither and thither, arranging the lights with a view to more striking effect; clustering many flames in a group at one point, leaving another in partial shade; clapping his hands in wild delight one minute, impatiently knocking down one of his helpmates the next. It was finished. The king was heard approaching. Cellini, with an imperious gesture, commanded silence; the doors of the gallery were thrown open, and the colossal bronze god flashed out in all his dark effulgence on the astonished and enchanted gaze of the monarch. The triumph of the hour was complete; but it cost the sculptor dear. The duchess gave Francis no peace till he quarrelled with her enemy, and dismissed him from the court.
Many Italian artists had followed Leonardo da Vinci to France, some out of love for the great master himself, others tempted by the generosity which the King of France showed universally to their class. The most distinguished of these disciples of Leonardo was Andrea del Sarto. But he was of too restless a disposition to settle anywhere permanently; camp, court, and studio alike wearied him after a time; his wings were too buoyant to remain long folded even in the enchanted clime of Fontainebleau; he was not more than a year there, when he declared it was a necessity of life for him to return to Florence, the ostensible motive being to see his wife. Francis proposed to send for her, promising that she should be made welcome to his court as an honored guest; but Andrea said this would not do: he must go himself and fetch her. All the king could obtain was a promise that he would return to France in a year; and, to make the promise more binding, he entrusted him with a considerable sum of money, to be expended, according to Andrea’s taste and judgment, on objects of art for the decoration of the palace. But when Andrea found himself once more in Florence, in the company of his wife and his former boon companions, he forgot all about his mission, and spent the king’s money in merry-making; he did not dare show himself at Fontainebleau after this, but frittered away the rest of his life in his native city, where he eventually died in poverty and contempt. It would take too long to enumerate the various European celebrities who fill up the brilliant picture presented by Francis’ court at this period; but we cannot refuse a passing mention to Serlio, the accomplished Bolognese architect, whom the king lured away from Italy by his gold and his honeyed flattery. Serlio rebuilt the palace almost entirely; his genius was allowed full scope, and the result justified the confidence of his patron.
The area of the old building being much too small for the magnificent new plan, Francis bought in the Mathurin Convent and the noble grounds with which Louis IX. had endowed it, and added them to the original site. The design of the library had been sketched by S. Louis, and this Serlio adhered to strictly, making no change of his own. When the edifice was finished, Francis swept Italy and Spain for artists to adorn and beautify it. Rosso came to paint the walls in fresco, and his design for the grand gallery, which was to be called the Gallery of Francis I., carried the prize over all his competitors; he embellished it with paintings, friezes of great beauty, and rich stucco-work. So delighted was the king with the result of Rosso’s labors that, in addition to other favors, he created him a canon of the Sainte Chapelle. This wonderful gallery had sixteen frescoes representing the most remarkable incidents in the life of Francis; the famous porte dorée[104] was decorated by the same gifted hand. It is lamentable to think that these glorious works of art, which formed Rosso’s principal claim on the admiration of the world, were sacrificed to the vindictive jealousy of a rival. Francesco Pellegrini had been the early friend of Rosso; but, when they met as fellow-laborers at Fontainebleau, the friendship turned to a rivalry which soon developed into bitter enmity, and ended in the tragic death of Rosso. Primaticcio, as Pellegrini is usually called, was accused by his rival of having stolen a large sum of money from him; he was put to the torture, but acquitted triumphantly. Rosso was then seized with shame and remorse; haunted in imagination by the shrieks of the innocent man, the friend of his youth, whom he had given up to the torture, his mind gave way, and in a fit of insanity he took poison, which killed him in a few hours. Some say that Rosso knew that the accusation was false, and that he brought it designedly against Primaticcio, hoping to get rid of him; but his frantic grief on discovering his mistake, and the fatal consequences of his remorse, may be taken as contradictory evidence of this opinion. Primaticcio, moreover, by his subsequent conduct, vindicates his unhappy rival from having done him so very great a wrong in suspecting him capable of the theft, for he unblushingly stole from Rosso what was incomparably more precious to him than gold—his fame. No sooner was he master of the field, than he set about to destroy all traces of Rosso’s beautiful compositions, pulling down the walls which they adorned, under pretence of enlarging the space. Some few that were spared by the relentless destroyer have been obliterated by damp and the effects of time. There is one fine painting of his to be seen in the Louvre—“Mary receiving the homage of S. Elizabeth.”
The fêtes given at Fontainebleau by Francis I., though perhaps inferior in splendor to those of Louis XIV. at Versailles, surpassed them in picturesque elegance; they were rather the ideal festivities of an artist than the gorgeous pageants of an Arabian caliph. But the leisures of Francis were not all wasted in frivolous amusements. In his sane moments, when he was not flying after that will-o’-the-wisp that cost France and him so dear, the conquest of the Milanese, he was something more than the mere fascinating madcap that his enemies make him out; for it is his lot, like that of all charming but unprincipled sovereigns, to inspire panegyrics and denunciations equally exaggerated. He was not only a patron of those artists who contributed to the adornment of his dwellings: Francis courted the society of learned men for learning’s sake. The luxurious repasts of Fontainebleau were enlivened and refined by the presence of such men as Clement Marot, whose style, full of terseness and incisive grace, the king was fond of emulating in verses of his own composition, not altogether devoid of poetic merit. He delighted in the chivalrous lays of the middle ages, and in the harmonious cadence and florid imagery of the ballads of the troubadours. The witty Curé of Mendon was a frequent guest at the royal table, Francis provoking his lively sallies, and heartily enjoying them, though the sarcasm was often boldly pointed at himself. Learned men of every class—doctors, bookworms, and even printers—were admitted to the same honor. Erasmus was one of the few who withstood the wiles of the charmer; he steadfastly refused all invitations to reside permanently at Fontainebleau; but he kept up a brisk correspondence with Francis, the honest freedom of whose tone throughout does equal honor to the scholar and the king. The French court was, in fact, the most polished and the gayest in Europe at this period. The sprightly Queen of Navarre—that sister whom Francis so tenderly loved, his “Marguerite des Marguerites”—was its presiding genius and brightest ornament. She was passionately fond of Fontainebleau, and made it her home during the greater part of her first husband’s life, and after her marriage with Henri de Navarre, who was so frequently absent, either in her brother’s service or in the pursuit of war on his own account. Her image is everywhere associated in our memory with that of Francis in his favorite palace. In her boudoir, a spacious and magnificently decorated room, leading out of Rosso’s noble gallery, the royal brother and sister passed many delightful hours, either in affectionate converse together, or surrounded by the artists and learned men whom they both loved to honor. Here Francis placed the library of rare books and manuscripts for which he had scoured Italy, Spain, and Greece. The erudite Erasmus would sometimes deliver one of his learned discourses on deep and elevating themes in the privacy of this enchanting retreat, while Marguerite de Navarre worked out, in rainbow-tinted silks and golden threads, the poem of one of her artist friends, or some chivalrous exploit of her idolized Francis. Happy had it been for Francis and for France had he dwelt content amidst the peaceful and refined delights of this Eldorado. But there was the Milanese—that unlucky Milanese, the bane of his life, and of his people’s while his lasted. Again and again he flew at it like a moth at the flame, or a madman at his idée fixe—failure and humiliation, instead of disgusting him with his hobby, only goaded him to its pursuit with greater zest. And what odd, shifting relations grew out of this standing duel between him and Charles V.! Alternately, they were rivals, friends, deadly foes, and “dear brothers.” Beside the gloomy, vindictive Spanish warrior, subtle in his policy, swift and ruthless in his vengeance, the brilliant figure of Francis shone at its best; he had all the qualities that his rival lacked; his uncalculating generosity, his rash impulses that led him into so many grievous straits, all stand out in bright relief against the dark background of the contest. The story of the broken Treaty of Madrid is one of the many vexed questions over which the apologists of both princes have broken innumerable lances, but they leave it pretty much where it stood in the year of grace 1527, after the Notables decided that the conditions of the treaty were monstrous, and had been unjustifiably imposed by a jailer on his prisoner, and that Francis was right in maintaining que prisonnier gardé n’est tenu a nulle foye, n’y se peut obliger à rien.[105]
Charles had no right to exact the abdication of his conquered foe, and the latter had no power to effect it without the consent of his Notables, which he knew full well would never be granted. Still, the solemn oath sworn on the crucifix by Francis in presence of the emperor is not to be disposed of so easily. It would have been more consistent with the character for Bayard-like chivalry, which the French prince arrogated, to have withheld the pledge which he knew he could not redeem, than to purchase his liberty by a subterfuge that has left an equivocal mark upon his memory. He was only a lifetenant of the crown of France; he might resign it, but he had no power to alienate its most insignificant fief; in swearing, therefore, to hand over the duchy of Burgundy and the counties of Flanders and Artois to Charles V., he was performing a vain sham; for, had he been willing to carry out the promise of renunciation himself, he was well aware that the states-general and the parliament of the realm would never ratify the act, and that without their ratification it remained null and void. The strong epithets used by Charles in denouncing the disloyalty of his quondam captive in violating this preposterous treaty are, however, somewhat misplaced, considering the duplicity and cruelty which he himself had displayed in extracting impossible concessions from a brave and conquered foe.
It was not long before Francis had an opportunity of vindicating his much-prized character for chivalrous magnanimity by heaping coals of fire on the head of Charles. The emperor was on his way to Ghent, and applied to the king for a safe-conduct through his dominions. It was granted at once, but on condition that the emperor should remain for a few days the guest of Francis. Charles was in such a hurry to castigate the rebels that he would have promised more than this in order to arrive swiftly on the scene of vengeance; he consented to halt at Fontainebleau; but no sooner had he set foot on the soil of his “good brother of France,” than he was seized with tremors and suspicions that made his life miserable; he accused himself of madness in having so rashly rushed into the arms of a prince whom he had persecuted meanly when he was in his power, and whose state he had grievously injured; nor did the magnificence of the reception which greeted him on his arrival calm his fears. Francis, who was utterly incapable of a base breach of hospitality, could not forego the pleasure of playing a little on the agonies of Charles; he occasionally repeated to him the murmurings of the Queen of Navarre and the Dauphin, who would fain have improved the rare opportunity by compelling their guest to undo some of the mischief he had done their brother and father. Francis even recounted to the emperor with great merriment an epigrammatic little passage between himself and his favorite dwarf, Triboulet: while the latter was diverting the king with his usual antics on the night of the Spaniard’s arrival, he suddenly pulled out his tablets, and began to write with an air of great gravity. “What are you writing there, Triboulet?” inquired his master. “The name of a bigger fool than myself,” replied the dwarf. “Who is that?” said Francis. “Charles,” replied Triboulet. “But suppose I keep my word, and let him go?” queried the king. “Then,” answered Triboulet, “I would rub out Charles, and write Francis instead.”
The question of the Milanese was discussed between the two sovereigns during this period with great earnestness on one side and consummate skill on the other. Charles promised solemnly to bestow the investiture on the Dauphin; but, when Francis urged him to confirm his pledge by a written guarantee, he cunningly retaliated his host’s answer concerning the Treaty of Madrid: “Prisonnier gardé n’est tenu à nulle foye, n’y se peut obliger à rien.” He declared, however, that on reaching Flanders he would give the promise in writing. We know how he kept his word.