THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GIFT Llewellyn Buell "iHMJRlATCo^ A HISTORY OF FRENCH ARCHITECTURE FROM 1494 TO 1 66 1 A HISTORY OF FRENCH ARCHITECTURE FROM THE REIGN OF CHARLES VIII TILL THE DEATH OF MAZARIN BY REGINALD BLOMFIELD a.r.a., m.a., f.s.a. architect: honorary fellow of EXETER COLLEGE, oxford: AUTHOR OF " A HISTORY OF RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND," ETC. WITH DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS VOL. II LONDON G. BELL AND SONS, LTD, 1911 CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XI. Church Building in the Sixteenth Century, and the End OF Gothic Architecture 1-16 Persistent survival of Gothic — Church of Brou — Van Boghem — Conrad Meyt — Discrepancy between their work — Nevers — Troyes — Two currents of thought in sixteenth century, the new manner and the mediaeval tradition — St. Pierre, Coutances — Limoges — Caudebec — Tillieres — Three types of sixteenth-century Church building, (i) design for remodelling, as St. Gervais, Gisors, the Grappins; (2) survivals of earlier methods, Carnac, Auray, Arques le Bataille, St. Michel Dijon, Tonnerre, St. Remi Dieppe, Toulouse, and Orleans; (3) Neo-Classic detail but Gothic design, St. Eustache Paris, St. Maclou Pontoise, St. Etienne du Mont — Failure of the old tradition to keep pace with the ideals of the time. XII. The Jesuits IN France 17-30 New factor, the return of the Jesuits early in the seventeenth cen- tury — Difference of attitude towards the antique as between the genera- tion of De rOrme and that of Lemercier — The latter relies on modern authorities for versions of the antique — The tendency to follow authority, use made of this by the Jesuits — Extent of their organization — Educa- tional work— Etienne Martellange — At Carpentras — At Vienne — At Le Puy — Vagueness of his methods and difficulties with contractors — La Flfeche — The Church of the Novitiate, Paris — The Lyc^e Corneille, Rouen — Poitiers — LaTrinite, Lyons — His death — Not a great architect — St. Pierre, Nevers, and Roanne — An agent and administrator — The plan of the Jesuit church — Its elevations — Effect on later designers, Frangois Mansart — Its method not to be treated with contempt, but handled by competent men has its place and value in architecture. XIII. Henri IV 31-48 Condition of France at beginning of seventeenth century — King's object to re-establish the arts — The little Gallery at the Louvre — its decorations — The Salle des Antiques — ^The Metezeau family — The Grand Gallery — Its designer — Probably Etienne du Perac for the eastern half, and Jacques Androuet du Cerceau for the western — Blondel's criticism on Du Cerceau's design — Henri IV and the idea of completing the Louvre — The artists of the Grande Galerie — Henri's V 856089 vi FRENCH ARCHITECTURE CHAPTER PAGE schemes for the improvement of Paris— State of the city — The Pont Neuf and its Place— Place Royale — Place Dauphine — Porte et Place de France — Additions to Fontainebleau — Galerie des Cerfs — St. Ger- main-en-Laye, terraces, and staircase — Important work done for Henri IV in development of French architecture — His anticipation of later ideas. XIV. Marie de Mfioicis 49-65 Salomon de Brosse — Jean du Cerceau — Marie de Medicis and the arts in France — Decorative painting — The change of direction introduced by Rubens — The Luxembourg and Salomon de Brosse — Not based on the Pitti Palace — Its plan, defects of its design — Later history of the building — St. Gervais, Paris — The Protestant Temple at Charenton — The Grand Salle of the Palais de Justice — Colommiers en Brie — The Parliament House at Rennes — Jean Androuet de Cerceau — The Hotels de Sully and De Mayenne — Hotel de Bretonvillers — Hotel Seguier — Buildings by unknown architects — at Toulouse — Dijon and the south-east side of France — Hotel de Vogue — Porte de la Citadelle, Nancy — Town hall. La Rochelle — The brick and stone architecture of the reign of Henri IV — Period still one of transition. XV. Jacques Lemercier 66-78 Born at Pontoise — His employment at the Louvre — The Church of the Oratory in Paris — The Catholic Renaissance in France com- pared with the Laudian Revival in England — Lemercier and the Sorbonne — Church of St. Roche — The official type of the French seventeenth-century church — Churches at Richelieu, at Vannes, at Blois, Notre Dame at Caen, St. Pierre Saumur, Eglise Toussaint at Rennes, Les ArdeHers Saumur, St. Nicholas Compiegne, La Trinite Fontainebleau — Lemercier compared with Wren — Less imaginative, less power of organic control — This quality lost sight of in modern architecture — Advance made in work of Lemercier and his contem- poraries. XVI. Leukucier (continued) 79-92 Lemercier as a domestic architect — Poussin's unfavourable opinion — Hotel de Richelieu — Richelieu's wealth — Chateau de Richelieu, laying out of its general design — The Chateau — The re- building of the town of Richeheu, its importance in the history of town- planning — Brouage and its fortifications — Lemercier and the Louvre — The Pavilion de I'Horloge — Its failure as a design — The Grand Gallery — Poussin's quarrel with Lemercier — The Town Hall at Lyons — Lemercier succeeds Mansart at the Val de Grace — His death — Lemercier as an architect. XVII. Pierre LE Muet 93-106 Brick and stone, and the provincial architecture of the early part of the seventeenth century — Hotel de Chalons-Luxembourg — Tiie CONTENTS vii CHAPTER PAGE Normandy houses — Menars, Vannes, Moulins — Le Muet — Born at Dijon — At work at the Louvre — His book on building — Pontz and Chavigny — Tanlay — Bussy Rabutin — Influence of Ancy le Franc — Chateau de Sully — Le Muet's hotels in Paris — Hotel Davaux — Tuboeuf — Palais Mazarin — Hotels de I'Aigle, de Chevreuse — Le Muet succeeds Lemercier at the Val de Grace — His death — An able architect and a fine planner. XVIII. Francois Mansart 107-118 The Mansart family — The Hotel de la Vrilliere — The Church of the Feuillants — An early work — Little known of his training — His work in Normandy — Balleroy — Bre^-y — Buildings, Blois, for Gaston d'Orleans — The great staircase — Maisons for Rend de Longueuil — Its plan — The staircase — The cost of Maisons — Its later history — The grounds broken up and the house neglected — Fresnes — Cany — Dauboeuf — Other houses attributed to Mansart. XIX. Ma^sakt {continued) 119-135 Mansart's work in Paris — At the Hotel Carnavalet — His trans- formation of the entrance facade — Respect for Goujon's sculpture — Blondel's comment on this, and modern French restorations — The Hotel Conti — The Hotel d'Aumont — Uncertainty as to designer, and confusion in accounts of this building, probably all by Fran9ois Mansart — Hotel de Jars, its plan and elevations — Mansart's church work — St. Marie in the Rue St. Antoine — Originality of the design — Church of the Minimes, now destroyed — The Val de Grace— The church — Faults of the exterior probably not due to Mansart — The interior, beauty of the design — Mansart and the rebuilding of the Louvre — His death — Attacks made on him — Mansart the greatest architect ever produced by France. XX. French Architecture, i 600-1 661 136-151 Death of Mansart closes third period of French Neo-Classic — Dates overlap — Architecture of Henri IV and country houses — Chiverny — Vizille — Chambrai — Montgomery-Ducey — Dauboeuf and Miromesnil — The true seigneurial manner — Advance in house- planning — The Paris hotels — Madame de Rambouillet — The story of her reform of domestic architecture without foundation — The change occurred later — Typical plan of the middle of the seventeenth century — Municipal architecture — La Rochelle — Lyons — The build- ing of the Town Hall — Advance in church architecture — Order and subordination the key-note of the period succeeding the death of Mazarin — But the development of Neo-Classic continuous from the early days of the sixteenth century down to the end of the eighteenth. Index 153 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PLATE LXXXIII. LXXXIV. LXXXV. LXXXVI. LXXXVII. LXXXVIII. LXXXIX. xc. XCI. XCII. XCIII. XCIV. XCV. XCVI. XCVII. XCVIII. XCIX. c. CI. CII. cm. CIV. cv. CVI. evil. CVIII. CIX. ex. CXI. II The Jub£, Limoges Cathedral The JuBfi: Brou .... Tomb of Philibert le Beau: Brou Tomb of Margaret of Austria: Brou St. Pierre: Coutances . Choir Vault: Tilli£:res Organ Gallery: Caudebec St. Gervais: Gisors . Carnac Church: Morbihan St. Michel: Dijon . Capital in Choir (south side) of St. Remi: Dieppe St. Eustache: Paris JUBfi: St. Etienne du Mont, Paris Pier and Capitals, St. Maclou: Pontoise . Church of the Novitiate of the Jesuits: Paris Chapel of the Lyc£e Corneille: Rouen . St. Pierre: Nevers Chapter Room: Lyc£e Henri IV, Poitiers Montmorency Chapel at Moulins Ground Plan and Section of the Montmorency Chapel at Moulins Choir Stall: Cathedral, Toulouse . The Louvre: Petite Galerie The Louvre : Grande Galerie The Tuileries: The Pavilion of Flora An Old Street in Troyes: La Rue des Chats The Pont-Neuf: The Northern Arm The Place du Pont-Neuf .... The Place Royale The Place Dauphine CouR Henri IV: Fontainebleau PaVILLON DE la BiBLIOTHfeQUE: FONTAINEBLEAU S. Germain-en-Laye: Buildings of Henri IV Chiverny The Luxembourg b PAGE I 2 2 6 6 8 8 lO 12 12 12 14 14 i6 24 26 28 28 28 30 32 34 38 40 42 42 43 44 44 46 46 48 50 52 X FRENCH ARCHITECTURE TO FACE PLATE PA°E The Luxembourg: Elevation to Courtyard and SECTION through GALLERIES 52 CXII. The Luxembourg: Ground Plan 53 The Luxembourg: Section and Side Elevation to Court 53 CXIII. Plan AND Section of the Temple of Charenton . 54 St. Gervais, Paris 54 CXIV. Monceaux 56 CXV. Colommiers-en-Brie 58 CXVI. Liencour: General View 58 CXVII. The Hotel de Sully 60 CXVIII. The Ile Notre Dame, showing the Hotel Breton- villers and others 60 CXIX. Gateway: CouR Henri IV, Capitole, Toulouse . 62 CXX. Gateway of THE LYCfiE: Toulouse .... 62 CXXI. Doorway: Hotel DE VoGU£, Dijon .... 64 House in Rue des Forges, Dijon 64 CXXH. Nancy: Porte DE LA CiTADELLE 64 CXXni. Church OF THE Oratory, Paris: Section ... 66 Church OF THE Oratory, Paris: Ground Plan . 66 CXXIV. The Church of THE SoRBONNE: Paris ... 70 CXXV. Interior of St. Roch, Paris 73 CXXVI. Notre Dame: Caen 74 Church OF St. Pierre: Saumur 74 CXXVII. Chapel OF the Lyc£e: Eu, Seine Inf 76 CXXVIII. Details: Church of Les Ardeliers, Saumur . . ^6 CXXIX. Church OF Les Ardeliers: Saumur, Ground Plan . 76 Les Ardeliers: Saumur, Entrance . . . . j6 CXXX. Cartouche in stucco, by Lemercier: Chapel of La TRINITfi, FONTAINEBLEAU 76 CXXX I. The Palais Royal 79 CXXXII. The Garden of the Palais Royal .... So CXXXIII. Bird's-eye View OF the ChAteau OF Richelieu . 82 CXXXIV. View and Ground Plan of the Chateau and Demesne of Richelieu 84 CXXXV. The Chateau OF Richelieu: Front Entrance. . 84 CXXXVI. Richelieu: the Town Gate and Principal Street . 86 Brouage, Charente Inf. West Side .... 86 CXXXVII. Lemercier's Additions TO THE Louvre ... 89 CXXXVI 1 1. Lemercier's Design for the Entrance Front of the Louvre 90 CXXXIX. Chambray: Eure 93 LisiEUX: The " Ancien EvfecHfi" 93 CXL. Hotel Limur: Vannes 93 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS XI TO FACE PLATE CXLI. Chateau; Pontz CXLII. Tanlay: Section and Internal Elevation and Ground Plan CXLIII. Tanlay: The ChAteau d'Eau CXLIV. Chateau of Chavigny: Spxtion and Internal Elevation CXLV. The Hotel Davaux: Section and Internal Eleva- tion CXLVI. The Hotel Tubceuf: Section and Internal Eleva- tion CXLVI I. Palais Mazarin CXLVI 1 1. The Hotel de l'Aigle: Elevations of the Garden Front and Internal Elevation, with Ground Plan CXLIX. The Hotel de Chevreuse: Section and Internal Elevation CL. Hotel Bretonvillers: Section and Elevations CLI. Chateau de Balleroy: near Caen CLII. Hotel de la Vrilli£;re or de Toulouse Church of the Convent of the Feuillants: Paris CLI 1 1. Chateau : Berni CLIV. Entrance to Forecourt: Br£cy, Calvados CLV. Ceiling of Mansart's Staircase at Blois . CLVI. Detail of carving: Cove under Gallery, sart's Staircase, Blois .... CLVI I. Maisons: Garden Front .... CLVIII. Maisons: from the Forecourt CLIX. Chateau de Cany: Saint-Val£ry-en-Caux CLX. Hotel d'Argouge or Carnavalet: Front Elevation prior to Mansart's alterations . Ground Plan CLXI. Hotel d'Argouge c'/' Carnavalet: Section through principal court CLXII. The Hotel CoNTi The Hotel d'Aumont CLXIII. The Hotel d'Aumont: Section and Ground Plan CLXIV. The Hotel du Jars or Du Gest: Section and Ground Plan CLXV. Church of Ste. Marie in the Rue St. Antoine CLXVI. The Church of the Minimes .... CLXVII. The Monastery of Val de GrAce CLXVI 1 1. Plan of Val de GrAce CLXIX. The Church of Val de GrAce: Section CLXX. Montgomery Ducey: Loggia and General View Man 9S 97 98 99 100 lOI 102 102 104 106 107 108 108 108 no I 12 I 12 116 116 120 120 120 121 122 122 124 124 127 128 130 137 Xll FRENCH ARCHITECTURE PLATE CLXXI. Hotel de Liancourt: Elevation from Forecourt AND Section through Forecourt . CLXXII. Hotel de Liancourt: Detail and Ground Plan CLXXni. Chateau de Touars CLXXIV. Hotel Seguier CLXXV. Ground Plans: Chateaux de Touars and Maisons CLXXVI. Hotel de Ville: Troves CLXXVH. Hotel DE ViLLE: Lyons CLXXVHI. The Church OF the Val DE GRACE: Interior . 138 138 142 142 143 146 147 ISO ERRATA P. 8, line i2 from he\o\\',/of Rideaux read Rideau. P. 8, line lo from below, and on opposite plate,/';- Bruges read Bourges. I'l.. l.XXXlli ^r,•. f t -1 :C^^1'?^ / ^-.. ' / l\lr^^^^v^lj,ji \K. /;. rfW TKli JUHli, LIMOGES CATHEDRAL (P. 7) II. 10 FAc:e 1-. l] A History of French Architecture from the reign of Charles VIII till the death of Mazarin CHAPTER XI CHURCH-BUILDING IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, AND THE END OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE SO far we have followed the development of neo-classic art in France through the sixteenth century, and have traced the gradual establishment of its predominance in civil and domestic architecture; but what had happened meanwhile in the churches? We are here face to face with more complex conditions, because the treat- ment of the church did not depend on the taste and temperament of the individual, but was influenced by a deep-rooted tradition. Under such conditions it was inevitable that the attitude of church builders should be one of strong and tenacious conservatism. Long after the details of Gothic had been abandoned the traditional plan and even construction were adhered to, and few facts in the study of architec- ture are more suggestive than the illogical persistence of the Gothic tradition in church building long after the conditions under which it had grown up had ceased to exist. That there was no real life in it is shown by the gross and irrational details into which it ultimately degenerated; but its survival was so general throughout France in the sixteenth century that no account of the architecture of that period would be complete without some reference to this last flicker of mediaevalism. As compared with the great church building eras of the Middle Ages, new churches were of course very rare, and though some interesting experiments in design are to be found in additions to existing churches, they are not important enough to constitute a class by themselves, apart from what was being done on a much more considerable scale in domestic architecture. Yet there is much that is interesting in the ecclesiastical architecture of this century, and here, more than anywhere, is clearly visible the prolonged struggle between the old and the new. Just outside the south-eastern corner of France, one entirely new church and monastery was built early in the sixteenth century, the II E 2 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE very remarkable Church of Brou/ near Bourg, in the south-eastern corner of Burgundy. There was no question here of any addition, the church was new from its foundation to its topmost finial. Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands, desired to have a memorial to her husband, Phili- bert, Duke of Savoy; and after negotiations with Jean Perreal had been broken off, in the year 15 13 she made an agreement with Louis van Boghem, of Malines, to design the masonry of the church and superintend its construction at a salary of five hundred livres a year, the Duchess undertaking that, if he were taken prisoner on his way from Flanders to Brou, she would pay his ransom and all expenses to which he might be put. Van Boghem got out his design and the works were started. Everything went well at first. Van Boghem's wages were raised, and he was further commissioned to design all the wood-work and glazing, and also the tombs and altars in the church. This he undertook to do on condition that the Duchess kept her promises and paid him his arrears. By letters patent of 1517 she agreed to pay him one thousand livres as soon as he had completed what he had in hand. In 1528, in order to encourage him to complete," the Duchess agreed to pay him a premium if he completed the church within a certain time. According to Van Boghem, he kept his agreement, with the addition of a stone spire " de merveilleux importance " and a cloister in ten bays. Any one else, he said, would have taken a year over this work, but he did it in seven months, though he had eight men down with the plague. It appears from the report sent by Van Boghem and the Prior to Margaret of Austria in 1528 that by that date the church was not far enough completed to take the tombs. The vaulting of the side chapels and aisle was finished, and Van Boghem hoped to complete one bay of the nave that winter; this would leave three bays yet to do, and the west door to be raised from eight to nine feet. After this there was the jube to be put up, " qui sera triomphant et fort riche pour les beaux ouvrages et foliages qui y sont," and Van Boghem offered, if necessary, to stay at Brou for the winter instead of returning to Malines as usual, or at any rate only to absent himself for three or four months. Margaret of Austria died in 1530, and it appears that Van Boghem ' For the particulars of the church and tombs at Brou I am indebted to an article in the " Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1872, ii, 170-176, by M. Houday, who gives the text of the agreements between Margaret of Austria, Van Boghem, and Meyt, of Van Boghem's report, and of his petition to Margaret's executors. - " Pour donner cceur au diet Van Loys de diligenter la perfection des diets ouvrages." Pi. LXXXI\' \. n. fiu'i.' iiiK JUI-.I-, : iiRCii; (p. 2) TOMii ni- imiii.ii'.i:ri- i.k \w.\v: iikcin (i>. 4) [11. icl KACI', I'. 2 CHURCH-BUILDING IN THE 16TH CENTURY 3 finished his work, though he did not get paid for it till 1533, when he made his humble petition to the executors of the Duchess that they would pay him his lawful claim for 4,034 livres. The executors paid him 1,500 livres, which the unfortunate man was said to have accepted " amiably and of his own good will," probably fearing summary venge- ance if he pressed his claims any further. After Margaret's death it was found that the wet came into the church, and a certain Philippe Laine, master mason of Antwerp, prepared a model showing how this might be dealt with. This perhaps accounts for the executor's delay in paying Van Boghem. The Duchess left her pictures to the church of Brou, but her successor bought these in, and with the proceeds Bernard van Orley was commissioned in 1535, for 1,200 livres, to paint for the altar " ung beau exquis et puissant tableau de bois de Dennemarke." It is evident from the accounts that Van Boghem was the designer as well as the builder of the church. He made his "pourtraict" both of the building and of the tombs, and he superintended their execution from start to finish. Both in general design and in details he adhered strictly to late Flemish Gothic of a rather peculiar kind, for the design is curiously unequal. The west facade is about as bad an example of Gothic architecture as it is possible to find. The three triangular lights and the circle in the gable are really hideous, and the design shows no sort of instinct for composition. The interior, on the other hand, is well lit, quiet, and dignified, and the choir is attractive in the spacious simplicity of its general treatment, acting as a background and counter- foil to the exquisite delicacy of its detail. In fact the closer Van Boghem gets into touch with his detail, the more assured and confident his handiwork. The three tombs are executed in Carrara marble of a very beautiful quality, and the lace-like tracery looks as if it were carved in ivory. Margaret of Austria would have done well to have left the whole of the monument to the inimitable craftsmanship of Van Boghem, but she had a favourite sculptor at Brussels, a certain Conrad Meyt,^ who was entrusted with all the important figure-work of the tombs. In 1526 an agreement was entered into by Margaret with " Conrad Meyt, tailleur d'ymages," stipulating that for a salary of ' Meyt came from Brussels to Malines in 15 14, when Margaret gave him fifty livres for his services, and to help him in his marriage. In 1 518 he received forty " philippes d'or" for two Hercules in copper, one in wood, and two portraits of the Duchess in wood. In the same year he made her the model of a wooden tower for her cabinet, and a stag's head to go over a fire-place. In 15 19 he made two wax figures of Adam and Eve. 4 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE 300 livres a 3'ear (Van Boghem's was 500) Meyt was to go from Malines to Brou, and there was to do all the sculpture required accord- ing to the "pourtraict pour ce fait par le diet maistre Van Boghem." The work he was to do is stated in detail: the recumbent figure of Philibert of Savoy with the lion at his feet, and the six figures of children standing round him, on the slab; also the figure of the Duke, naked, below, " selon le portraict." This figure was to be in alabaster. He was also to do the recumbent figure of the Duchess with a grey- hound at her feet, with four children, and below the representation of her dead body in alabaster; also the figure of Margaret of Bourbon, mother of Philibert, with four children surrounding it. Lastly he was to make "the virtues, and other details necessary for the said tombs." Meyt undertook to complete within four years. Van Boghem finding him three workmen inclusive of Conrad Meyt's brother. The Duchess was to find all marble and alabaster, and when the work was com- pleted it was to be inspected by "maitres a ce congnoissans," who were to report whether or not the contract was duly carried out. Meyt's work, also, is very unequal. The "gisants,"or recumbent figures, particularly those of Margaret of Austria, are admirable.' So, too, are the Virtues, but the amorini standing on the slab, round the figure of Duke Philibert, are mannered and sentimental, their forms over emphasized and articulated, and neither those of children or boys; nor do they show any consciousness of the idea of the monument as de- signed by Van Boghem. Meyt was an Italianized Fleming, but very imperfectly Italianized; the tense, hard sentiment of Flemish art still clung to him in spite of his effort to show himself a son of the Renais- sance. The result is an unhappy discord between the work of the architect and the sculptor. While Meyt had set his heart beyond the Alps, Van Boghem was still dreaming of his home in the Netherlands and of the dying art of the Middle Ages. The church at Brou was perhaps the last complete effort of pure Gothic in France and its borders, but a great number of additions were made to older buildings. At Nevers, for example, the fine south tower of the cathedral begun in 1509, and completed in 1528, is entirely Gothic. In 1502 Martin Chambiges was summoned from Sens to build the west front of the cathedral at Troyes, and his designs were adopted in preference to those of Jehan Gailde, or Gailda, who made ' This tomb is the one under the arch between the choir and the north chapel. The lower figure, with its profusion of loose hair, is unusually beautiful and pathetic — a welcome change from the horrible figures usually found in such monuments. CHURCH-BUILDING IN THE 16TH CENTURY 5 the wonderful jube in the Church of the Madeleine at Troyes (1508-17). Chambiges superintended the work in a somewhat casual manner till the year 15 18, when he resigned in favour of his son-in-law. The work was only partly completed, and there is not a trace of the Renaissance in the design, which is in late Gothic, boldly and effect- ively treated. There was a great fire at Troyes in 1524, the town was to a large extent rebuilt soon afterwards, and is in consequence very rich in late Gothic. There are good examples in St. Nizier (1521-31), the Madeleine, St. Jean and St. Nicholas, and St. Martin, and perhaps the finest si.\teenth-century and early seventeenth-century glass to be found in France. The Gothic tradition was perhaps more vital here than anywhere else, for there can be no doubt that its church builders in the sixteenth century knew very well what they were about. Gothic was so familiar that they were able to refine upon its details, giving, as it were, an abstract expression of certain well-known features of earlier styles; but after the coming of Dominique Florentin to Troyes, in the middle of the century, this was forgotten. In three generations the tradition was to be wholly lost, and the builders vainly struggled to recover their dim recollections of how their fathers and grandfathers had done these things. But the Gothic tradition in church-building died hard in France as in England. Mediaeval plans and principles of construction, the nave, aisles, and transepts, the choir and its arches, the vaulting, the buttress, and the flying buttress remained in use after the details of Gothic architecture had been abandoned; and nowhere is the shallow- ness of the early Renaissance in France more clearly shown than in this attempt to clothe the traditional facts of mediaeval construction in an alien dress. No attempt was made, as yet, to deal with architecture according to its logical intention, the utmost ambition of these men was to plaster a more or less correct version of some classical detail on to the unoffending surface of their building. Not only had they lost the spirit of mediaeval architecture, but they had even forgotten the structural purpose of the Gothic features that they did retain, as may be seen from buildings such as Beauvais, where the flying buttresses scarcely stand up by themselves, much less support the vaulting of the choir. Moreover, they must have built badly The church of Notre Dame at Niort, begun in 1491 and completed in 1535, simply and suddenly collapsed on 15th November 1910. Throughout the sixteenth century there were in fact two currents of thought sometimes combining in imperfect fusion, more often 6 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE directly antagonistic. For many generations building had been in the hands of the master builders, and these men were so engrained in the old traditions, and so enamoured of their prescriptive rights, that they were by no means disposed to abandon their familiar methods in favour of the new ideas introduced by the Italians, and strenuously advocated by the new generation of architects. There appears to have existed much the same latent opposition between the builders and architects as there was in the following century between the guilds of painters and the free artists. The result was that in buildings where no architect such as De I'Orme was employed, buildings which must have formed the large majority, the tendency was to slip back to the older manner. The Church of St. Pierre at Coutances, and particularly the west tower, illustrate the state of mind of the master- builder. This church was rebuilt in the sixteenth century, all in late Gothic, with the exception of the octagonal lantern at the crossing, with its idiotic designs of sixteen Corinthian columns clinging to the inner face of the lantern. The west tower is square in plan with angle buttresses, and a balustrade with bad flamboyant tracery. Above this is an octagon storey with flying buttresses. This storey has an ogee- shaped stone dome, carved on the outside to resemble tiles as in the west spire of the cathedral, and terminating in an octagon lantern all in stone. On the north side of the east buttress is incised in Gothic letters "Jehan Le Breton," and the clock is dated 1550. The details are perplexing in the last degree. On the west front there are what look like thirteenth-century caps, but the building proceeds without interruption to fifteenth-century detail. There are bold and lofty arches with eccentric tracery and barbaric cusping below the balus- trade. The flying buttresses have crude pointed arches, a sort of last gasp of Gothic before the appearance of Renaissance details in the lantern. The question presents itself, was this tower an old tower re- modelled and completed by Le Breton in the sixteenth century, or did Le Breton build the whole of the tower and use up his whole collection of details, old as well as new, in the building."* The crude- ness of the Gothic detail makes one suspect that the latter is the e.xplanation. Political conditions were against the spread of the new manner, so far as church building was concerned. Religious enthusiasm was divided between the Huguenots, who hated the old ceremonial and its environment, and the Catholics, who still clung to the church archi- tecture that had for centuries given expression to their ideals. In Pl. lxxxv ^^^;:^?i:\ D O U [II. in l-ACK I'. 6 CHURCH-BUILDING IN THE 16TH CENTURY 7 matters of art the instincts of the Huguenots were mainly iconoclastic, and thus the only positive and moving force in this matter tended to maintain the architecture of the past. In fact, it was not till the return of the Jesuits in 1603 that an entirely fresh factor came into play. Long after Renaissance detail had established itself elsewhere, Gothic continued to be employed in the churches. The transepts at Beauvais (1550-1575-78), excepting the doors, or the north door of Evreux (1525), or the transepts and choir of Limoges, show little trace of the new manner. The north transept of the cathedral of Limoges is a remarkable example of late Gothic. The details are rather harsh, owing to the granite of which it is built, but it is a fine and striking design. The facade was built in 1517-30, and within three years of its completion the great stone organ gallery at the west end, in the most intricate and elaborate manner of the earlier French Renaissance, was built by French masons, as it must have been, on account of its amazing ingenuity of construction, and carved by Italians.' The choir of St. Pierre at Caen, and that of Tillieres (1534-46), in spite of their detail and the peculiarity of their flat vaulting, are Gothic in principle. Possibly the nearest approach to original design is to be ' The date on a tablet on a baluster on the south side of the gallery is 1533, and it is supposed to have been built for Jean de Langeac, or Langennes, between 1532 and 1541. The gallery occupies the full width of the nave, 36 ft. 9 in. In the centre is a wide entrance flanked by engaged candelabrum columns, between which are niches with delicate canopy work, divided by pilasters. Above is an overhanging canopy the full length of the front, the original groining of which has been cut away, leaving a canted soffit, in front of which are six pendants with cusped arches forming a sort of fringe below the gallery front. These pendants have niches for statues formed on the front with elaborate canopies. They are about twelve inches in diameter, and at least five feet high. There is no abut- ment to the end pendants, and it is a marvel that they stand up at all. A moulded string runs along the front under the elaborate balustrade, and at the two ends are stone newel staircases with wreathed strings. The figure subjects above the granite plinth are taken from the Labours of Hercules, such as Hercules and Geryon, Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra, Hercules and the Nemean Lion, but in the background of one of the panels appears a church steeple. All the constructional parts of this gallery are in granite, the carved work being in clunch, and it is an astonishing tour de force of masonry, ranking with works such as the jub^ of the Madeleine at Troyes, and of St. Etienne du Mont in Paris, to which we have no parallel in England. From an examination I made of the construction, it appears that the pendants are hollowed out inside and are suspended to the granite stones which form the front part of the gallery floor and which run back a considerable distance, and are presumably bolted down in some way at the back, as there is all the weight of the stone balustrade to be carried as well. The pendants are carried up between these flooring stones, forming the piers of the balustrade. The organ gallery at Caudebec is somewhat similar in construction, and of about the same date. De Lan- gennes' tomb is under the arch of the north-east bay of the apse. 8 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE found in the belfries and upper stages of towers, such as that of St. Antoine at Loches (1519-30), and the west towers of the cathedral of Tours, particularly the southern one (1537-47). Although these are crowded with incongruous detail, they are picturesque in outline and the genuine expression of an unfamiliar motive. Church-building of the sixteenth century, apart from the innumer- able examples of detail alterations, falls into three main categories, either (i) churches such as St. Gervais at Gisors, where designs for the facade on a comprehensive scale were attempted; or (2) survivals, such as the church of Carnac, which curiously suggests the Laudian Gothic of certain Northamptonshire churches such as Apethorpe, and Nassing- ton near Peterborough; or (3) churches such as St. Eustache, and St. Etienne du Mont at Paris, where, though all the detail is Renaissance of a sort, the informing spirit is still unmistakably Gothic. The cathedral or church of St. Gervais at Gisors is a difficult problem. The choir and eastern part of the church date from the fifteenth century, though there is a date, 1545, in the fine grisaille window in the south aisle of the choir. The nave, which has two aisles on each side, with clerestory windows above the aisles, has piers carrying the arcades and groining, which are fluted, twisted, and octagonal, and in one case have large A's, and the ermines of Anne of Brittany. The groining is a sort of lierne vaulting, with ribs growing out of the shafts, as usual in late work, and pendants at the intersections. This part appears to date from the reign of Louis XH. At the west end, inside, there is a remarkable open newel staircase (1570) with pilasters and running entablatures, and a composition of a colossal Corinthian order, the latter dating from the eighteenth century, and probably belonging to the work at the west end, above the central doorway, which bears the date 1 707. The inside is confusing enough, but outside, on the west front, two or three distinct attempts seem to have been made to remodel the whole facade. The centre doorway has canopies of late Gothic on the buttresses, and a deep recessed and coffered arch over the entrance, not unlike that of the ruined chapel of Notre Dame des Vertus at Auxerre, and dating from the latter part of the sixteenth century. The north tower, which has fine figures in canopies high up on the wall, and heads in medal- lions, appears to be earlier than the centre part. Lastly, at the south- west angle there is a vast tower never completed, and of uncommon design and workmanship, which it is exceeding difficult to date. The Doric order and entablature of the lower order might date from Henri H, so might possibly the deep recessed oval window set in a LXXWl CHOIK VAlU.r: Tll.l.liiKKS (P. 7) III. TO I ACE r. S I'l,. LXXXVII PluHo. uRi .AN I ;Al,l.l,l<^ : i Ai nhiu-c ( r. y) I II. Ill KAIK I'. S CHURCH-BUILDING IN THE 16TH CENTURY 9 cartouche on the second storey on the south side. But the pulvinated frieze with openwork carving in the entablature of the second order seems a hundred years later. Palustre assigns the work to the Grap- pins of Gisors, whom he places among the fathers of modern French architecture, on no authority, that I am aware of, but certain scattered references in the building accounts of the church, which were unearthed by Laborde some sixty years ago.^ The registers of the place start with the year 1464, and an entry in 1505 refers to " les grans et somp- tueux ouvrages qu'on fait de present en cette t^glise," yet Robert Grap- pin does not appear on the scene till 1523, when he receives five sous a day as mason, in succession to a certain Robert Jumel, who had been at work here since 1497. Grappin, who is described as a " maistre magon de I'ouvrage de ladite eglise," also contracted for the images over the north door, and had a son Jacques among his assistants, but he clearly could not have been the architect, for in 1528 masons were summoned from Beauvais and Andelys to inspect the church and specify "la forme de I'edifice";^ and in 1536 Jehan Coulle of Rouen undertook to supply the figures on the north tower, each eight to nine feet high, at " 4 livres x sous " apiece. A Jean Grappin appears in the accounts for 1537-9 as "tailleur et imaginier." In 1558 he is called "maistre ma^on de ladite eglise"; and in 1569-70 he journeyed to Vernon to select the stone for the pulpit and choir enclosure. In the latter year he is described as " conducteur de I'oeuvre de cette eglise," and in this capacity he constructed the curious stone staircase leading to the organ gallery at the west end. He was evidently a skilful mason, but his detail in the choir justifies Laborde's criticism that he was merely a feeble imitator of Goujon, and an artist of little ability. A Jehan Grappin in 1598 receives, with a certain Bocquet, a small pay- ment for repairs to the pulpit, and this is the last mention of any member of the Grappin family. The scanty evidence that there is proves that Robert and Jean at any rate were master masons in charge of the building operations, and that there were at least three genera- tions of them so engaged ; but there is no authority for the ingenious fancy of Palustre that they were architects of ability buried in unmerited oblivion. Not only were masons summoned from Beauvais, ' Laborde published his notes in a small brochure entitled " La Tour du Prisonnier et I'Eglise de St. Gervais et St. Protais," Paris, 1849. Laborde found nothing to admire here, and wrote: "Je n'ai vu a Gisors qu'un exemple deplorable de la confusion des styles . . . le choc le plus violent, dont j'ai ete temoin, entre I'art natural et Fart iniporte." ^ Laborde, 20. II C lo FRENCH ARCHITECTURE to draw up the specifications for the general design, but when it came to the later work of the south-west tower the devis or specification is not entrusted to Grappin at all, but to a certain Adrien de Mont- heroude, who contracted for its execution in 1589, and whose work was passed by Gilles Roussel, master mason, in 1591. One would willingly know more of de Montheroude, if he really designed the tremendous fragment of the south-west tower, one of the most impressive examples of late sixteenth-century architecture in France. As for the Grappins, their claims are as shadowy as those of the Bacheliers of Toulouse. The confusion of design shown in the west front of Gisors is suggestive of the uncertainty of aim that still prevailed in the provinces, in spite of all that had been done in Paris and its neighbourhood by the archi- tects of the Valois kings. The survivals of Gothic in France are even more curious than they are in England. The church of Carnac, for example, is an extra- ordinary mixture of styles. The entrance on the north side is under a porch with an open canopy, a little reminding one of the fountain of Trinity College, Cambridge. Inside there are two wide aisles with wood barrel roofs on arcades, carried by what at first sight appear to be Norman columns, but which on closer examination are seen to date from the early part of the seventeenth century. The barrel ceilings are painted in bold panels with figure subjects. There is a fine pulpit of wrought iron of the seventeenth century, and certain screens to the choir which appear to belong to the eighteenth century, but were in fact made early in the nineteenth. Finally, to complete this amazing anachronism, at the west end there is a stone octagonal spire on a square tower, with square pinnacles and small flying buttresses at the angles, which, except for the balustrade, might date from the fifteenth century. The actual date on the west entrance is 1639. It is a typical instance of what was habitual in provinces remote from Paris. The church of St. Gildas at Auray is another example. This church (1636) has a nave with a semicircular barrel vault in plaster over arcades of pointed arches in four bays, springing from cylinder columns with Tuscan caps and Ionic bases. At the west end is a good organ gallery on seven black marble columns, and there is an important altar-piece (1658) with the usual elaborate design of columns, balusters, entablatures and broken pediments, with marble, figures, ornaments, and gilding, a good deal over emphasized. Costly works such as this altar-piece were probably entrusted to sculptors of reputation in Paris or elsewhere, but the church itself with its strange anomalies of design was probably left I'l.. LXX.W'Ul I 11. Ill lAi E !■. lO CHURCH-BUILDING IN THE 16TH CENTURY 11 entirely to the local builder, and there are many others scattered about in Brittany which show the invincible tenacity with which the Bretons clung to the tradition of their forefathers, and a curious barbaric instinct in design, — the calvary and ossuary at Saints Thegonnec are instances — utterly alien to the temperament of the Frenchman of the northern centre. The Parisian might get as far into Brittany as Vannes, but he was not to be tempted to cross the sea of Morbihan to Locmariaquer and the wilds of Carnac. Carnac is clearly a survival, outside the main stream of develop- ment. But there are churches of some historical, though no great archi- tectural, importance, in which the old and the new meet with curious results; Renaissance detail of a sort is used throughout, and yet in the general treatment there is a throwback to the motives of much earlier work. Such for example are the deeply recessed arch of the west en- trance to St. Michel at Dijon (1537),' or the side entrance to the church of St. Michel at Tonnerre.^ The details are in the accepted neo-classic of the time, and yet the impression left is rather that of a Romanesque archway — and the same half conscious instinct appears in plans and construction. St. Pierre at Tonnerre is an instance. Here the apse and part of the choir is fifteenth-century, but the rest of the church is a deliberate attempt to translate old forms into the terms of the new manner. The principal entrance is by a double doorway in the south transept, under a recessed semicircular arch, with a sort of cusping or scalloping to the inner sides. This appears to date from the time of Henri II as the cipher of that King and Diane de Poitiers appears among the details. The north transept was built in 1590,^ and to this date belongs the Corinthian order used for the buttresses, with gargoyles as at Fontainebleau, and a large balustrade surmounting a modillion cornice. The interior, except for the apse and the west tower, is really a square space divided into three aisles, the bays of ' This archway is remarkable for a shaft carried up through the soffit of the arch and surmounted by an open stone lantern. Palustre, " L'Arch. de la Renaissance," 264, puts the date at 1551-64 and attributes it to Sambin, but there appears to be no ground for this. It is just possible that Sambin might have helped in the sculpture of the " Last Judgement " in the tympanum, but it is known from an entry in the parish archives for July 1551, that Nicolas de la Court, imager of Douai, was employed to carve this for seventy livres tournois, according to the model to be supplied him (" L'Art Frangais Primitif," 112). ^ The church has been injured by fire, and except for the west tower, the windows, and the doorway, appears to date from the fourteenth century. The windows have tracery without cusping. The dates on the tower are 1620 and 1621. ^ Inscription over entrance. 12 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE which are vaulted with quadripartite groining, but in the centre and eastern bay of the middle aisle, lierne ribs are used, having no relation to the actual vaulting. The new manner was used for details, but had in no sort of way penetrated into the heart of the design. Indeed, the tenacity of the old tradition may be gauged from the church of St. Pierre at Auxerre. The west front of this is dated 1648 and 1658, the rest of the building, except the tower, appears to date from the early part of the seventeenth century. Inside, the church consists of one long nave in seven bays, with arches on either side. The nave arcade is formed with semicircular arches on cylindrical columns with Corinthian capitals and bases. Flat pilasters run up from the abacus of the capitals to the springing of the groining, the whole space between the pilasters and up to the groining being occupied by three-light windows in two divisions. There is tracery without cusping to the windows, and the groining is in lierne vaulting with free-stone filling in, springing from the ribs. The peculiarity of the church is that, apart from the groining, there is not a single mediaeval detail in it, except the leaves at the angles of the bases, and yet the plan and organic idea of a mediaeval church are so faithfully followed, that the impression at first sight is that of a rather fine Romanesque church with later additions. The church of St. Remi at Dieppe shows similar peculiarities. The choir was begun in 1522 and finished 1544 for Thomas Bouchard. The worked stopped at the crossing in 1560, and was renewed in 1605; the nave was begun in 1655 and finished in 1672.1 Both choir and nave have huge cylinder columns, the choir with carved capitals, the nave with Doric circular capitals, but in both nave and choir the tracery and details are late Gothic. So, too, when the vaulting and clerestory of the choir of Toulouse Cathedral were destroyed by fire in 1609, Pierre Levesville of Orleans, rebuilt it all in the Gothic manner, the only variations being the absence of cusping, and the fanciful design of the tracery; but the vaulting is true vaulting in the sense that the filling in really bears on the ribs. Strangest of all, when the elder Gabriel built the west front to the Cathedral of Orleans, and the south transept in 1706, he adhered to the main lines and general forms of Gothic, though totally ignorant of the mouldings, detail, and whole spirit of Gothic architecture. Even the Jesuits employed groined vaulting in many of their interiors. The chapel of the Lycee Henri IV at Poitiers, built in 1608, is vaulted in this manner, though its details generally are neo-classic. ' Notes by the Abbd Loth, 1902. Pl. LXXXIX I M. ro i-AiF. r. 12 /V- X l^" Pi.. XC CAflTAI. IN CHOIR (.SOUTH SIDF.) OK ST. KKMI: IlIEPPE (P. 12) [/;. /.'. Je/. [II. TO FACE 1'. 12 THE END OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 13 Of the third type of church, that is, churches where the detail is neo-classic, but the whole conception of the church is Gothic, St. Eustache at Paris is the most famous example. This great church shares with Brou the distinction of being the only important church built de novo in the sixteenth century. Pierre Lemercier, who began the building in 1552, evidently intended to show what could be done with a church in the new manner, but, as usual with the builders of this period, he never got within the fringe of the subject, and in fact produced an immense Gothic church, in spite of the lavish details and ornament with which he covered his building. The spacing of the piers, their great height, and the relation of the piers to the arches, and the whole scheme of plan and proportion are purely Gothic, and the designer could not conceal the fact, though he cut up his piers with every device of neo-classic he could think of, fluted and panelled pilasters, capitals, and fragments of entablatures, features that suggest the debris of a mason's yard rather than any consecutive architectural idea. Structurally and in plan it is a Gothic building, but the quality of late Gothic architecture is lost in this travesty of neo-classic. When he came to the outside the builder recollected another Renaissance motive, the classical pilaster with disproportionate capitals of a quasi- Corinthian order, then in the height of the Fran9ois I fashion. Ger- main Brice^ says: " L'architecte dans cet Edifice a fait paraitre une horrible confusion du Gothique et de I'antique, et a pour ainsi dire tellement corrompu et massacre I'un et I'autre que Ton n'y pent rien distinguer de r^gulier et supportable — ce qui fait que Ton doit plaindre avec raison la grande depense qui a 6t6 faite dans cette fabrique, sous la conduite du ma9on ignorant, qui en a donne les desseins." Pierre Lemercier appears to have completed most of the interior, though there is a date in the north transept, 1640, and apparently at about that date, or a little earlier, Jacques Lemercier was called in to complete the west front, and probably designed the Doric order, a fragment of which still remains on the upper part of the south side of the west tower.^ The ' Piganiol de la Force also has his word. The church is, he says, "le plus mal entendu, pour la commodit(? des Paroissiens, et _du plus mauvais gout pour I'architec- ture." '' It appears from Van Merlen's view of St. Eustache that Jacques Lemercier did not interfere with the earlier work on the south and west sides up to the top of the aisles, and that he started his Doric order above this and carried it across the west front, but left the work in the west front unfinished. Van Merlen gives the date of this work as 1632. (" Recueil des plus beaux edifices et frontispieces des eglises de Paris," by Jacques Van Merlen, 4, reprinted in the eighteenth century by Mariette.) 14 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE whole of the west facade, with the exception of the fragment on the south side, was swept away when Mansart de Jouy rebuilt the west front in 1755. St. Eustache is impressive by its size, but it is an unsatisfactory building inside and out. Pierre Lemercier had, in fact, little or no idea of organic design, in which each part is indissolubly associated with every other part, and there is no failure in that unity of effort which is the first essential of good architecture. But that was not how the builder-designer worked in 1552, and Pierre Lemercier was not a clear-headed man. He had already made his experiment in the interesting but bewildering Church of St. Maclou, in his native town of Pontoise. This church is of several dates. The apse, the ambulatory, and the east side of the transepts belong to the twelfth century; the tower and west front, one bay of the nave, and the north- west chapel belong to the latter part of the fifteenth, but the whole of the intermediate parts appear to have been rebuilt in the sixteenth, century. The north aisle follows the model of Fontainebleau in its capitals and details. The vaulting is quadripartite with diagonal ribs, and the ribs start from fragments of entablatures carried by large cylindrical columns with very big caps. These are in the Francois I manner with volutes formed by griffins and grotesques. The nave arcade has semicircular arches which develop out of the columns without any impost mouldings. The groining of the nave springs from entablatures and capitals as in the aisles, with this peculiarity, how- ever, that the arches are pointed. The south aisle is later and dates from 1578.' Here there is a most extraordinary jumble of details, and when the builder reached the old south transept he gathered himself together for a prodigious effort. He found a solid pier remaining from the older building; out of this he formed an engaged and fluted pilaster with an elaborate capital, but having done this he found that he had not even reached the springing of the aisle vaulting, much less that of the nave, so he continued with another fluted pilaster, finally ending up with an enormous Corinthian capital, and making no attempt to keep to the scale and levels of the somewhat similar treatment on the opposite side of the nave. It would be difficult to find a more hopeless muddle of incongruous scale and details. The Church of St. Etienne-du-Mont at Paris has many of the ' Date in south aisle. There is also on the east side of the pier next the south transept, the date 1585, probably the date of the completion of the church. The very remarkable entombment, which I have referred to before, is in a separate chapel at the west end of the north aisle. I'l,. XCI [/,. I', fh.^tn. ST. liUSTAtHK: I'AKI^ ( r. 1 :;; jrl'.K: ST. KTIENXE-Dl-.MO.NT. I'ARIs (I'. I4) I II. Ill l'A( K 1'. I.) THE END OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 15 defects of St. Eustache, the same foolish conglomeration of details, and the same initial mistake of supposing that the character of a building was altered by the substitution of one set of details for another; but the interior is light and cheerful, and it is a more attractive church than St. Eustache, possibly because it was less ambitious. The choir, which was begun in 151 7, still shows the Gothic tradition in all essential points, and the work becomes more mannered and less skilful as it proceeds westward. Elaborate pendants hang from the vaulting over the crossing, and finally in the rood screen and on the west front ^ the ornamentalists break right away into all the exuberance of the worst neo-classic of the time. Yet it is characteristic that, even with this intention, Pierre Biard could not divest himself of the earlier manner, for in the groining of the rood screen he fell back on what he remem- bered of Gothic vaulting. This rood screen is one of the show sights of Paris, and the stone staircase winding round the pier of the crossing is a clever piece of masonry; but both in design and execution the famous masterpiece of Pierre Biard seems to me a greatly over- rated work. It is inferior to Gailda's work at Troyes. The design is uninteresting, and every member is covered with ornament of some sort or another, but the relief is too high, and over-emphasized by the use of the drill and owing to the vertical cutting of the ornament, without any attempt at modelling, the effect at a distance is simply that of ornament drawn on the stone in black chalk. The Fames in the spandrels are feeble reminiscences of Goujon's, and the work is only saved from commonplace by the rather fine figures seated on the broken pediments over the side entrances to the choir. St. Etienne was dedicated by Gondi, Archbishop of Paris, in 1626.^ It is typical of what the mason-sculptor at the end of the sixteenth century could do. All that is good in it belonged to the last of the mediaeval tradition, the rest was mere groping after a new manner of thought and expression, not really understood by the workman and still repug- nant to his instincts. If, as it is, architecture is a serious art, work such as this, merely ignorant experiments with unfamiliar details, is not architecture at all, and it is wrong in fact to treat such men as Pierre Lemercier, the Le Bretons, or the Grappins of Gisors as ' The carving over the west doorway was executed by Gabriel Thomas in 1863. The front was repaired in igio. ' An old marble tablet in the north aisle records that during the ceremony two girls fell from the gallery round the choir with part of the balustrade, and that, by a marvellous Providence, neither they nor any of the people below were hurt. i6 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE architects. The results of their efforts were very much what a builder left to his own devices might produce at the present day. They trusted almost entirely to detail, but the detail was pitchforked into their buildings without any consideration or even consciousness of its archi- tectural value. In both cases tradition, the set habitual way of doing things, is as yet wanting, and in both cases is the reason why archi- tecture has gone so lamentably astray. Later on we shall find a strong tradition established by purely academic training, but at the beginning of the seventeenth century a tradition of neo-classic was not yet formed. The lead given in the Chapel of the Valois, or the memorial chapel at Anet, was not followed up. These buildings were isolated works outside the range of the vernacular of the time, and between the old and the new, architecture was temporarily stranded, for it is abund- antly clear that the old tradition of church building had finished its course. It no longer expressed the ideals of the time. It failed to provide the right background and environment for those complex conceptions of life and religion which had superseded the simpler methods of mediaevalism. It was not that religion was losing ground, on the contrary there was a strong and very earnest revival in France in the early part of the seventeenth century, but the point of view had changed, and a combination of causes, political, social, and intel- lectual, carried a new manner with it in inevitable consequence. Pi,. XCIl \ ' ,-t\N '> \ , /fn^^ ■■ .•;'«;■■ *%- ..^ .v^Vl* i} » " ><■, .r' U;t M ( I If .^ /. ^^ 1^'r^r^^. I'll^R AMI CAIT1AI.>, SI. MACI.HU: I'ClNTUISK (!'. I4) lA'. /.■■ del. [11. Ill I Aih I'. 16 CHAPTER XII THE JESUITS IN FRANCE FOR all effective purposes the mediaeval tradition ran itself out by the end of the sixteenth century. Soon after that date a change appears in French church architecture, so sudden and complete that it can only be accounted for by some cause external to the art itself. The new factors that have to be reckoned with at the beginning of the seventeenth century are the return of the Jesuits, the rapidity with which they rose to power in the State, and the astonishing extent and completeness of their organization. For the purposes of their propaganda nothing was too unimportant to be considered. Architecture had to take its place in their scheme, and it was in pursuance of a deliberate policy that the Society evolved two definite and important types of building — the college and the church. The field was lying fallow for the imminent change, the old tradition was dead, the master builders reluctantly had to recognize the fact that design had got beyond them, and that they could no longer hope to compete with the new men who had received a special training in architecture, and who had reached a relatively high standard of attain- ment in the art. Thirty years of civil war had lowered that standard, but a new generation was coming on to recover the lost ground, and clear it of the redundancies and failures that had been inevitable in the work of the pioneers of neo-classic. A notable difference emerges between the attitude of this new generation and that of the architects of the later Valois kings. In both cases the standpoint taken was that of the antique. Jacques Lemercier would have repudiated not less vehemently than De I'Orme the stupidity and barbarisms of S. Maclou and S. Eustache; both men looked to Rome for their authority and precedent, but they sought for it in different ways. The earlier men approached the art from the standpoint of the scholar, almost of the antiquary : their object was to ascertain from existing remains what had been the actual practice of antiquity. Raphael himself had founded II u i8 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE his schemes of decoration on such fragments of Roman painting as remained in the corridor of the golden house of Nero. Giulio Romano and Primaticcio developed this method into a system, yet always with reference to the original sources, namely, actual fragments of ancient wall paintings. The architects had founded their design on what they believed to be the system of Vitruvius, checked by the very considerable remains of ancient buildings still standing in Rome. Till De rOrme completed his great work on architecture, treatise after treatise appeared on Vitruvius and the antiquities of Rome. Between i486, the date of the first edition of Vitruvius, and 1567, at least eleven editions of Vitruvius were published in Italy, and Philander's edition, dedicated to Fran9ois I, was published at Paris in 1548. Serlio issued his works at different dates between 1532 and 1540. I have already described De I'Orme's studies in Rome, his excavations and labours in drawing and measuring the actual buildings. Both he and Bullant had based their practice on the ancient buildings of Rome as they found and measured them on the spot. But in Italy itself the first enthusiasm of the humanists had died away. Michael Angelo, last of the giants, had lived on beyond his time. The man of method had taken possession. Palladio and Vignola were now the acknowledged masters of architecture. Delia Porta' had finished Vignola's design of the Gesu, and with Domenico Fontana- had completed the dome of St. Peter's, from Michael Angelo's design, before the end of the sixteenth century. Carlo Maderno^ succeeded his uncle Fontana at St. Peter's after 1605, and carried out the west front and the great extension of the building between that year and his death in 1629. It was no longer a question of personal research among ancient buildings. There were dogmatic treatises on the art of architecture in abundance, St. Peter's and the Church of the Gesu for models, and to the young French architect it may have seemed a waste of time to grub about among ruins when he had only to cross the street to see with his own eyes the solution of his difficulties. To De Brosse and his con- temporaries, Vignola's use of the orders was far more important than the authentic remains of the orders themselves. The tradition of research seems to have been lost in the closing years of the sixteenth century, and when French architects were brought face to face with important problems of design, it was less trouble to find out how these matters were handled by the competent Italian architects of the time, ' Giacomo della Porta, 1541-1604. - Domenico Fontana, 1543-1607. ' Carlo Maderno, 1556-1629. THE JESUITS IN FRANCE 19 than to work laboriously back to the original sources.' By the end of the sixteenth century Italian art was so complete and systematic that the short cut was inevitable. Vignola- and Palladio had done for archi- tecture what the Caracci were doing for painting at Bologna. Systems and canons of design were henceforward to be paramount over the imagination, and the caprice and spontaneity of earlier art were doomed. M. Lemonnier says of French artists of the earlier part of the seven- teenth century: "In spite of their conscientiousness, and their aspira- tions towards the beautiful, in spite of their real feeling for the dignity of their art, in spite even of their talent — for they had talent and plenty of it — all that they established was a discipline and a manner."^ The criticism scarcely does justice to the admirable art of Nicholas Poussin, and applies less to architecture than to painting, because the work of regularizing architecture had been begun by De I'Orme at least fifty years before, and also because architecture is essentially the art of reasoned thought and ordered imagination. The mere caprices of the Court of Franqois 1 were no more architecture than the disordered efforts of Boromini a hundred years later. Church architecture alone, owing to the persistency of ecclesiastical tradition, had stayed outside the main current of thought, but the conflict between old and new was practically over, the days of artistic anarchy were numbered, and every- thing tended to combine in the direction of order, system, and method. French art was slowly settling into its course, after long wanderings in the wilderness; and the tendency towards an academic standard in design was inevitable. In the midst of these conditions appeared the vast organization of the Jesuits, supplying precisely the driving power necessary to gather together these vague ideas, and to compel them in a definite direction. 1 am expressing no opinion as to the value of what the Order did, only the historical fact that in the seventeenth century they practically revolutionized church architecture in every civilized country of the world except England. The Jesuits were expelled from France in 1594, the day after Jean Chastel's attempt on the life of Henri IV. Du Breul,^ says that within an hour of Chastel's attempt, a guard was sent to the Jesuit ' Much the same state of things has followed the chaos of Victorian architecture in this country. In the absence of a sure tradition of classic, many of our architects have rushed wholesale into the mannerisms of contemporary French design. '^ Vignola died in 1575, and Palladio in 15S3. Of the three Caracchi, Ludovico was born in 1553, died in 1614, Agostino, 1558-1601, and Annibal, 1560-1609. '' Lemonnier, " L'Art fran(jais aux temps de Richelieu et de Mazarin." ' " Le Theatre des .\ntiquitez de Paris, ' ed. 1639, p. 175. io FRENCH ARCHITECTURE College in Paris, everything was locked up and sealed, and the Jesuits were ordered to leave Paris in three days and France in fourteen. All their property was confiscated; of all their houses in France they were only allowed to retain six; and even when permitted to return, they were only authorized to hold twelve establishments in the south, together with one at Dijon and one at La Fleche.^ They were allowed to return in 1604, and at once took up an immense work of education and religious propaganda. The extent of their enterprise will be realized from the following figures. The world was parcelled out into five main divisions, subdivided into provinces : France, Italy, Spain, including Chili, Mexico, and the Philippines; Portugal, including Goa, Malabar, Brazil, China, and Japan; and Germany, including Austria, Poland, Bohemia, Flanders, Lithuania, and England. These five main divisions were subdivided into thirty-eight provinces, of which five were in France. In 17 10 there were 19,609 members of the Order, and 1,338 establishments throughout the known world. The central idea of the Jesuits was to work through education, to guide and control their pupils from the first, giving a certain bent to their minds, and concentrating their efforts on the moulding of character to a definite model, rather than on the free development of moral and intellectual faculties. They were genuine educationalists, in the sense that the accumulation of knowledge was for their purpose of less importance than the training of the faculties in a certain definite direction; but the certain definite direction itself discounted the value of their method, because the whole of their system of training, mental and moral, tended to the advancement of the Jesuit Order. This is not the place to discuss the ulterior motives of the Society, noble and self-sacrificing, at least in its earlier stages, if tainted by less worthy aims in its later. I only call attention to this far-seeing policy in so far as it touches the development of architecture. It was part of the policy of the Jesuits to standardize their methods, and it thus became essential to their purpose not only that there should be one recognized system of religion and education, but also a recognized environment, so that in all parts of the world the same regimen should prevail, and the same influences, external no less than internal, be brought to bear on their pupils and converts. It is in this conception that we have the origin of what is called the Jesuit style in architecture, a style which developed later into all sorts of extravagances, but which in its earlier examples was the real and even the austere expression of a far-reaching educational ideal. ' See Charvet, "Etienne Martellange," 19. THE JESUITS IN FRANCE 21 On their return to France in 1604 the Jesuits were at once invited to resume the educational work which had been arrested ten years earlier. Henri IV, who had still to convince his enemies of his peace with Rome, did his best to help them, for he gave them his castle of La Fleche, and money for the establishment of one of their great educational establishments in that town.^ The building was not com- pleted till the following reign, but in the state of the finances Louis XIII could do little, and in most cases the municipalities made contracts with the Jesuits, agreeing to find certain sums of money for building and endowment, in consideration of the Jesuit fathers under- taking all the business of education. The sums so found were by no means adequate, and the Jesuits themselves had to find the balance. The strictest economy had, therefore, to be observed. The work was spread over many years, and here again the statesmanlike sagacity of the Jesuits is evident. They made no attempt to hurry the works. The great church of the Gesu in Rome is still unfinished so far as its internal decorations go, but it has never deviated from its original scheme, and many of the seminaries and colleges in France were not finally completed till as much as a hundred years after the original foundation. The practice was for the architect of the Order to prepare designs and specifications, which were faithfully adhered to in essential points, whether the building took five years to build or fifty. These plans and specifications were handed over to the local people for execution. The Jesuit architect visited the work from time to time to settle difficult points of construction or business, but does not appear to have superintended the work from start to finish. The most famous of these Jesuit architects was Etienne Martel- lange, born at Lyons in 1569.^ His father was a painter, and master of the Guild of Painters at Lyons, 1573-6; but beyond this nothing is known of his training, though he is believed to have studied in Rome. In 1590 he was admitted to the Society of Jesus at Avignon, and in 1605 he became a " coadjuteur temporel " in the fourth degree of the Order, his duties being those of architect-general to the Jesuits in the provinces of Paris, Lyons, and Toulouse. He was responsible for part at any rate of the designs for the colleges of Le Puy, Moulins, Vienne, Carpentras, Vezoul, Dijon, La Fleche, Roanne, Lyons, and ' La Fleche (Sarthe). " Charvet, "Etienne Martellange," 1874. I am indebted to this work for the par- ticulars given in the text, but my remarks on his work as an architect are based on a personal study of his buildings. 22 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE Orleans, and made all the designs for the churches of the Novitiate at Paris and S. Pierre at Nevers, His first two buildings were the colleges of Moulins and Le Puy, the reports for which are dated January and February 1605.' In 1607 Martellange was called in to report on the buildings already erected for the College of Carpentras. His report was un- favourable and went straight to the point. When a building is bad, he said, it is better to alter it and even destroy it, rather than leave in perpetuity " une construction vicieuse." The Capucin Fathers at Angers, he continues, had just changed the design of their church from top to bottom when it was recognized as bad, and he advised the authorities at Carpentras to do the same. The class-rooms were too small, the chapel inadequate, the windows too narrow, and there was nothing for it but to reconstruct them. Martellange was very much in earnest. In all his reports he addresses himself to practical questions such as these. Money was short, and the work of education had to be started as soon as possible, it was no question with him of lavish orna- ment such as the Jesuits affected later on in the days of their prosperity. What he wanted was the plainest and most efficient building for the purpose, wisely planned and solidly built." In 1607 or 1 6 10 Martellange prepared designs for the college of Vienne, twenty miles south of Lyons, and a contract was made for the construction of the college and church for 112,000 livres ; but this appears to have fallen through, for in 161 5 and 161 6 he provided further specifications for the college, " qu'on veut bastir." The college was not finished in 1619. In 1681 the church was only 20 ft. up, and was not completed till 1725. From the first money and material were so scarce that Martellange got leave from the town to take down part of the walls of the Tour d' Orange at one of the angles of the ancient ' In Charvet's life of Martellange, these reports (Charvet, 13-56) are given in full, and are exceedingly interesting, as showing the method of operations in the establishment of the Jesuit Colleges. The old Jesuit college at Moulins, after being used as a museum, has now been turned into law courts. It is an excellent building in red brick with black diapers and stone dressings, ranged round three sides of a court. There is no trace of Martellange in the building as it now stands, nor does it in any way resemble what is known of his work elsewhere. The date over the centre dormer is 1656, fifteen years later than the death of Martellange, and the fagades to the street are later. Nor could he have had anything to do with the fine Montmorency chapel at Moulins, now the chapel of the Lycde. ^ "Pour le regard des ornementz, lis doivent etre simples: il fault avoir en ce esgard de donner a la stabilite ce qu'on metroit pour la beauts" (Martellange's report on the College at Moulins, dated 1605). THE JESUITS IN FRANCE 23 Forum, in order to use the stones for his new building.' The specifica- tions that he prepared were rather loosely worded to modern ideas. The thickness of wails, the heights of the storeys, etc., and dimensions of doors and windows, are specified, but with the exception of directions that fir {sapm) is to be used instead of oak [chine) for a long bearing, and that the walls are to be faced with a certain stone on the exposed side, no instructions are given as to materials or detail dimensions. One clause specifies that the ordinary doors are to be made according to common use and practice, and as advised by expert workmen. An- other clause directs that if any difference is found between plans and elevations, the contractor is left free to follow whichever he likes! There is no suggestion of a reference back to the architect. The specifications are actually far more vague than the building contracts of the time of Fran9ois I given in the Comptes, and suggest the amateur a mile away. Whether it was from want of traininsT, or a certain vagfueness and im- patience when it came to details, Martellange was in constant difficulties with local contractors. At Le Puy he started his contract with an error of measurement. The first contractor died in 1607, his successor continued the work till 1610, when he claimed for extra work beyond the contract. Martellange was summoned from Dijon to settle the matter, and main- tained that the contractor had already received four hundred livres too much, and that he denied one day what he had agreed to the day before. It is not known whether the architect or the builder won, but the builder was allowed to continue his work. A similar difficulty occurred at the College de la Trinite, Lyons, in 1622, when Martellange accused the builder of having charged more than double the value of the work done, and wrote to Gabriel Solignac of Beziers, architect of Paris, to inquire what was the practice of Paris, and whether there was any decree of Parliament in regard to methods of measurement. A settle- ment was not arrived at till two years later. These facts are suggestive of the attitude of the Jesuits towards architecture. That art was neces- sary to their system, accordingly they mastered it sufficiently for their purpose of keeping the control of it in their own hands, but there is no trace so far of their having studied it with the thoroughness of the professional architect. They were highly intelligent and able amateurs, who, so far as details of business and construction were concerned, must ' Charvet, " Etienne Martellange," p. 56, commenting on this vandalism, says " le gout d'antiquitesgallo-romaines n'tftait guere de mode au commencement du XVII siecle," but this was hardly the case; Martellange must either have been at the end of his re- sources, or a more ignorant man than might have been expected in his position. 24 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE have been much in the hands of their contractors, and in regard to design cut down architecture to certain standard forms, which could be reproduced anywhere with the least possible difficulty. It appears from his report on the trouble at Le Puy that Martellange was engaged on the church ^ and Jesuit College at Dijon in 1611. His next work was at the college of La Fleche in Anjou. Buildings had been started here in 1606, and large contracts entered into for the church and other buildings, but difficulties arose as usual, and in 161 2 Louis XIII sent Martellange to La Fleche to see to the completion of the church and college. It does not appear that he designed the church, begun in 1607, but the design is said to resemble that which he made for the Novitiate at Paris, and the college followed the regular Jesuit plan of three parallel courts, with the church forming the side of one court. The church of the Novitiate at Paris, now de- stroyed, was begun in 1612, though it was not till 1630 that the founda- tion stone was laid by the Due de Verneuil, Bishop of Metz, Abbe of St. Germain-des-Pres and natural son of Henri IV.- The reputation of Martellange rests mainly on this church of the Novitiate. It was quite small, being only about 96 ft. long and 42 wide, and consisted of a nave in two bays with side chapels, a crossing the full width of the church, and a choir in two bays with a semicircular apse. But, partly on account of the growing prestige of the Jesuits, it attracted a great deal of attention. Dangeau, Secretary of State for War, paid for it, and in 1 641 Nicolas Poussin painted the altar-piece, which was unfavourably criticized on the ground that the central figure suggested Jupiter Tonans, rather than the God of Pity.^ Blondel, who gives four plates of this church, says that it was regarded as one of the most perfect examples of its kind in Paris, and that the reverend fathers must have more than ever regretted having given the preference to Derand when they built their great church of St. Paul and St. Louis in the rue St. Antoine.* Martellange must have been very busy between 1 6 10 and 1620, for, besides the above buildings, he was employed on ' When Charvet wrote, before 1874, the church, after having been used as a school of art, was turned into an infant school. '■' Foundation stones were often laid long after the building was actually begun, at dates convenient to the great personage who was to perform the ceremony. ^ Poussin, who was irritated by the jealousy of his rivals at Paris, replied that it was impossible to imagine Christ " avec un visage de torticolis, ou d'un pere douillet," and that for his part he had hitherto lived among people who understood him by his paintings, without his having to explain himself in writing. ' Blondel, "Arch. Fran^.," II, chap. vii. Pi. XCIII ' ■ - s H b O a > O I 11. lo lArli ]■. 24 THE JESUITS IN FRANCE 25 the college of Roanne, and In 161 7 he provided plans and specifications for the church of the college of La Trinite at Lyons,^ a building on which he was engaged for several years, and where he had considerable trouble with his builder. In 1622 he designed the facade of St. Maclou at Orleans, destroyed in 1848, and this is the last building that he is known to have designed. Charvet mentions various buildings that he may have had to do with, such as the great Hopital de la Charit^ at Lyons, a remarkable anticipation of modern ideas in regard to the free access of light and air to every part of a hospital. It is also possible, though there is so far no evidence to prove it, that he designed the chapel of the Lycee of Henri IV at Poitiers, and the chapel of the Lycee Corneille at Rouen, both dating from about this period.'^ This Chapel of the Lycee Corneille is a curious and interesting building. The plan consists of a long rectangle, with half-octagonal apses at the east end and to the north and south transepts. It has a nave and two aisles, with galleries as usual over the aisles, but not over the transepts. The nave is in three bays, divided by transverse arches. The details are not less remarkable than the plan. The piers are square ; large and rather coarse corbels project from them a short way up, apparently intended for figures which are not there, and above these corbels run large Corinthian pilasters with a complete entablature, the top of which marks the springing of the groining. The galleries have bold square balusters, but the windows have pointed arches filled in with tracery without cusping; the groining is quadripartite, and the ribs are late Gothic in section. If Martellange was the architect, he must have left more than was usual even in his haphazard practice to the initiative of the local builders. The same peculiarities appear in the Chapel of the College of La Fleche, and the Chapel of the Lycee at Poitiers, founded by Henri IV in 1608. The nave of the latter is in five bays, groined, with ribs which start from fluted pilasters with engaged shafts at the angles. There is a stone gallery at the west end and galleries on either side of the two western bays. High up in the east walls of the transepts are close-grilled openings for watching the pupils In the chapel. The best thing in the Lyc6e at Poitiers is the delightful Chapter room, heavily panelled in walnut, with a fine wood ceiling, designed with bold mouldings in panels filled with paintings of no great excellence, but good in tone. The room, fortunately, has ' Now the Lycde Ampere. " The chapel at Rouen was begun in 1615, Marie de Medicis laying the foundation stone, but it was not finished till 1705. II E 26 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE never been touched, and it has all the old seats and fittings. With its sunny windows and their faded hangings it suggests, more intimately than any room I know in France, the intellectual atmosphere of these Jesuit Colleges in their earlier days, their culture and humanity, and a certain modest pomp and ceremoniousness which had not yet become too theatrical to retain its charm. In these days, before they were spoilt by prosperity, the Jesuit ideal was simple and austere, founded on discipline and self-sacrifice, without losing touch with scholarship and the finer interests of life. In Charvet's "Vie de Martellange" there is a letter written by a Jesuit, Father Perpinien, to his friend in Rome, describing the College at Lyons. The kitchen, he says, is close to the refectory, with an excellent cellar underneath; the bedrooms have each of them a book-closet fitted up with a number of books, where one can shut oneself up and read and meditate with reasonable warmth, " for here, my dear Barthelemy," he continues, " it is quite as important to keep the body warm as the mind, you can take my word for it. For example, in the largest room there used to be painted " intus vinum, foris ignis," but the author of this device was no doubt deep in the sins of the flesh, so we have told them to put up " intus preces, foris labor," excellent remedies against this terrible cold. . . . The college of La Trinite is placed in the middle of the strip of land dividing the Rhone and the Saone, and so from the rooms one has an admirable view of the river, which rushes by so fast that though it is far beneath, one hears the noise of its waters, one sees the boats descending, and far away stretches the immense plain bounded by the far-distant Alps. How often, as I walk up and down the terrace, have I imagined to myself that Italy, the nurse of Genius and the Arts, that Rome, the mother of Christianity, that the house of our Fathers, our college, and that you yourself, are before my eyes. How many times have I been tempted to repeat those lines of Meliboeus in Virgil : En unquam Latios longo post tempore fines Et veteris Romae surgentia marmore tecta. Post aliquot mea regna videns mirabor aristas.' The sensibility, the humanity of Father Perpinien suggest a different type from that of the cold-blooded Jesuit of romance and even ' Father Perpinien is adapting from the First Eclogue, where "patrios" instead of " Latios " is the true text, and he has substituted the line " et veteris Roma," etc., for " pauperis et tuguri congestum cespite culmen." His letter, from which I have para- phrased freely, is given verbatim in Charvet, " Martellange," 135-137. Father Perpinien was a Spaniard, who died in Paris the year that he wrote this letter. li Pl. xciv .t' "'/l.^a'!'^-^ P%C5l'J ii^l ■V I"- ■h |: r CHAPEI, OF THK LYCKE COR.VEII.IJ':: Rfll'EN W- -'5) I A'. B. ,lel. [ll. TCI lAlli 1'. 26 THE JESUITS IN FRANCE 27 of histor}', and it is only fair to recollect that there were in the Order men of his fine enthusiasm in the days before the Order had become the instrument of the ambitions of its Generals. Martellange died in 1 641, at the age of seventy-two. He had to undergo a severe operation in 1633, which seems to have prevented the further practice of architecture, and he spent the remaining years of his life in the Novitiate at Paris, painting and designing, and possibly helping Derand in his book on stone-cutting,^ and Mathurin Jousse in his work on perspective,^ and " Le Secret d' Architecture." ' In the annals for the year of his death, he is described as "a pious, laborious man, tenacious in his silence, and of notable humility. For fifty-one years he served the Society, freely spending himself in the arts of painting and architecture, and building many Churches and edifices for the Society and others, a man so gifted by God that he might be held up as an example to his kind." Martellange had in fact done a remark- able work — modestly and unobtrusively he had set himself to work out the problem of the Jesuit College, and it is to him, guided by the sagacity of his superiors, that France owes the conception of those great Lycees and seminaries so impressive to this day in their austere and simple dignity. His solution was straightforward enough, nothing but two or more courts with the church on one side of one of the courts; the real contribution to architecture was the scale of these buildings and their resolute plainness, for the Jesuits in their early days aimed solely at efficiency. On the road between Bourg en Bresse and the great church of Brou, there is a vast hospital of fine proportion and admir- able simplicity of treatment which illustrates this phase of architecture at its best. It appears to date from the early part of the century. In none, however, of his authentic works did Martellange show himself capable of a great design such as this. In spite of Blondel's praise of the design of the Novitiate, a careful study of the works of Martellange convinces me that he was little more than a meri- torious amateur in architecture, if such a thing is possible. His most important work now left is the church of S. Pierre at Nevers, originally the chapel of the Jesuit college. The plan consists of a Greek cross, with half-octagon apsidal ends to each of the four arms, ' " L' Architecture des VoCltes, ou I'art des traits et coupe des vofltes, etc.," par le rev. Pere Francois Derand, de la Compagnie de J^sus." Paris, 1643. " " La Perspective Positive de Viator, etc.," par Mathurin Jousse de la Fleche." La Fleche, 1635. ^ " Le Secret d' Architecture, etc.," par Mathurin Jousse de la ville de la Fleche. La Fleche, 1642. 28 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE and a shallow dome over the centre; the interior has no architec- tural details but some very meagre pilasters and entablatures, and relies for its effect on painted perspectives and architectural details in the worst Italian manner of the seventeenth century. Except for the ingenious plan there is nothing here to detain one. On the outside a great effort was made on the west fagade, and the result is character- istic, for there is hardly a single detail that is right : the pedestal of the lower order is too high, the niches above it too crowded, the impost moulding too heavy, the balustrade engaged against a solid wall exaggerated and irrational, and the facade as a whole too high for its width. It would seem as if Martellange had noted certain details as pleasing, and used every one of them without regard to scale, and without any sense of relation. The west front of the chapel at Roanne is wholly insignificant: a large semicircular arch on two Doric pilasters, surmounted by a pediment and flanked by two miserable little towers. In the centre is a doorway, which shows total ignorance of neo-classic design, and which was probably left to the local builder to carry out as best he could. The front of the chapel of La Trinite at Lyons shows the same poverty of invention. Martellange, in fact, on the evidence available, emerges less as an architect than as an agent drawing up schemes for these vast establishments, and aiming at the maximum of accommodation for a minimum of cost; and though one may admire his common sense and directness of purpose, the qualities that he displayed are those of the administrator, not of the artist. On the other hand, it was Martellange who introduced the typical plan of the Jesuit church into France; the nave with shallow recesses between the abutments of the transverse arches, with galleries above. This plan appears in its simplest form in the chapel of the Lycee at Roanne; and in the chapels of La Trinite and of the Charite at Lyons. Treated in excellent architectural terms it is found in the Montmorency chapel at Moulins. Lemercier used it at the Oratoire and the Sor- bonne, and Frangois Mansart designed a consummate variation on this theme in the nave of the Val de Grace. Unfortunately the simpler ideals of earlier days were lost. The Jesuits became more and more immersed in political intrigues ; theatrical display and the most gorgeous and ostentatious splendour became necessary for their purposes, and all that was really worth keeping in their architecture was lost in the orgies of their decoration. On the outside of their churches, the Jesuit architects concen- trated their attention on the west fa9ade. Sometimes, and for special I'l,. xcv C^^i»_^^^'^^^ -^ ^ Js^ IX. IK/'lu^.: ST. PlKkKK; NKVERS ( P. 27) Photo.] [J.R. CHAl'TER room: I.VCKK IILXRI l\, I'tllTIia-lS (P. 26) (from " I'Avsagks v.v mo.numkn ]s i>r I'diiou ") [11. 1(1 FACE r. 28 Pl. XC\'I / i^- , ■ ./ ^■^ >~ W i';.Ji^- I A'. A. ,/<■/. .MONT.MORENCV CHAl'KI, A I MOl'l.lNs ( I'. jS) [ll. Tl) PACK P'. 2h THE JESUITS IN FRANCE 29 purposes, ornamental treatment was used elsewhere, as in the exposed north elevation of the chapel of the seminary at Vannes ; but the characteristic and familiar feature of the Jesuit church is its west front; " columns on the ground storey between the three doors, entabla- ture, and cornice, columns on the upper storey on either side of the central 'oeil de bo^uf,' triangular pediment at the top, the implacable fa9ade rises identical under every sky."' This is how a modern French writer has described it, in terms of rather unintelligent scorn. The picture, of course, is by no means accurate in detail, though it gives, in general terms, the main features of the Jesuit facade, but it raises the question how far Jesuit architecture, as a phase of neo- classic, deserves the wholesale condemnation which it has been the fashion to pour on it for many years. It is too important a factor in modern architecture to be dismissed in a few sharp words of casual contempt. Its lineage, direct from Vignola, was at least respectable. Introduced into France at the beginning of the seventeenth century, it was accepted by all the best architects then living. De Brosse and Lemercier adopted it as a matter of course; even Frangois Mansart himself followed it in his design for the west fa9ade of the Val de Grace. It supplied the intervening link in monumental design between the art of Henri IV and that of Louis XIV. Such testimony is too weighty to be pushed aside, and in order to appreciate it at its right value it is necessary to clear the mind of the prejudices of the Gothic revival, the fanciful justifications of architecture on constructional or moral grounds, the misplaced earnestness that insists on some special symbolical meaning for every detail, without regard to its effect on the whole, all the muddle-headed sentimentalism that did duty in France in the last century, not less than in England, for the patient study and appreciation of the art of architecture as actually practised. Men such as Frangois Mansart conceived of architecture as an art that exists for a special aesthetic purpose, an art that has to realize itself by means of carefully considered relations of mass and outline and of voids and solids, by the proportions of the parts to the whole, and by a certain deliberate rhythm, animating and controlling the whole design. The problem was purely artistic. Being thoroughly well trained, technical difficulties hardly existed for them, nor were ' " L'Evolution de I'Architecture en France," Raoul Rosieres, 185. A sketch of the development of French architecture, written without very intimate study of the subject, on the unhistorical hypothesis that the national architecture of France consists solely of its Gothic architecture. 30 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE they greatly concerned whether their faqade did or did not express to a nicety the actual construction of their building, or whether it was capable of translation into symbolical terms by ingenious literary persons. To these men the Jesuit facade appeared reasonable and satisfactory, and so under conditions it undoubtedly was. Badly treated ^ it became utterly monstrous, but in good hands it gave oppor- tunity for that sense of scale and rhythm, for that sensitive instinct for the right detail and ornament, which are to the architect what his exact vision and his skill of hand are to the painter and the sculptor. Architecture such as this is necessarily technical. It cannot impress the imagination by sheer gigantic size like the east wall of the cathedral at Poitiers. It can very easily be exaggerated and overdone, as in the west facade of the church of St. Paul and St. Louis, in Paris. But it has its place in the history of architecture, by no means, it is true, in the front rank of the world's masterpieces, yet no more to be utterly con- temned than the works of those writers and artists who appear and dis- appear, never wholly forgotten, never quite within the fringe of first- rate eminence. ' There is a notable example in the west front of the Church of the Visitation at Nevers. Pl. xcvii SJliut tie lit C^apella cm eft repr^ente Z- tvaih^au de Qean ^ Hii ror fcc'it PROFIL ?, la Cffap^lU a,, <-Sl- U Sepulture c'c S^foii^icur cv D O III. m KAi K I'. ;4 HENRI IV 35 Sauval, ii, 39, describes these paintings with his customary zest. Andro- meda, for example, " regarde son liberateur avec zele et avec pudeur "; " Le Dieu Pan, avec sa laideur ordinaire, et couronne d'un grand bouquet de cornes, employe toute son Industrie et toute ses forces pour enlever la belle Syringue," and so on. Bunel was so anxious to be accurate in his pictures of the kings and queens that he and his wife journeyed all over France in search of original portraits in churches, chapels, cabinets, and windows. The whole of these decorations were destroyed in the fire of 1660. Meanwhile work had been proceeding rapidly on the side to the Tuileries. Immediately to the west of the little gallery, and on the river front, was the Salle des Antiques, begun by Catherine de M^dicis,^ finished, according to Sauval, for Henri IV by Thibault Metezeau, decorated by Du Breul, and so encrusted with marbles that Sauval says it resembled a reliquary, or a German cabinet. The part played by the Metezeau family at the Louvre is one of its many problems. The Metezeau family had been connected with building for at least two generations. Clement Metezeau, who died before 1550, was a mason at Dreux. His son Thibault, born in 1535, is described as archi- tect of the Due d'AIenqon and of Henri II, and is supposed by Berty to have designed the ground-floor of the Petite Galerie. In regard to the Salle des Antiques, as he died in 1596, and Henri IV did not enter Paris till 1594, it is probable that Sauval has confused him with his son, Louis Metezeau, who is described in the register of Dreux (1596) as "Architect and Controller of the King's buildings," and in 1608 was " architecte du Roy," and "concierge et garde des meubles du Palais des Thuileries," at the large salary of 2,400 livres a year, just double what was being paid to Jacques Androuet du Cerceau.* That the second appointment had nothing to do with architecture is shown by the fact that he was succeeded in 161 5 by Charles Albert de Luynes, the favourite of Louis XIII. On the other hand, he is known to have been associated with Francini, the Florentine engineer, in the design of the decorations made to receive the Queen at Dreux in 1 6 10; and among Marot's engravings is one of the Hotel de ' Sauval, ii, 42. This building was known as the Salle des Ambassadeurs, because it was here that the King gave audience. ' It appears that Louis Metezeau superseded Jacques Androuet du Cerceau in 1594 at a salary of 800 livres. The latter objected, and succeeded in getting the appointment suspended for three years (see Berty, "Top. Hist.," ii, 191-192), but in 1608 Louis Metezeau was " architecte du Roy," receiving 800 livres a year more salary than Du Cerceau and Fournier, "autres architectes de sa Majeste." 36 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE Longueville (" Rue S. Thomas du Louvre, du dessein du S' Metezeau "), built for the Due d'Epernon early in the seventeenth century. This was a large house built round three sides of a court, with a screen wall next the street, and fa9ades in two storeys, with pairs of Ionic pilasters with niches dividing the bays on the ground-floor, with the same treatment with the Corinthian order in the upper storey. It is a common-place design, rather like that of the Hotel de Sully. Louis Metezeau is one of the four claimants to the honour of having designed part of the Grande Galerie, but for reasons which I state below it is more likely that Du P^rac was the architect, the probability being that the man who designed the south fa9ade of the little gallery designed the first half of the Grand Gallery, and this was begun before Louis Metezeau was established in his office. The work of completing the Grand Gallery was, in fact, the earliest undertaken by Henri IV. He entered Paris on 22nd March 1594, and in September of that year a decree was issued enacting that all proceeds from fallen timber were to be devoted to the works at the Louvre, the Tuileries, and the Chapel of the Valois; and by a public decree, in the following December, the tenth of all sums resulting from the sale of wood from the royal forests was to be devoted to the Louvre, Tuileries, St. Germain-en-Laye, and Fontainebleau. The first block undertaken at the Louvre extended from the south end of the Petite Galerie up to the Pavilion de Lesdiguieres, as it is now called,^ and formed a symmetrical facade to the river, the design of the Petite Galerie and the Salle des Antiques being repeated at the west end. The works were completed by 1598. Who was the architect? Four names have been given : Louis Metezeau, Plain, Fournier, and Du Perac.^ The difficulty about Metezeau is first that in 1594-6 he was a com- paratively subordinate official, and if he did actually design the first floor of the Grand Galerie, as Berty supposed, it is strange that not only should he have been superseded, but his design absolutely ignored, when it ^came to the building of the second part in 1600. ' The original pavilion here was known as " La Lanterne des Galeries." " Brice, "Description de Paris," i, 157, ed. 1725, is the only authority for assigning it to Metezeau, but Brice is not to be trusted. He also says that Louis Metezeau designed the dyke at the siege of La Rochelle in 1627-8, though Metezeau is known to have died in 16 1 5. Brice has also gone astray in regard to Du Pdrac and Du Cerceau, attributing to Du Pdrac the part that was certainly done by Du Cerceau. Blondel repeats Brice's mistake, "Architecture Frangaise," iv, 69. D'Argenville, "Voyage Pittoresque de Paris," 58 (ed. 1 765), also repeats Brice, but his book, though of a certain interest, has no pretence to anything more than the accuracy of an ordinary guide-book. HENRI IV 37 Plain and Fournier were only builders, Sauval's words are conclusive on the point.' Etienne du Pdrac, of Paris, first appears in Rome in 1569;^ in 1575 he published at Rome his " Vestigi dell' antichita di Roma," a quarto volume of thirty-eight folding plates, giving perspective views of the ancient buildings of Rome as they were when he drew them. The drawings are not good, and are badly engraved, but the work is of greater historical value than the ingenious restorations of Palladio, who was indifferent to the accurate record of facts. Du Perac re- turned to France in 1582, and is said to have been employed by the Due d'Aumale at Anet and elsewhere, and numbered among his pupils Claude Mollet,' the designer of the Tuileries gardens. F^libien says that he was architect to the King, and carried out important works at the Tuileries and St. Germain-en-Laye, and that he died in 1601. Of these works there is no trace at all. It is evident from the above dates that the period of Du Perac's studies was not later than 1550 to 1575, if not earlier still, that is to say, Du P^rac really belonged to the generation of De I'Orme, and this would explain the curious character of the design of the first part of the Grande Galerie. The elevation consists of a ground storey with rusticated pilasters, a mezzanine storey, and above this, small engaged pilasters in pairs on either side of windows with alternate segmental and triangular pediments and niches between each bay. The design is learned and scholarly, but it is trifling in scale, and suggests the courtyard of Ancy-Ie-Franc; indeed its inspiration might well have been drawn from Bramante. It is just such a design as one would ' Sauval, ii, 3: " Fournier et Plain batirent le second etage [of the Petite Galerie] sous Henri IV." See also Berty, "Top. Hist.," ii, 77. The Fourniers were master-masons, cabinet makers, and jewellers. Isaye Fournier is described in 1608 as "architect du Roi" in a statement of wages to the officials of the Louvre and Tuileries (Berty, " Top. Hist.," ii, 205), and a Fournier appears with Du Cerceau as " architecte de sa Majesty " at a salary of 1,200 livres. On the other hand, in 1600, Isaye Fournier appears in the company of Guillaume Marchand, Pierre Chambiche, Francois Petit, Pierre Guillain, and Robert Marquelet, as " maistres masons assurez au marche de la ma^onnerie et construction de la Grande Galerie qui doibt aller du Chateau du Louvre au Pallais des Thuileries " (Berty, " Top. Hist.," ii, 201). The term "architecte" was used so loosely for any one connected with building that little can be inferred from its appearance in the account. Lienor Fournier, sister of Isaye, was married to Pierre Biard, " maistre sculpteur et architecteur du Roy," the maker of the jubd of St. Etienne du Mont, in 1592, and L^on Lescot, nephew of the Sieur du Clagny, was godfather to one of the children in 1595. Most of the artists of the time seem to have married into each other's families. " This is the date of an engraving of the Capitol at Rome by Du Pcrac. ' Claude MoUet, "Theatres des plans et jardinages," 199, quoted by Berty. 38 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE expect from an old man who had learned his manner in Italy in the middle of the sixteenth century, and, after the work that had been done by Bullant and De I'Orme, seems a throw back of two generations. The balance of evidence, in conjunction with the character of the design, leads to the conclusion that Du Perac was the architect of the first part of the Grande Galerie which was completed before the end of the sixteenth century. The second part, extending westward from the Pavilion des Lesdiguieres to the Pavilion de Flora at the south-west angle, and including the return northwards up to Bullant's addition to the Tuileries, was almost certainly designed by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, the second son of the old engraver, who succeeded his brother Baptiste in charge of the Louvre in 1595, and who died in 1614. Jacques du Cerceau the younger was probably the ablest architect of the Du Cerceau family. The school in which he had studied is evident from his design. The colossal order, the reckless disregard of friezes and entablatures when they got in the way of windows, show the influence of Jean Bullant. One thinks of the chatelet at Chantilly, the frontispiece at Ecouen, the facade of the gallery at Fere-en-Tarde- nois, all experiments tending to the culminating effort of the Grande Galerie and the Pavilion de Flora. Du Cerceau simply turned his back on Du Perac's design, only recognizing it by continuing the battered plinth and the balustrade. Having done that, he used an order twice the size of that of the earlier designs, and though purists have condemned the liberties he took with the orders, and the monotony of his alternate pediments, Du Cerceau's design was more attractive and even more reasonable than anything yet done at either the Louvre or the Tuileries.^ Blondel, however, was most severe on Du Cerceau's design of the Pavilion de Flora;- he says that here are to be found all that is most licentious in architecture, bays of unequal width, quoins of different sizes, a solid where there ought to be a void, entablatures broken through for windows, in short, that every kind of abuse was presented in these monstrous decorations. He condemns, as the last ' The whole of this disappeared in the rebuilding of the river front by Lefuel and others in the last century and can only now be studied in Marot's engravings, which were used again by Blondel in his "Architecture Frangaise." When French architects of the nineteenth century were called upon to restore a building, a palace, cathedral, chateau, or church, their idea was not so much to leave the building structurally sound, but otherwise intact, as to reconstitute the design entirely with such embellishments as commended themselves to the taste of the nineteenth century. ' " Architecture Fran^aise," iv, 84. Pl. C irx i « :- z -J o s I [11. ro i-ACK r. jS HENRI IV 39 word in bad design, the solid space in the centre of the pavilion, with the three little niches one above the other. In regard to the fagade of the gallery, the pilasters were too flat, the entablatures should have been carried through, and the repetition of pediments appeared to Blondel to be the reductio ad abstirdum of this architectural feature. Of the two designs he preferred Du Perac's, as the purer, though much too small in scale, and not unreasonably found fault with the total break in the design between the first part and the second, which would lead a stranger to believe that the two were intended for totally different purposes, instead of their both being built for the purpose of connecting the first floor of the Louvre with the first floor of the Tuileries. Blondel could find nothing to admire here, except the beauty of the sculpture and the finish of the architectural details, and summed up his criticism by saying that connoisseurs are as much pleased by the sculpture as they are revolted by the architecture.' Blondel was undoubtedly a fine judge of architecture, and there is much in what he says about Du Cerceau's design, but the weight of his learning and his logic some- times lay heavy on his judgement. He has overlooked in Du Cerceau's design a certain largeness of treatment which carried on the tradition of Jean Bullant. In breaking away from the pettiness of earlier design Du Cerceau helped to bridge over the gap between the generation of De rOrme and that of Lemercier and the able architects who were to make the next great advance in the development of French architecture. Not only did Henri IV complete the gallery joining the Louvre and the Tuileries, but he contemplated a vast scheme for combining the two palaces on the north side. He had already reserved sites on the side towards the rue St. Honore for this purpose, and the " grand dessein du Louvre " is referred to in contemporary letters. The scheme was not actually realized till the time of Napoleon III, but it is a striking testimony both to the genius of Henri IV and to the progress of French architecture made in his reign, that such a vast conception as this " grande cour admirable " should have been possible at the time.^ It appears that Henri also intended to complete the unfinished works ' " Architecture Frangaise," iv, 86. " Les connoisseurs sont epris de la beaute du ciseau du sculpteur, at pour I'ordinaire sont revokes du dessein de I'architecte. Cette critique ndanmoins ne regarde que I'ensemble, certainement tous les profiles consideres sdpar^ment sont ingenieu.x fernnes et coulans, on leur reproche seulement de I'etre mal appliques, et d'une expression contraire au motif qui leur a donnd lieu." " The fragments of mural painting from the Louvre in the Galerie des Cerfs at Fontainebleau, in 1862, bear out the description given by Tavannes. See Berty, "Top. Hist.," ii, 97, 98. 40 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE of the Louvre. Tavannes,^ in his memoirs, says that had Henri IV lived, " loving building as he did, he would have made one most notable building by finishing the main block of the Louvre, of which the grand staircase (Henri II) only marked one half," though, as Tavannes added, to carry out this scheme he must have had " all the wealth of the Netherlands, of Burgundy, and of Savoy." The scheme was taken up by his son Louis XIII, who built the northern half of the west wing, but was only finally completed under Louis XIV. Henri IV was no mere building amateur. Keenly interested as he was in building, he built with a purpose as definite and statesmanlike as that of Augustus Caesar when he re-organized Rome. The words of the letters patent of 1608-9, confirming the privileges of the artists of the Louvre, prove that the King was deliberately endeavouring to re- establish the arts in France. " Since," he says, " the culture of the arts is not the least among the benefits that have resulted from the peace, we have so arranged our buildings at the Louvre that we can conveniently lodge here a number of the best workmen and most competent masters that can be found, painters, sculptors, jewellers, clockmakers, engravers in precious stones, and others, not only for our own use, but also that they may serve as a nursery of craftsmen ^ who may spread the know- ledge of the arts throughout our Kingdom." In the reigns of Francois I and Henri II, Italian and other artists were lodged in the Hotel de Petit Nesle across the river, " the Bastille of Transalpine art," as Courajod called it. The Petit Nesle stood on the site of the present Institut, but the establishment appears to have been broken up by 1559, when Francois II gave it to the Queen-Mother as a chamber of accounts, and no further attempt appears to have been made to find quarters for artists till Henri IV completed the Grande Galerie of the Louvre. His idea was to bring together here the most skilful artists of the Kingdom, " afin de faire comme une alliance de I'esprit et des beaux arts avec la noblesse et I'epee" (Sauval, ii, 41). The state of his building only allowed him to find lodgings for some nineteen artists, among whom were Bunel the painter, Francheville the sculptor, Dupr6 the medallist, swordsmiths, jewellers, and others. These privileged persons excited the jealousy of the Guilds, who declined to recognize their apprenticeships or to treat them as qualified masters. The King cut the knot by exempting them altogether from the control of the Guilds.^ Moreover, Henri IV ' Quoted by Berty, ii, 96, 97. ^ "Une pepiniere d'ceuvriers." ^ See Mariejol, "Hist. Fran^.," vi, 2, 74, and for the Petit Nesle, Piganiol de la Force, " Desc. Hist, de la Ville de Paris," viii, 187-188. Sauval only describes the Pl. CI ■i*^ i:^i:„.,l„>„ .lu .,,:ni.l I'.lu.ll'.-n .I.J J',„h:,.J.i:..ll. I.:,. /I..„y //' iHK lUii.ERjKs: rill-: pavilion OI- I I.ORA (IM'. 3.S, 59) lf.M. .Il^.-l/^i'l Marct [11. 10 lAi li r. 40 HENRI IV 41 was determined as far as possible to employ French artists in preference to foreigners. All his architects were Frenchmen; so, too, were the sculptors, except Francheville and Bordoni.' The decorations at the Louvre he kept in the hands of Frenchmen, and his object seems to have been to foster and encourage a national art quite as much as to decorate his palaces. Nearly all the ideas under which the modern tradition of French art has been built up originated not with Louis XIV, but with Henri IV. From the artists of the Grande Galerie sprang the French academies, from the King's pcnsionnaires at Rome the future establishment of the Villa Medicis. The art of France was to be Romanized from top to bottom, but it was a settled policy with the rulers of France that only Frenchmen should be employed. The same far-seeing policy is to be traced in Henri IV's various schemes for the improvement of Paris. That the King was an enthusi- astic builder is proved by the testimony of his contemporaries." His ambition was to rival Franqois I in building,'' but whereas that King had devoted his energies to his palaces and hunting-boxes, and done little or nothing for Paris, Henri IV was the first ruler since the days of Imperial Rome who undertook great building operations as a matter of set policy, and for patriotic objects. The trades had been left in a state of complete disorganization by the civil wars, and it is expressly stated by Chatillon, one of the royal engineers, that the King's object was to find work for the people; " le grand monarque, Henri IV. s'affectionna extremement a I'architecture, la faisoit revivre et prendre plus de lustre qu'elle n'avoit faict es siecles passees, poussee d'un juste desir de faire bien a tous, et de faire travailler et gaigner le menu other Hotel de Nesle or Hotel de Soissons, on which Catherine de Mddicis built her last house. ' Bordoni made the great altar in the Chapel of La Trinite at Fontainebleau. The decorations of Fontainebleau appear to have formed an exception, as in addition to Franche- ville and Bordoni, Ambrose Dubois of Antwerp was employed to decorate the " chambre de I'ovale," where Louis XHI was born, in 160 1. In this room he painted fifteen pictures from the story of Theagenes and Charicleia (Heliodorus), with landscapes by Paul Brill. Francheville, or Franqueville, an able sculptor and founder, was extensively employed in France. He made the statues of Force and Peace on either side of the chimney-piece of the Salle des Gardes at Fontainebleau. Besides the four bronze figures from the monument to Henri IV on the Pont Neuf (figures, by the way, with the most delightful patina)^ there are also by Francheville in the Louvre two excellent figures of Mercury and Orpheus, and a very commonplace David. On the evidence of these works he seems to correspond to Nicholas Stone in England, but was a much more accomplished artist. " "Si tost qu'il fut maistre de Paris, on ne veut que masons en besogne" ("Le Mercure Francois," 1610, i, 488, quoted by Poirson, iii, 522). ' De Thou. TI G 42 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE peuple." ' Saint Simon mentions a saying of the three Places in Paris : " Henri IV avec son peuple sur le Pont Neuf: Louis XIII avec les gens de qualite a la Place Royale: et Louis XIV avec les maltotiers [extortioners] dans la Place des Victoires." Saint Simon makes the characteristic comment: " Celle de Vendome, faite longtemps depuis, ne lui a guere donne meilleure compagnie."'" His second motive was to transform Paris; not only did he aim at makine it healthier and more convenient for its inhabitants, but he definitely wished to make that city the national centre of France. In the year 1600 the condition of Paris must have been simply deplorable. According to M. Poirson,^ the streets were so narrow that even hand-carts would hardly pass through them. The houses were nearly all of wood and plaster, carried up several storeys and over- hanging as well. " L'espace et I'air etaient encore le privilege des rois, des seigneurs, des membres du haut clerge, des riches financiers." The " Rue des chats " at Troyes still shows a condition of things that must once have been general. It is some 6 ft. to 7 ft. wide at the ground level, but the storeys overhang so much that the sky is invisible in parts of this alley, and the upper storeys are kept apart by wooden struts which appear to be almost as old as the houses themselves. In Paris there were only some five or six insignificant public squares, the largest being the "Place de Greve " of sinister and bloodstained memories. There were only two bridges completed, the Pont Notre Dame built by II Giocondo a hundred years before, and the Petit Pont. The Pont Neuf was still unfinished. Drainage and sanitary regulations scarcely existed, with the result that every ten years there was a plague of some sort or another, and in 1596 the assembly of notables had to move from Paris to Rouen. Paris, says Poirson, "was little better than a common sewer" when Henri IV took it in hand. The work that he did in attempting to cleanse and civilize the town is of great importance in the history of modern architecture, because it was the first attempt since the days of Rome to deal with an existing city on a comprehensive and consecutive scale, and Henri IV was in fact the founder of that great tradition of civic planning which has been one of the most important contributions of French architecture to civilization. The rudimentary lead of the " Bastides " had not been taken up, and though a great piazza or public space round the chief municipal buildings had ' Quoted in "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1870, iii, 565. ^ " Memoires," Ed. de la B(5dollibre, i, 103. " "Histoire du Regne de Henri IV," iii, 625-626. I'l. Cll AN oij) s-|ki;i;r in luinivs: i a kvk iiks chats (v. 42) I II. Ill KACK r. 42 Pi., cm w a: H X •A 1 11. in I AC F. 1'. 42 Pi.. CIV I I' i mi -1 ti^t- • ♦ •'■■-.-' .iiit ■i i^- ? .; 5- i < Q %1 - 1^ § - - ^ n^ 5"l--4 sX^ '; c sS •- .^f se w >- 5 .^ ; r- 5--: u t^.J^l^t. ^ ^>^s4.1 X >> -i o ;! :" r^ ^2 '1 y ~ ^ i ^ j-'^ ^ = Ss 5-J -; ; s ^5"s ^t^?;;^?! ■• < '^ i > i ^ '^ 5 -i-;■ 5 =^ - ■; t^^: ^^?^ II. TO FACE 1'. 45] HENRI IV 43 been usual in the mediaeval city, this was by no means the same thing as the schemes of re-arrangement initiated by Henri IV, and modern treatises which deal with them as if they were are simply confounding two totally different groups of facts. In 1600 an ordinance was issued for the enlargement, alignment, and paving of streets, and forbidding overhanging storeys. This was re-issued in 1608, and in spite of the state of the finances, some very considerable works were undertaken under the general directions of Sully as "grand voyer " or Surveyor-General. The Pont Neuf and the Samaritaine formed the first great scheme. The Pont Neuf crossing the river east of the Louvre, had been begun under Henri III in 1578, from the designs of Baptiste du Cerceau, but it had been left incom- plete, and the scheme was taken up again by Henri IV, and sufficiently completed by 1604 to admit of traffic' Du Breul describes the bridge in his time as consisting of twelve arches, seven on the side of the Louvre, five on the opposite or south side of the Isle de Palais. Above the arcade ran " une double corniche d'un pied et demy de large, laquelle est soutenue de deux pieds en deux pieds de tetes de sylvans, satyres et dryades, orn^es de fleurs et festons a I'antique." Above this was the parapet wall, with "culs-de-lampe " " projecting from every pier. As first designed, the bridge was intended to carry houses on both sides, following the precedent of II Giocondo's design of the Pont Notre Dame (1507), but these were omitted by express desire of the King, in order not to block the view to and from the Louvre.^ The Samaritaine stood to the west of the bridge. Du Breul says that above the figures on the front of the Samaritaine was "une industrieuse horloge," which not only marked the hours, but showed the courses of the sun and moon, and above the clock was a belfry and a carillon, which when the hours came "played one tune after another, which could be heard afar off, and was very refreshing." The Place du Pont Neuf appears to have been completed by the end of the reign, though the statue of Henri IV by John of Bologna* that used to stand here ' Du Breul, "Theatre des Antiquitez de Paris," ed. 1639, 184-186. '' " Culs-de-lampe," small bays round on plan and corbelled out. Daviler, art. " Culs-de-lampe," says: " Saillie de pierres ronde par leur plan, qui portent en encor- beillement la retomb^e d'un arc doubleau, d'une Tourelle, d'une Guerite, etc., comme on en voit aux demilunes du Pont Neuf a Paris." ' Du Breul, 186. * See description in Marot's plate of the Pont Neuf. The statue was destroyed in 1 792. It was presented by Cosmo, second Grand Duke of Tuscany, to Marie de Mt^dicis. The pedestal was of marble with four slaves and bas-reliefs by Francheville. The figures are now in the Louvre. 44 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE was not in position till 1615, and the pedestal was not completed till 1635- The Place Royale, now the Place des Vosges, was the next great undertaking.^ The King's object was to let in light and air to the Ouartier St. Antoine. The Palais des Tournelles was cleared away, and a vast square of a superficial area of 5,184 toises was formed, to be surrounded by blocks of buildings and pavilions, nine in each of three of the sides, and eight on the fourth. All the buildings had to be of a uniform design in brick and stone, with arcades on the ground floor of arches, 8 ft. 6 in. wide and 12 ft. high, with Doric pilasters between, and above the pilasters the favourite motive of alternate quoins carried up two storeys to the eaves, above which is a steep slate roof with dormers. The King himself started the work, by building at the ends of the side wings the " Pavilion du Roi," and the " Pavilion de la Reine," and the houses along the side terminated by the latter. The rest of the site he offered to the public, at a ground rent of a golden crown for each site, on condition that each lot was indivisible, and that the government design was followed. So well was the work done that it has needed little repair in the three hundred years that have passed since the place was built, " la solidite des maisons est a toute epreuve."'^ The Place Dauphine, immediately to the west of the Palais de Justice, and between it and the Pont Neuf, was begun in 1607. This was a waste untidy bit of ground of an area of some 3,120 toises.^ At the King's suggestion, Achille Harlay, first President of the Parlement, took up the whole of the site at a rent of one sou per toise, on condition that all buildings on it followed the official design, which consisted of symmetrical elevations on all three sides of the triangular space, built in brick and stone, with an arcade to the Place on the ground-floors. The Place Dauphine was intended to form a Change and meeting place for merchants in the centre of the city, and new streets, such as the rue Dauphine, thirty-six feet wide, were formed to open it up. The last and, on the whole, most comprehensive enterprise undertaken by the King was the memorable scheme of the Porte et Place de France, situated in the Marais, on the north side of old Paris. According to M. Poirson, the object of this scheme was mainly political. Territorial unity had been attained since the union of Brittany with France, under Louis XII, but national unity, the unity ' Sauval, i, 624-627. ^ Poirson, iii, 709. Unfortunately the roofs have been reslated, and most of the fronts painted. ' Sauval, i, 628. Pi.. CV ■ACK I'. 44 Vl. CVI [ll. TO PACK P. 44 HENRI IV 45 of Breton, Provencal, or Burgundian, as Frenchmen, did not exist. Each of these provinces retained with some jealousy their corporate entity. It was a main object in the pohcy of the King to break down this individualism, and to induce his subjects to consider themselves as Frenchmen first and above everything. The Porte et Place de France was to be the visible embodiment of this conception. As the country- man entered Paris from the north, he passed through an imposing gateway, the Porte de France, of brick and stone, with wings right and left, and found himself in a broad roadway, on the further side of which was an open semicircular space, 480 ft. wide at the base, and set out with a 240 ft. radius. Round this space were set seven separate blocks of buildings of brick and stone, the fa9ades of which were designed in seven bays, with a ground-floor arcade, engaged tourelles at the angles, and steep pitched roofs with lucarnes and a cupola in the centre. Each block measured 78 ft. on the face, and was separ- ated from its neighbour by a street 36 ft. wide, and to these streets were given the names of the principal provinces : Picardy, Dauphine, Provence, Languedoc, Guienne, Poitou, Bretagne, and Bourgogne. At the back of these blocks or " insulae" were gardens, and beyond, at a distance of 240 ft. from the buildings, a street laid out concentrically with the semicircle of the Place. Streets radiating from the centre divided this concentric roadway into lengths which were called by the names of the less considerable governments, Brie, Bourbonnais, Lyonnais, Beaune, Auvergne, Limousin, Perigord. Finally the con- tinuations of the radiating streets beyond were called Saintonge, La Manche, Touraine, La Perche, Angouleme, Berri, Orleans, Beaujolais, Anjou. It was indeed, as M. Poirson says, " the most national, the most entirely French conception that any sovereign ever dreamt of," and had it been carried out it would have been a magnificent trans- formation of the Paris of that time. The new streets were to be continued right away through Paris from north to south, one roadway starting from St. Denis was to come to the Pont Neuf and the Place Dauphine, cross the bridge, and so out to the southern boundary of the city, another to the left ran out to the Isle St. Louis. One may well believe Sauval's story,' that Henri himself imagined the scheme, for which the drawings were made by his engineers, Aleaune and Claude Chatillon of Chalons. Sully started the work in 1609, but after the King's assassination it was dropped, and though it was resumed by Richelieu in 1626, that statesman had his hands too full ' " Histoire et AntiquittSs de la Ville de Paris," vi, i, 632. 46 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE to carry it far, and the work was abandoned, and the only record of it left is the bird's-eye view by Poinsart engraved in 1640.^ Outside Paris the most important works undertaken for Henri IV were the Chapel of La Trinit^, the Galerie de Cerfs, and the Court of Henri IV at Fontainebleau, the low-lying group of the buildings to the east of the Cour Ovale.^ The Chapel of La Trinite was only begun in the last year of his life, and its completion belongs to the following reign. The Galerie des Cerfs was built by Henri to join the Cour Ovale to the principal porter's lodge on the Place d'Armes. It con- sisted of a long passage-way on the ground-floor 245 ft. long by 22^ ft. wide, above which was the Galerie de Diane, built to please Gabrielle d'Estrees. The interior was completely altered under the first Napoleon, and the upper gallery was turned into a library, and finally decorated by Pujol for Louis XVIII and Louis Philippe. The exterior, which is of brick and stone, is an interesting example of that unpretentious architecture of brick and stone which is the most original contribution to French architecture of the reign of Henri IV, and of which the Place des Vosges is still an excellent example. The design is lacking in great architectural qualities, but there is a restraint in the details which redeems it from insignificance.^ It is not known who was the architect of the Galerie des Cerfs, or of the Cour Henri IV, with its bold and imposing entrance. The treatment of the pavilions recalls the entrances to the town of Richelieu, an authentic work of Lemercier. On the other hand, the rustications, and a certain heaviness of treat- ment, suggest Salomon de Brosse's work at the Luxembourg. As Lemercier was born in 1585, it is more likely that De Brosse was the designer. De Brosse, who was born in 1565, was already well known at the Court,* and it is probable that he also designed the ' Reproduced in the "Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1870, iii, 560-567. Only eleven of the streets out of the original twenty-four were formed, namely, Poitou, Bretagne, Beaune, Saintonge, La Manche, Touraine, La Perche, Berri, Orleans, Beaujolais, and Anjou. ^ In the " Domaine de la Couronne, Fontainebleau," p. 1 1, it is stated that Henri IV made "le grand etang qui horde au midi la Cour des Fontaines" and the "grand canal qui s'dtant dans toute la longeur du Pare," but in Du Cerceau's general view of Fontaine- bleau (B.M., V, 69) the lake is shown in its present position. ^ It was in this gallery that M. Pacard, architect of the Palace of Fontainebleau, discovered the fragments of the painting of the Louvre. The lower gallery was decorated with thirteen views of the royal palaces painted by Du Breul. It was in this gallery also that the Marquis de Monaldeschi was murdered, in 1657, by order of Christina of Sweden. * In the year 1618 Salomon de Brosse was an "architecte du Roy" at the Louvre, St. Germain, Vincennes, and other places, and received 2,400 livres, whereas Jacques Lemercier, who is heard of in that account for the first time, is briefly called "autre architecte," and only received 1,200 livres. See Berty, "Top. Hist.," ii, 208-209. I'l,. C\'l ^^*W^ ■■■vv ■I "i- 1 ■ ; Q a: o o [n. Til KACF. I'. 46 Vl. cviii /'//,./,..] I/.. .1/. I'WII l.iiN l)|-, I, A l;llil,IOTHKQUE: FONTAINlUil.K.AU (I', (^i) (lOHMKRI.V GAr.F.RIR DF.S fF.RI-s) [ll. lO KAi'K 1'. 46 HENRI IV 47 Pavilion de Sully, a small house at a short distance east of the Palace, which Henri built for his minister, and the curious " Baptisterie " or entrance to the Cour Ovale, a square cupola on stone arches, which the King had built in 1606, in order that his three children might be baptized under it in the presence of the Court. Apparently the Salle du Guet, built by Francois I, was demolished in order to make way for this building.^ The additions made to Fontainebleau by Henri IV are important as illustrating what remained for many years the vernacular style in less important country houses. At the Louvre or at St. Germain the aim of the architects was more ambitious. Fontaine- bleau was always regarded rather as a country house than a palace, and the example set in the Cour Henri IV, the Galerie des Cerfs, and the Pavilion de Sully, was widely followed throughout the country. Henri IV's buildings at St. Germain-en- Laye were scarcely less important than his additions to Fontainebleau. The old chateau stood too far back from the river for the view. A scheme had already been prepared for Henri II, by De I'Orme, for new buildings on the crest of the hill overlooking the Seine, and the theatre designed by De I'Orme was already built. Henry IV's alterations consisted in squaring up the outside of De I'Orme's building, and enclosing it by a new faqade on the river front, with wings returning at either end, past the earlier buildines and at some distance from it. On the river front was formed a prodigious series of terraces and staircases leading down to the river, some 320 ft. below. Marchand, who finished the Pont Neuf, is described as having been the architect of this work, though it is more probable that he was the building contractor, and Alessandro Francini the Florentine engineer constructed some amazing water-works, including a grotto in which Orpheus was made to play on his lute, birds to sing, and trees to bend.^ The work seems to have been badly done, for the buildings were ruinous before the French Revolution. There is now not a trace of it left, and the only records of it are contemporary descriptions, the plates of Israel Sylvestre, and the great view engraved by Francini in 16 14. Partly owing to the absence of materials, and still more to the erroneous tendency to identify the French Renaissance with Fran(jois I, the importance of what Henri IV did to advance French architecture has been much under-rated. He was the first French King after ' See vol. i, p. 50. •' When a string of the lute was broken it cost Louis XIII three hundred crowns to have it repaired (Sauvageot). 48 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE Fran9ois I to take any genuine interest in the arts, and it was due to his impulse that French architecture began to recover its tone and regain its place in the line of genuine development; for there is one far-reaching difference between the patronage of Frangois I and Henri IV. Frangois I was also an enthusiastic patron of the arts, but he seems to have been unable to consider art as a whole, and in its relation to the social and political life of his countrymen. The active personal part that he took in the direction of his artists in no way compensated for this failure in large ideas ; it was, indeed, as I have already pointed out, actually injurious to the progress of the arts. The role of the intelligent ruler is not to interfere with artists in the details of their art, but to find them opportunity and elbow room, to stimulate the intellectual atmosphere in which they work ; to apply wisely the resources of the state to their encouragement and support. It was to this great task, among many others, that Henri IV devoted himself, and it was in this way that he laid the foundations of all that has been most vital in France in the relations of the modern state to the arts. M. Poirson said justly, " ce qu'il accomplit fut enorme; ce qu'il projeta et commen9a fut immense : . . . il prepara dans I'avenir toute une revolution ; les gouvernements et les administrations muni- cipales qui ont change la face du hideux Paris du moyen age n'ont fait qu'appliquer ses idees."^ In the largeness of his conceptions, and the statesmanlike patriotism of his aims, Henri IV was far ahead of his time. Louis XIV, with all his ambition for the greatness of his monarchy, could not rise to that high level ; but he was fortunate in his generation, and he reaped the benefit of ideas which were due to the genius of his grandfather. ^ Poirson, iii, 707. Vl. CIX .:^ I \ I II. ro FACE I'. 48 CHAPTER XIV MARIE DE MEDICIS, SALOMON DE BROSSE, JEAN DU CERCEAU THE accounts for salaries' paid to officials employed on the royal palaces in the year 1618 opens with the following names: Salomon de Brosse, architecte, 2,400 livres, Clement Metezeau, architecte, 800 livres, Paul de Brosse, also architect, 800 livres, Jean Androuet du Cerceau, 500 livres; Ysabel de Hangueil, widow of Louis Metezeau, architect, 600 livres, Jacques Lemercier, " another architect," 1,200, and Pierre Le Muet, a boy ("jeune gar^on ") retained by her Majesty to work at models and elevations of houses, 600 livres. The names so brought together are suggestive. Salomon de Brosse belonged to the sixteenth century almost as much as to the seventeenth. Paul de Brosse and Jean du Cerceau were his nephews, and belong to the next generation. Lemercier, who appears here for the first time, takes us well into the seventeenth century, and Le Muet, who is de- scribed as a mere boy, carries us down to the time of Louis XIV. The sequence, from the birth of De Brosse to the death of Le Muet, extends from Charles IX to Louis XIV, and covers about a hundred years of ' This most interesting account is given in full in Berty, "Top. Hist, du Vieux Paris," ii, 208-215. 1* includes painters, sculptors, carpenters, enamellers, gardeners, and engineers, and all the more important artists and tradesmen employed at the Louvre, Tuileries, St. Germain-en- Laye, Vincennes, and other royal palaces. Among the painters are an Erard of Nantes, perhaps the father of Charles Errard, the first Director of the French Academy at Rome, Simon Vouet, " estant de present en Italic, cy devant retenu par sa Maj'* au lieu de Rend Lefranc, aussi peintre deceddd, qui y avoit este envoyd par le feu Roy (Henri IV) pour se rendre capable de servir sa Majtd en peintures et ornemens du dedans de ses maisons." Among the sculptors Bordoni, who succeeded Francheville, Guillaume de Fr^, Pierre Mansart, sculptor (son of Jean, and probably related to the architect), Herbert Lesueur and Pierre Biard, " sculpteur, qui a cy devant servy souby le sieur Francqueville, sculpteur, d'oii il a este en Italie, pour continuer ses estudes et se rendre capable de servir sa majestd en sculpture " (this, of course, is the younger Biard), Claude MoUet the gardener, Jean Nostre, gardener, Francini the water engineer from Florence, and many others. The Due de Sully receives six thousand livres, as super- intendent of buildings in Paris and St. Germain, one of the few appointments he retained after the death of Henri IV. There is a suggestive entry of payment to a gardener for attending to the grand parterre at the Tuileries, between the wood berceaux and the alley of mulberry trees, and for trimming the pole-hedges " tant de bois sauvages que de jassemin, coigners (?), grenadiers, arbres de Judde, etc." H H 50 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE momentous history in the development of France. Within that hundred years French architecture found itself. It emerged definitely from the experiments of the sixteenth century, and passed beyond the stage of merely playing with the orders to a real mastery of classical architecture. When Le Muet died, the tradition and ascendency of neo-classic were as solidly established in France as the despotic power of the monarchy itself. Another conclusion to be drawn from these accounts is that Marie de Medicis, with all her faults, was at least sympathetic in regard to the arts. In 1618 she was still Regent, and a comparison of the list of artists maintained by her in that year with the much smaller list of 1608,^ shows that in this regard at any rate she followed Henri's policy of nursing the arts, for all these artists were supported out of the royal purse. Five at least of the architects were able men. Among the sculptors were Du Pre the medallist, Bordoni the Italian, Pierre Biard the younger, Herbert Lesueur,sculptor and bronze-founder, whoexecuted the statue of Charles I, and the figures in the inner court of St. John's, Oxford. The Queen herself maintained Simon Vouet in Italy, in order to study the painting and decorations of houses; and it is important to note that at this period, when architecture was steadily advancing, great stress was laid on decorative painting. In nearly all the accounts of the royal buildings that have reached us, there are frequent entries of the painters employed in their decoration, not for easel pictures, but for frescoes on walls and ceilings. Thus the Queen pays a certain Sieur de Sainct Moris 1,800 livres a year for invention of paintings and devices for her houses and galleries.^ Erard is summoned from Nantes for the same purpose, and six other painters are named, all of whom were employed in similar work; not always of first-rate excellence, but always interesting in its decorative sense, and from a certain simplicity and sincerity of treatment.^ Most of it has now disappeared, but examples are still to be found in the provinces, as at Oiron and Saint Loup* in Poitou and Chiverny in the Sologne * (1634). In the Salon ' See Berty, ii, 207. ^ Ibid., ii, 209. ' The small French room painted and panelled at the South Kensington Museum shows this kind of work at its lowest level. The quaint decorations at Bussy Rabutin (1640) are another example. See below. ' In one of the rooms at Saint Loup the main beams of the ceilings are covered with leather gilt and painted with cupids, fruit, and flowers. Montgomery Ducey near Avranches is another example. ' The date carved on stones. Chiverny is some eight or nine miles from Blois; " un nommd Boyer, de Blois, en fut I'architecte " (F^libien, " Memoires," 64). See also chap. XX, p. 137. I'l.. ex fii. Ml 1AL1-: I-. 50 MARIE DE MEDICIS, DE BROSSE, DU CERCEAU 51 or Salle des Gardes of Chiverny, the walls are painted with panels of flowers, daffodils, lilies, tulips, and others, each with their Latin motto; and the beams of the ceilings are covered with arabesques in white, black, green, yellow, and lilac, on a chocolate ground. This appears to be the earlier work, and takes us back to some of the decora- tions of Ancy-le-Franc, and even of the Queen's cabinet at Chenon- ceaux. In the Chambre du Roi, at Chiverny, the ceiling is deeply coffered in panels, all painted with figure subjects by an artist named Monnier, of Blois, and exceedingly decorative in effect. We are here at the parting of the ways. There is a distinct remin- iscence of Primaticcio's manner and the sixteenth century in the details of Chiverny. That manner was not ambitious, nor were its aims heroic. All it sought was a pleasant general harmony of colour and gilding, with quaint fancies in decoration, heathen gods and goddesses in cheerful if not always dignified circumstance, mingled as at Chiverny with devices of flowers from the garden; work that made no great demand on the imagination, and yet was entirely pleasant to live with. But before Monnier had begun his work at Chiverny, the gallery at the Luxembourg was finished, the taste for the dramatic and the heroic had come in with a rush. The pageantry of ancient Rome as given by the Carracci was the accepted theme and method of painting, and now Rubens with his irresistible brush had swept out the lesser men. His achievement was magnificent, and of vast importance for French art, but one cannot help regretting to some extent the loss of the poetical fancy, and a certain delicate instinct for decorative fitness which had been the best legacy of Primaticcio and the sixteenth century. Still the arts of France were on the move, and one has to accept a certain pose and convention before it is possible to appreciate the move- ment justly. In 161 2 Marie de Medicis^ bought from the Duke of Piney- Luxembourg a large house and gardens on the site of the present Luxembourg, and in the following year a farm and various gardens adjoining the property,^ including a windmill belonging to the Chartreux. In 1 61 5 she had the whole site cleared, and called in Salomon de Brosse to build her a palace as a dower house. Salomon de Brosse, as already mentioned, was closely connected with the Du Cerceau family. He is ' Marie de Mcdicis was daughter of Francis II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and of Jeanne of Austria, born 1573, and married to Henri IV in 1600. ^ A. de Gisors, " Le Palais du Luxembourg," 33-39. De Gisors, following Blondel, calls De Brosse "Jacques"; he is called "Salomon" in the account for 1618. 52 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE usually described as the son of Jean de Brosse, and Bauchal gives the date of his birth at Verneuil as 1565, but in the account of 1618 already referred to Du Cerceau (that is Jacques Androuet the second) is referred to as his uncle lately deceased. So that Salomon must have been the grandson of the engraver and of Jean de Brosse of Verneuil. The large salary that he received in 1618 shows that he must have been an architect of considerable reputation, and therefore not a very young man, when he succeeded his uncle in 1 614 in the charge of the Royal palaces; nor was the Luxembourg his first important work, for he had already designed the chateau of Coulommiers-en-Brie and the Hotel de Bouillon in the rue de Seine now destroyed. According to the story, Marie de Medicis instructed her architect to copy the Pitti Palace, but either the story is a fable, or De Brosse must have hoodwinked his employer, for he did nothing of the sort. The Pitti Palace, begun in 1435 from the designs of Brunelleschi, and completed by Ammanati somewhere about 1570, is famous as one of the largest palaces in Italy, and architecturally for very little else. Ruskin excelled himself in his enthusiasm for the rustications of the Pitti Palace, " a stern expression of brotherhood with the mountain's heart from which it has been rent, ill exchanged for a glistering obedience to the rule and measure of man " (" Seven Lamps," 8^). But after all what is architecture but an expression of the " rule and measure of man " ? Rustications have no value in themselves, but only in their relation to other parts of a building otherwise treated. The fagade of the Pitti is in three storeys with a balustrade running unbroken along the entire front. The whole fagade from the ground up to the top cornice is rusticated, and presents an interminable series of roundheaded windows with deep voussoirs to the arches. On the whole, it is about the most brutal design for a palace front ever perpetrated, and its only possible justification might be that Luca Pitti, who built it, needed a fortress for himself and his ruffians. The only common feature in the two buildings is their free use of rustications, but though greatly overdone at the Luxembourg they are there handled with some regard to their architectural intention. There is, in fact, no sort of resemblance between the Pitti and the Luxembourg. But De Brosse was not altogether happy in the solu- tion of his problem.' The site bought by Marie de Medicis lay ' The Palace of the Luxembourg has been materially altered in the many trans- formations it has undergone since the days of the first Napoleon, and we have to depend on Marot's plates and contemporary descriptions to realize what it was in the seventeenth century. The palace was a good deal altered in 1734 (Blondel, "Arch. Frang.," ii, 50), Pl. CXI A ^ ■i ' ;^ **i?ti-ir« :g> a k--— -rfcpt Lillill ir=^ s^ ^ ^f^^r^^^ 'n#i ill liWinrin; ■H ,< r,„U,-/l,-- / M.,r,^H^ :',■ ,i^/ THK LUXICMIlOUkC : CKOUNH PLAN ( I', 55) \:\larot THE LUXE.MLiOUKG: SECTION AM) SIDE ELEVATION TO COUKT II. To FACE 1'. 5jl MARIE DE MEDICIS, DE BROSSE, DU CERCEAU 53 parallel to the street ^ in its greatest length, instead of at right angles to it. There was room, however, to set the building back, so that the entrance front would be seen in full by any one approaching the palace, but De Brosse made the mistake of bringing the front of his Court of Honour right up to the street, with the result that, as there is no "place" in front of it, the composition is not visible at any distance as a whole. He probably relied on his principal buildings showing up as a background to the Belvedere over the main entrance The plan consisted of a large court 180 ft. wide and 210 ft. long, surrounded on three sides by buildings. To the right and left were galleries in two storeys. In that on the upper floor on the right were the series of scenes from the life of Marie de Medicis, painted by Rubens (now in the Louvre), and it was intended that a similar series from the life of Henri IV should fill the left hand gallery. At the two outer angles next the street were lofty pavilions in three storeys, stand- ing forward into the street, with steep pyramidal roofs ; between these pavilions was a one-storey gallery with a terrace above it, and in the centre the principal entrance, with a square storey above it carrying a circular Belvedere. The principal buildings were on the farther side of the Cour d'Honneur. Six circular steps led up from the court to a broad terrace, separated from the court by a balustrade and extending to the main block. The plan of this was H-shaped. At either end were two large pavilions, 60 ft. square with a recess in the centre, forming the side wings and joining these wings was a single thickness building, separating the terrace of the Court of Honour from the gardens at the back. On the garden side was a gallery and terrace, run- ning the whole length between the pavilions. The principal staircase was in the centre, with a low passage way under it to the garden vestibule (Blondel says it was much too low and narrow for its purpose), and on the first floor, above this vestibule, and at the back of the main staircase was the chapel. To the right and left of the main stairs on the first floor were guard rooms, giving access to the principal rooms in the four great pavilions. The only access to the galleries was through these rooms, except for two subsidiary staircases in the pavilions on the front to the street. Like most of the plans of the time, it covered a great deal of ground, and gave comparatively very little accommodation. when the top floor was remodelled, but Blondel's plates reproduce Marot's engravings made before any alteration. ' The rue de Vaugirard. ^ Measured from internal face of the buildings next the street to the face of the buildings on the further side of the terrace to the Cour d'Honneur. Plan in the Petit Marot. 54 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE There were other faults in the plan. The terrace in the Court of Honour was picturesque from the court, but it involved crossing some 50 ft. in the open before one could enter the house; and Blondel is severe on the great projection of the pavilions on the garden side which shut out the view from the centre part. In the elevations De Brosse used three orders, Tuscan, Doric, and Ionic, for the pavilions, and a composite order for the attic of the centre part. Each order had its entablature with a pedestal course above it, and above the top cornice of the pavilions and at the springing of all the immense roofs there were balustrades. Every storey was rusticated, and all the entablatures and pedestal cornices were returned round every pair of pilasters. Blondel, whose criticism of this building is one of the best of his many admirable appreciations, says that the beauties of the Luxembourg consist in its virility, the severity of its forms, the purity of its profiles, the proportion of certain parts, and in general in a certain taste based on the antique and maintained throughout the entire com- position.^ Having thus liberated his conscience he proceeds to some very severe criticism in detail. The Tuscan order was too fat, the Doric order too short, and the attic too low. Over the attic storey of the principal entrance to the main building, there was a segmental pediment, on which were two enormous figures, out of scale with the Caryatides below them and indeed with anything else in the building. These have long since disappeared, but Blondel's criticism is entirely borne out by his plates. Scale is the touchstone of architecture, and these men of the first half of the seventeenth century were as yet by no means sure of their scale. We shall find a similar failure in Lemercier's "Pavilion de I'Horloge " at the Louvre, some ten years later. Moreover De Brosse was given to working his motives to a standstill. The rustications of the Luxembourg defeat themselves by their repetition, and the constant returns of the entablatures over each pair of pilasters were tedious and irritating. Blondel finds fault with the variations in the height of different parts of the building, one storey in the front gallery, two in the two sides, three in the pavilions and main building. Such diversity, he says, is only tolerable in a building of great extent, where the object ^ " Les beautes reconnues telles dans la decoration de ce Palais consistent dans la caractere de virilite qu'on remarque dans tout son ordonnance, dans la severity des formes, la purite des profils, la proportion particuliere de certaines parties, et, en general, dans un certain godt antique, egalement soutenue dans la totality aussi que dans les details de I'architecture et les ornaments qui le composent " (" Arch. Frang., ii, 51). Blondel apolo- gizes for his criticism. Pl. CXIl' f T z; o o ~ z o H O w [ll. TO lA' i: I-. 54 MARIE DE MEDICIS, DE BROSSE, DU CERCEAU 55 is to produce a pyramidal composition, by supporting the main block with lower buildings, a criticism which a little reminds one of Sir Joshua Reynolds' praise of Vanbrugh's methods of design. Blondel concludes his criticism with words which ought to be put up in every school of architecture, " simplicity of form, economy of ornament, reserve in the breaks ought to be held a higher beauty than any detail that invention and genius can suggest." The whole of his criticism on the Luxembourg is well worth reading. It is written from a definite academic standpoint, certain fixed canons of design must be followed, strict propriety must be observed, but, that once accepted, his criticism is shrewd and acute, he detects the real faults of the design, and exposes them with a very intimate sense of the gravity and dignity of monu- mental architecture. De Brosse was not only architect of the Luxembourg. He was con- tractor as well; and in this capacity bought quarries for the stone-work, and provided all the plant and materials. In 1621 he was receiving 2,000 livres a week, but a difference arose in regard to his claims. In 1623 his own experts assessed them at 700,150 livres, whereas the repre- sentatives of the Queen-Mother put them at 581,653 livres. In the re- sult De Brosse's claims were settled, and he was superseded in 1624 by Marin de la Vallee, a well-known contractor of Paris. It appears from the contract made with De la Vallee that De Brosse had considerable difficulty with his foundations, and had to sink a number of shafts in order to get a solid footing." The Queen furnished her palace in the most costly manner. A writer in 1640 says that in the cabinet the floor was of marquetry, the chimney-piece and the panelling were all gilt, the windows glazed with fine crystal, and the cames or bars were of silver instead of lead.° The gardens designed by De Brosse were on a great scale.^ The grotto, since reconstructed, was formed from his design on the east side of the crarden, and water for the fountains was brought from Rongis in underground pipes, and through an aqueduct of twenty-five arches at Arceuil, 1,300 ft. long, and 80 ft. high at its highest point. Though money was spent right and left, the work was not com- pleted. After Concini was murdered in 161 7, Marie de Medicis entered into a series of desperate intrigues to maintain her influence over her son, and to break the power of Richelieu. Her failure was complete ' A. Hustin, " Le Palais de Luxembourg," 16-17. - Malingre, " Antiquities de Paris," 1640, ii, 401. Quoted by De Gisors. ' They have been completely altered since, first in 1782, again in iSio-ii, and in 1840, when the grotto by De Brosse was reconstructed. 56 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE and memorable. After 1631 she was an exile, and she died at Cologne, almost destitute, in 1642.^ The Luxembourg was neglected; and in 1733-4 considerable repairs were found to be necessary. In 1776 Soufflot prepared a scheme for filling up the space between the two pavilions on the garden side which was not carried out,* and in 1795-8 it was altered by Chalgrin for the Directoire. In 1804 further works were carried out under Chalgrin, when the terrace in the Cour d'Hon- neur was removed, and the principal staircase and chapel were destroyed to make room for the Salle des Conferences. Finally, a further remodel- ling by De Gisors was] begun in 1836, and finished in 1840, which so completely transformed De Brosse's Palace that no adequate idea of what it was can be formed from the existing building. It was increased by more than one third on the garden side, the whole of this facade with the two angle pavilions dating from 1840. The interior was altered out of all knowledge, and, probably at this date, common- place modern roofs were substituted for the immense roofs of the pavilions and central building, which had been essential features of the original design.' De Brosse designed three other famous buildings in Paris, the west front of St. Gervais, the Protestant temple of Charenton, and the Hall of the Palais de Justice. The west front of St. Gervais was built in 1 616, Louis XIII laying the first stone. The design, which is too well known to need description, seems to have been considered a masterpiece till the time of Blondel. Its chief merit is its size. The diameter of the Doric order of the lowest storey is 3 ft. 7 in., and the height of the order with its entablature is 35 ft. 9 in. Blondel gives the height from the ground line to the top of the Corinthian entablature as 138 ft. 6 in. Otherwise the design is commonplace enough, and there is force in Blondel's contention that it would have been greatly improved by taking the pedestal course from the Ionic order and placing it under the Doric, for the whole building, like the garden facade of the old Luxembourg, seems sinking into the ground. The central pediment is not wanted, and interferes with what Blondel calls " the gravity of the architecture," and the composition of the top storey with the two lower orders is awkward and unhappy. The fact is that with orders above ' For three years, 1638-41, she was maintained in England by Charles I, her son-in- law, who allowed her a hundred livres a day (De Gisors, 54). " See Hustin, 18-29. ' It is now the palace of the Senate. See introductory note, Blondel, "Arch. Frang.," Guadet and Pascal, vol. ii. For a series of views of the Luxembourg in its present state, see the views pubUshed by Armand Guerinet. Pi. CXI\' II. Ml Al K V. \U MARIE DE MEDICIS, DE BROSSE, DU CERCEAU 57 orders it is difificult to avoid a monotonous and merely mechanical design. A man with a genius for proportion, such as Fran9ois Mansart, at Blois and Maisons, may justify himself by some excellent rhythm, but this constant breaking-up of the facade by the horizontal lines of the entablature, the repeated breaks which are involved, the obviousness of the motive, and the undue display of the mScanique of classical design, all tend to diminish the scale and to fritter away the impression of grandeur. Blondel, somewhat unkindly, suggests that the real reason why the front of St. Gervais was thought so good, was that the front of the Maison Professe des Jesuites ' by the Pere Derand was so indubitably bad. The Protestant temple at Charenton was a different affair. De Brosse seems to have been determined to carry out the idea of a con- venticle with the most rigorous logic. His plan consisted of a parallel- ogram, 100 ft. by 50 ft. (inside measurements). This he divided up into a nave and aisles in nine bays, with Doric columns supporting two tiers of galleries, and above these square piers on the floor of the second gallery up to the plate of the wagon ceiling of the nave. The aisles ran round the ends as well as the sides, so that there were four columns at the ends and eight at the sides. Plain balustrades formed the front of the galleries, there were no entablatures, and the whole building was covered in by a great barn roof. The Temple was pulled down after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and appears to have had little architectural value. De Brosse made no attempt to get any quality out of his problem. He does not seem to have been capable of an effort of genius such as enabled Inigo Jones to design "the handsomest barn in Christendom," and De Brosse's Temple must have been inferior to such a picturesque conventicle as the Niewe Kerke at The Hague. The Grande Salle of the Palais de Justice was rebuilt by De Brosse in 1625, and again in 1872 by Due and Daumet, apparently in more or less faithful reproduction of De Brosse's design. It is a vast hall in two aisles, about 1 10 ft. wide by 280 ft. long, exclusive of the gallery at the east end. The arcade down the centre is a clumsy arrangement, and though in a way it is a solution of the problem of covering in a very large space, the design is unimaginative and commonplace. De Brosse was a competent practical architect, but by no means a great artist. In Marot's collection of views '' there is a plan and three elevations of the Chateau of Colommiers en Brie, which was designed by De Brosse. The plan consisted of a rectangular court, 180 ft. by 150 ft. inside, ' In the rue St. Antoine, begun in 1627 (Blondel, "Arch. Fran^.," ii, 119). ° In the collection known as Le Petit Marot. II I 58 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE with buildings on three sides and on the fourth or entrance side a low- screen building with a pavilion at the entrance, and a terrace at the further end of the court, with the principal staircase in the centre of the main block, much on the lines of his design for the Luxembourg. The same treatment of a three-sided court with low screen wall in front and an important pavilion over the central entrance is shown in the views of Liencour and Monceaux by Silvestre. Colommiers appears to have been a study for the larger building. The court of the Luxem- bourg measured 210 ft. by 180 ft. as against the 180 ft. by 150 ft. of Colommiers, and the general conception of the two plans, with the terrace opposite the main entrance, the screen wall and Belvedere on the entrance side, and the arrangement of the buildings on three sides with the main corps de logis on the side opposite the entrance, was pretty nearly the same. The entrance fronts were nearly identical, but in the elevation to the court and the garden front, De Brosse allowed himself greater licence at Colommiers than he did afterwards at the Luxembourg. Colommiers was built about 161 3 for Catherine de Gonzaga, widow of the first Due de Longueville. It was pulled down in 1737 by the Due de Chevreuse of the time, in order to save the cost of its maintenance. The last work that De Brosse undertook was the Parliament House, now the Palais de Justice, at Rennes, begun in 1624, and com- pleted by an architect of Rennes named Cormeau thirty years later.^ This building is one of the most remarkable in the west of France. The plan consists of a square courtyard, with advanced wings in the front, and has not been materially altered from De Brosse's design. The front facade has a rusticated ground storey of granite; above this is a pedestal course supporting Doric pilasters with an entablature and balustrade, behind which rises a steep slate roof with elaborate lead cresting, and lead figures at the angles of the roofs of the wings. The design is simpler, better proportioned, and more mature than those of the Luxem- bourg and Colommiers. A broad flight of steps leads up from the ground floor to the salle des pas perdus, a magnificent hall about 125 ft. long and 40 ft. wide, which occupies the whole of the front except the two wings. This hall is covered by a wagon roof in wood, divided into panels by bold mouldings of wood with wreaths, swags, coats of arms, and other devices on the panels, all of which were gilt on a blue ground. All De Brosse's work here, this hall and the galleries running round the court are on a great scale, a scale well maintained in the ' It was further altered by Gabriel the elder in 1726. I'l,. cxv IJI'.MIIN I'Ok llllt l'..\ IKANel', 1 At ADK SECTIONS AND ELKVATION TO COURT ^ |.I/,!/W <;K()IN|i I'l.AN COI.OMMlKks-I.N-llRII'.: UK NKOSSI'., A KCH I I l-.C I ( I'. 57) lMar<,i [11. Ill I A' t. I'. 5,S p.,. CW^l z a I II. lO KAlK 1'. i;S MARIE DE MEDICIS, DE BROSSE, DU CERCEAU 59 splendid coffered wood ceilings of several of the principal rooms, which appear to have been executed by Cormeau after the death of De Brosse, for the building was not completed till 1666. De Brosse died at Paris in 1626. So far as it is now possible to judge from his work, he was a considerable man, and possessed a certain vigour of design and feeling for scale. Technically, he was well versed in his trade. There is nothing trifling or affected in his architecture. But he was ponderous, and heavy of touch, and rather dull. It is of no use looking to De Brosse for any of the finer qualities of art. His design is straightforward and obvious, but unconscious of subtleties of rhythm and proportion. He ranks with Lemercier, not with Fran9ois Mansart. De Brosse left a nephew, Paul, who appears in the list of the paid architects of the King between 1616 and 1628, and who undertook certain works in conjunction with his cousin, Jean Androuet du Cer- ceau; and in 1636 is said to have made a design with Lemercier^ for the completion of the north-west tower of the cathedral of Troyes. This was completed in 1638. It is a great lump of a tower with few redeeming qualities, and the designers would have done better to follow the design of the existing west front by the old master-mason of Sens. The younger De Brosse was joint owner with Jean du Cerceau of certain stone quarries at Mendon, of which Du Cerceau ultimately became sole owner. He appears to have been less suc- cessful than his cousin, Jean du Cerceau, who was Architect-in- Ordinary to the King in 1635, and who seems to have been employed on several of the big town houses that were being built about that time in Paris. At some date early in the seventeenth century (after 161 2), he designed the Hotel de Sully (Berty says 1624-30) and the Hotel de Mayenne, both in the rue St. Antoine, picturesque buildings, but vulgar in design and crude in detail. The Hotel de Sully, in spite of the advertisements which conceal most of the front, is very little injured on the sides to the courtyard.'- The fa9ades are elaborate and greatly ' Bauchal, " Nouveau Diet." •' The Hotel de Sully is No. 62, rue St. Antoine. It appears from De Breul (" Supple- ment des Antiquitez de Paris," 69), that this hotel was built for De Neubourg, Master-in- Ordinary in the Chambre des Coniptes, and was brought by Sully on the death of De Neubourg. De Breul describes it as " un tres beau logis, accompagne d'un grand carr^ de logemens, d'une belle cour, et spacieux jardin." There is a good ceiling of the time on the soffit of the main stairs, but the details are coarse. The court measures about 60 ft. by 90 ft. The building above the ground-floor storey between the two pavilions in the front is, of course, modern. The Hotel de Mayenne was built in 161 3 for the Due de Mayenne, the fat and famous adversary of Henri IV. The house was built of brick 6o FRENCH ARCHITECTURE overdone with pediments, heavy-looking figures in niches, and archi- tectural ornament, the latter coarse in relief and much cut in like Biard's carving at St. Etienne. These buildings do not give one a very high opinion of Du Cerceau's ability as an architect, but they were certainly early works. Architecture was advancing rapidly in the reign of Louis XHI. The confusion of thought characteristic of the early part of the seventeenth century was clearing, a higher standard of taste was being formed, and architects were beginning to realize that they must exercise restraint and selection if their designs were to escape the blatant vulgarity of the Hotel de Sully. In 1635 Louis XIII bought the Isle Notre Dame (now Isle St. Louis) and some of the best houses in Paris were built here. The Hotel de Bretonvillers, designed by Du Cerceau, was probably the first, and it was followed by the Hotels Lambert et d'Hesselin.' The Hotel de Bretonvillers stood at the east end of the island, and appears from old engravings to have been a very large house, consisting of a main building in two storeys, with attics in a lofty roof. The entrance was on the west side, this side of the court being as usual kept down to one storey. A long building, apparently a gallery, continued eastward along the north side, opening on to the garden which occupied an irregular plot south-east of the house, and facing to the Seine on the south side. The east fa9ade to the garden measured 140 ft., and the inner court 84 ft. by 78 ft.- The side elevations of this court with their shells and pediments recall the familiar Du Cerceau manner, but the rest of the elevations are more mature, and may have been the work of a later hand. The building was destroyed in 1873. The only other important house known to have been designed by this Jean Du Cerceau was the Hotel Bellegarde, more generally known as the Hotel Seguier, and remarkable for the magnificence of its decorations.^ The house was built of brick with bands of stone, as and stone. De Breul, loc. at., says: " Le corps de logis de derriere est fort grand, embelly de belles et grandes salles, chambres, anti-chambres, cabinets, et d'un bel escalier." It is now called " Les Francs Bourgeois." ' Note on a print by Marot. The Hotel d'Hesselin is No. 24, Quai de Bethune, and has a fine seventeenth-century door, and considerable remains of the original design in the courtyard at the back. These are shown in Marot's views. The Hotel Lambert is the well-known building at the end of the Isle St. Louis. ^ Dimensions on the plan in " Le Petit Marot." ' The Hotel Bellegarde, said by Sauval to have been sold in 161 2 by Madame de Montpensier, afterwards Duchesse de Guise, to Roger de Sanlari, Due de Bellegarde, " le plus galant et le plus achevd courtisan de son siecle." He decided to rebuild the house, and employed Du Cerceau to design him a new palace on the debris of the Hotels " de Conde, de .Soissons, et de Montpensier," which he adorned with "gildings, emblems, Pi,. CXVll GARUEX FRONT \Miiivt \Mnivt ELEVATION AND SECTION CROUND PLAN 111 III JIKL HE SULI,\' ( I'. 5()) \.\/ttrol i [n. lo 1-AC_ E r. Oo Pl. cxviii ■-:=!;s "■■is o X - '3 ? H ^ ^ 5 S O X "^ ^ ■f; o z [ll. TO FACF. !■. 60 MARIE DE MEDICIS, DE BROSSE, DU CERCEAU 6i in the houses of the Place Dauphine and the Place Royale and con- tained a remarkable staircase invented and carried out by Toussaint Vergier. The stairs were contained in a square apartment, with land- ings and an opening in the centre, wide easy steps of stone and a stone balustrade, all carried on vaults and trompes of masonry without further support. Du Cerceau is known to have been employed on this house in 1645, and this is the last we hear of him till his death in 1650 at the age of sixty. It is hardly fair to judge a man by a single work, and it is perhaps unfortunate for Jean du Cerceau that the Hotel de Sully is the only considerable building of his from which it is now possible to arrive at some appreciation of his powers. If all the design of the Hotel de Bretonvillers, as shown by Marot, was his, he certainly improved as he went on. but on the evidence of the Hotel de Sully it is impossible to rank him high as an architect. That building shows a certain power of composition, but little or no technical attainment, and no sensitive feeling for the great qualities of architecture. This particular Du Cerceau seems to have been typical of the second-rate man of the time, men who did a great quantity of work, most of it bad, and scarcely worth consideration, except that their names have survived in seventeenth-century engravings. It is the more to be regretted that we know nothing of the men who designed buildings of much greater merit elsewhere in France, and who must have been contemporaries of De Brosse and of this younger Du Cerceau. At Toulouse, for instance, there are two remarkable gateways, dating from the reign of Henri IV, or thereabouts, the authorship of which is quite unknown. One is at the back of the Capitole, or Town Hall, in the Cour Henri IV, which was built in 1 60 1-3. The other is the entrance to the Lycee, close to the Church of trophies of arms, the swords of the Grand Ecuyer, and certain rooms designed less for use than for' pomp and magnificence." The hotel afterwards passed into the hands of the Chancellor (Seguier), and was for some years the meeting place of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Sauval's account is circumstantial. He says that De Bellegarde employed Du Cerceau " comme alors il n'y avoit pour d'architecte qui eut plus de nom que Du Cerceau, car c'etoit lui qui avoit conduit les chateaux de Monceaux et de Ver- neuil, et non seulement qui passoit pour avoir des plus grands pens^es et des plus nobles fougues, mais de plus c'toit I'architecte du Roi " (Sauval, ii, 195-196). As Jean du Cerceau did not die till 1650, he must either have lived a very long life, or displayed precocious ability, to have gained this reputation by 1612-13. One is never quite certain whether Sauval is not mixing up all the Du Cerceau family together. According to De Geymuller, Jean du Cerceau was a minor in 1602, and it is probable that De Bellegarde did not begin building so early as Sauval implies. 62 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE the Jacobins. These doorways are distinguished by their great size, and their breadth of treatment. There is nothing like them of the same date in Paris or anywhere else in France that I know of, and they undoubtedly are the work of some individual designer of ability whose name is now lost. The doorway to the Lycee is almost 36 ft. high to the top of the upper cornice, and 22 ft. wide. The sculpture is badly defaced, though enough is left to make out the design, and both here, and in the great gateway at the back of the Capitole, the treatment is of striking originality. It goes beyond the stale repetition of the orders usual in contemporary work, and one can only regret that we know nothing of the man who designed these stately gateways. Possibly the same man designed the courtyard of the Hotel d'Assezat at Toulouse, with its fine gallery overlooking the court. This building is probably of two dates, as over the door with twisted columns is the date 1555, but the details are quite fifty years later, and as the brick and stone are bonded together in the most haphazard manner, I incline to think that these details were added later, i.e. about 1600, as certainly happened at the Hotel du Vieux Raisin or Bernuizier. This building dates from the early part of the sixteenth century, but at the end of that century some frantic sculptor was let loose in the court, who framed windows with terms and caryatides, and absolutely incrusted the old brick walls with his ornament, regardless of scale, and regard- less of the delicate ornament (probably Italian) of the earlier work. The sixteenth-century architecture of Toulouse is altogether most perplexing. It is improbable that the artist of the two great gateways mentioned above could also have designed this monstrous ornament. Then again, there are the Hotel de Felsins, and the Maison de Pierre, close to the Church of the Dalbade. The Hotel de Felsins is supposed to have been built about 1556, but is probably later ; the Maison de Pierre, now much rebuilt and modernized, dates from 161 2. They are badly designed, yet the very violence of their manner suggests a local artist, the hot blood of the meridional. There is, indeed, some evidence to show that the inspiration did actually come from the south, rather than from the north or from Italy. Jean de Bernuy, the builder of the Hotel Bernuy in 1557, was a merchant at Burgos before he came to Toulouse.^ There can be little doubt also that the influence of the Dijon school extended down the valley of the Rhone, and reached to Toulouse and other places in the south-east of France. Indeed, throughout the six- teenth century and well into the seventeenth, the two currents of ' See Alain Justice in "L'Art Frangais Primitif," E. Leroux, ed. 1906, 124-125. I'l.. rxix / % ■f /' i t^- ^, .. : «fc»C^t ^ Mil ^' •# ^ii!s«.t -■i- If ■ it'll >■■■', 5 ■.» I I W ^.% \M^>^^-^ i|^ 1 |i I'll ..-j^-^. - :1 o p o z a D O o •)-i'»sp'\» j S3'n.. .'..'V.^t.Nii I II. lO FACK P. 62 cxx ''^iii ''»'«''% i »*'i ■■Ik' *<;*?».■■, ■- -1*.^ %. y ( ^ i X 1 c;a-ik\v.\\ ok lllK i.vci'e: TOUi.orsE (p. 6i) I A'. /;.,/,■/. [11. TO FAI E p. 62 MARIE DE MEDICIS, DE BROSSE, DU CERCEAU 63 artistic thougfht, that of Paris and the north-west on the one hand, and that of Dijon and the south-east on the other, kept quite apart and have to be studied independently. The exuberance of feeling, the habit of forcing the note beyond its true architectural pitch, had long been characteristic of Dijon, and this tendency seems to have gathered up all its strength for a final effort at the end of the sixteenth century. Dijon is full of examples, the eccentricities of Hugues Sambin, and houses such as La Maison des Ambassadeurs, and No. 38, Rue des Forges,' where there is practically no plain wall at all, the sculptor having covered every inch of it with his fancies. There is another example at the corner of the Rue Chaudronnerie. It would almost seem as if the tragedies of the last thirty years of the sixteenth century must have strained everybody's nerves to breaking point, for there is a curiously tense feeling about the work of the early years of the seventeenth century, as if the grace and humanity of life had worn down to the bone, so that the architecture that expressed it had become restless and hysterical. The entrance to the Hotel de Vogue at Dijon, and more particularly the side to the courtyard, is a well-known example. The designer of this house is unknown, and even its exact date. The only date on the building is 16 14 on the chimney-piece of the big hall, but the entrance front is later than this date, and the angle doorway appears to be rather earlier. Sauvageot, who was very enthusiastic about it, accepted the Comte de Vogue's theory that it was designed by the owner, Estienne Bouhier himself, partly on the ground that no professional architect would have launched out into this " indpuisable et riche variete." '^ That, however, was exactly what the Dijon archi- tects did do, and had been doing for the last forty years, and the Hotel de Vogue may be taken as a typical instance of that school of design at its best. The Chateau de Sully, near Autun, very well illus- trated in Sauvageot, vol. i, is another example. It was begun by the famous Gaspard de Saulx, Marquis de Tavannes, and finished 1596- 1609 and 1650. Bussy Rabutin says that when he went there, some fifty years later, they entered the court with seven coaches and six horses apiece. Scarcely less striking is the Porte de la Citadelle, at Nancy (1598), with its trophies of arms, by Florent Drouin, the astonishing rustica- tions, formed of a series of rosettes, and the armed men corbelled out from the pilasters of the main gate. The Porte de la Citadelle is one of the most interesting examples remaining of the military architecture of ' Dated 1561. '' Sauvageot, "Palais, Chateaux," etc., i, 25. 64 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE the end of the sixteenth century. On the outside is the elaborate com- position shown in the illustration. Through this passed a narrow way, opening out into a great vaulted archway, 63 ft. long by 42 ft. wide, spanned by a wagon vault in brick, starting from a low plinth, with flush stone transverse bands. The height, from the pavement to the soffit, is only about 18 ft., and the space appears, from two fire-places at the sides, now blocked up, to have been used as a guard room.' It is an admirable piece of building, but the architecture of the facades is simply crude and melodramatic. The Town Hall of La Rochelle built in 1606 illustrates the same ambition to arrest attention, the irresistible instinct for attitudinizing. This building has been restored out of all semblance of antiquity,^ but the design is still there, and it is charac- teristic in the tour de force of its arcade on the ground floor, the profusion of its ornament, and the tortured design of the lucarnes, reminiscent of what De I'Orme and Bullant had done in the Tuileries. Though exceptions may be found, and in spite of the splendid efforts of Henri IV to promote the art, architecture generally was at a rather low ebb in the reign of Henri IV. It had not yet had time to get into its stride, and it was still confused by the technical legacies of the sixteenth century. At its best it produced that simple and straight- forward manner of domestic architecture in brick and stone, such as I have noted at Fontainebleau, which drew its charm from its materials, and from a certain austerity and reticence of design. M. Lemonnier^ says of this period : " on y a evidemment cherche I'ordonnance, la ligne, on n'est arrive souvent qu'a la lourdeur et a la s^cheresse. Mais dans leur masse puissante, dans leur soliditd un peu rude, ils ne manquent ni de caractere, ni m^me de grandeur." His further criticism, on the merit of this period in dispensing with the orders is not so just, because in fact the orders were freely used, and quite as irrationally as ever they had been by the architects of Henri II and Catherine de Medicis. At its worst, and its worst is more plentiful than its best, the archi- tecture of this period ran out into all sorts of ambitious extravagance, piling detail upon detail, and over accentuating the architectural motives that it used. Except that it was more skilful, there is little to choose between this architecture and our own Jacobean. Both manners are a ^ The absurd figure of Henri IV above the entrance is modern. The two fine figures in the niches are not original, and are said by M. Hallays ("Nancy," 29) to have been brought here from the ducal garden. ' By Lisch in 1879. ^ " L'Art Frangais au temps de Richelieu et Mazarin," 52, 53. Pi . cxxi a [U. ro I'AIK V. (j. I'l. I'XXII I II, lO I AlK, I'. 64 MARIE DE MEDICIS, DE BROSSE, DU CERCEAU 65 travesty of the classic that they set out to realize. They had lost the charm, the picturesqueness, the reasonableness of earlier work, of the Manoir d'Ango in France, of Compton Winyates in England, and they were separated by a deep gulf from that genuine interpretation of the neo-classic spirit which Inigo Jones was to introduce into England, and Francois Mansart into France. The period was still one of transition, and must be criticized from that point of view. But throughout this period both architects and workmen were gaining technical ability, and out of all this welter of experiment and failure, a finer taste and more perfect insight into the function of architecture were slowly emerging. The younger generation were to profit by the failures of their elders. II CHAPTER XV JACQUES LEMERCIER QUATREMERE DE QUINCY introduces his account of Lemercier with a somewhat cynical division of history into periods distinguished by men of genius, and the periods suc- ceeding in which the best that can be done is to catalogue their works. The seventeenth century in France was so busy with produc- tion that nobody seems to have given much thought to the men who made it the great age of modern architecture not only in France but in Europe; and any one who has attempted to ascertain anything of the history of those considerable artists, knows how scanty is the material for any account of their lives. France had no Vasari. In Perrault's collection ^ of the illustrious men of France of the seven- teenth century, Franqois Mansart and Claude Perrault are the only architects mentioned, yet in that century had lived De Brosse, Le- mercier, Le Muet, Le Pautre, Le Notre, Jules Hardouin Mansard, and many other architects, almost any of whom would have won a first-rate reputation had he lived two hundred years later. No one thought it worth his while to write the lives of these men, and we have to unearth what scanty facts we can from engravings and memoirs and the scat- tered references in Blondel's monumental work. Jacques Lemercier was born at Pontoise in 1583. In that year Armand Duplessis, afterwards Cardinal Richelieu, was born in Paris, the younger son of a not very prosperous country gentleman, destined within thirty years to be the real ruler of France, and incidentally the patron to whom Lemercier was to owe his position as the first architect of his time at the French court. Lemercier came of a family of builders settled for many generations at Pontoise. He was related to Pierre Lemercier, the builder of St. Eustache in Paris, and of St. Maclou at Pontoise. Nicholas, son or grandson of Pierre, carried on his work in ' " Les hommes illustres qui ont paru en France pendant ce Siecle," par M. Perrault, de I'Acaddmie Frangaise. Paris, 1698. 66 I'l. CXXIII I Tf^ ^:. Sir.' iiiuimnisfiffl flll|«ll|ill iMlil CHURCH OF THli URATOKV, PARIS: SKCTION (l'. 68) (LEMKRClKlt, AI«-in 1 KL I ) xn rTT lllJLll J3 CHURCH OF THF. ORATORN, I'ARlM CROUNF) I'lAX (I'. 6. / I A". /J. ,/,■/'. UK I ails: I una II oi i.i > arii1';i,ikns. satmur [II. TO lACK r. 76 Pi. CXXX ?2 I ,"?• -'. ?*/ ^„ .... ^^ ^4-^,,r^-'^ ' ■ ' iH^-.,"^ ]^: ^li'^^ ' /v: /. \: V-"" >3s s^-v^' I id it ^ i 15, -> J ■ ^. « r 11! » i"i i I nil ! J . . ^~7'^v"''' '11-^ — r~- — , — n — 7-^-^ — ; H ■■Ml ■■ I : r*in' 1 iHB, ui: ; ■■::]ti ' j ■■ A,u, "fffi' w mw Vt/I.hulh r,,l,l:,Ut ^ • r,:.,/..,j„* TANLAY: SECTION AND INTKRNAI. ELEVATION AND CROVND PLAN (I'P. 97-IO0) (LK MUEJ', ARCHITElT) 11. TO FACE I'. 97] PIERRE LE MUET 97 TubcEuf, Rue des Petits Champs, a house in the Rue Vivien, and the Hotel d'Avaux in Paris. Pontz was a large house, with a rectangular court i 20 ft. by 96 ft., a screen wall ran along the entrance front, set back slightly from the ends of the two wings on either side of the court. These wings were in two storeys on the side to the court, and the roofs were kept lower than those of the main block opposite the entrance. At the four external angles were pavilions, 30 ft. square in plan, engaged on the inner side only. The principal staircase was to the left, on entering the main block. A subordinate staircase is shown on the right and another service stair on the left hand wing. The rooms are shown en suite, without any attempt to provide separate communications, and the roofs do not run through with continuous ridges, but are still treated separately as so many pavilions, a survival of the sixteenth century.' Chavigny in Touraine followed the same general arrangement as Pontz, but the court was larger, 126 by 155, and it had a moat 90 ft. wide as at Tanlay. Both these houses are now destroyed. Tanlay in Burgundy is probably the most charming country house in France. Architecturally it has faults, and eccentricities, but its courts and vast dependencies, its canal with the water temple or Chateau d'Eau at the end of the long lines of limes, its broad moat of clear running water, render it irresistibly attractive. It has also the supreme merit of not having been restored. A long avenue, stretching back into illimit- able distance, leads past the church, through the little village, to the fine iron gates and railins:s that enclose the entrance court. On the further side is the Petit Chateau, built by Jacques Chabot, Marquis de Mirebeau in 16 10. Beyond the Petit Chateau is the green court, surrounded on three sides by a high wall adorned with thirty-eight arches of the Tuscan order and gateways leading to the park on the further side, and to the immense base-court on the right. The left side of the green court overlooks the moat, which is crossed by a bridge of three arches leading to a detached entrance pavilion in the centre of the side of the Court of Honour next the moat. A simple balustrade has replaced the screen wall which once connected this pavilion with the wines of the house running out from the main block on either side of the court. Few, if any, houses in France convey so fully the impression of the Grand Seigneur. The careful segregation from the village that lies humbly at its gates, the spaciousness of the whole conception of its plan, ' In Le Muet's engravings the house is shown as buih of brick with stone dressings. A plan and section of Pontz are given in " Le Petit Marot." n o 98 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE the disregard of merely utilitarian considerations, speak eloquently of the temperament of a bygone age, when the great nobleman con- sidered the world made for his personal gratification, yet, given that condition, was prepared to make large sacrifices in the effort to realize his ideals. Tanlay, too, has memorable historical associations. It has been a great house from time immemorial. The Courtenays, lords of Auxerre, had a castle here in the thirteenth century. Three hundred years later it passed into the hands of Louise de Montmorency, sister of the Constable, and wife of Gaspard de Coligny, father of the three famous brothers, the Cardinal Odet de Chatillon, the Admiral, and Frangois d'Andelot, Colonel-General of the Infantry of France. It was the latter who inherited the property in 1559, and who began the present house on the site of the Courtenays' castle, following the lines so closely that he adhered to the unequal angles of the court, and preserved the circular towers of the outer angles. D'Andelot's work was stopped by the wars of the Huguenots, and when he died in 1560,' scarcely a quarter of the present house was completed, namely the part from the left hand tower known as the Tower of the Ligue,'^ up to the vestibule in the centre of the fa9ade facing the park, with less than half of the left-hand wing. Nothing further was done in the sixteenth century. The property descended to D'Andelot's daughter, who married Jacques Chabot, Marquis de Mirebeau, and it was Chabot who, about the year 16 10, built the strange building known as the Petit Chateau, which now acts as a gate-house between the outer court and the green court. It is a considerable building, measuring on plan eighty feet by thirty-six,^ and is chiefly remarkable for the extraordinary rustication of the entrance front, "con9ue," says Sauvageot, "dans un esprit de rusticite outre et brutal." Curiously enough, the faQade on the opposite side, with its lofty plinth and plain pilasters, is relatively quiet and refined, and architecturally equal to the later work by Le Muet. It appears from the unfinished masonry on this side that Chabot intended to carry on the design, and the building probably represents not merely a gate-house, but the first instalment of some great scheme, now lost, for an entire new building round what is now the green court. Chabot ' Poisoned, it is said, by Catherine de Medicis before Saintes. ^ Sauvageot, who has illustrated Tanlay fully in his " Palais, Chateaux, Hotels, et Maisons," vol. i, points out that the name Tower of the Ligue is a complete misnomer, as the Ligue was a Catholic association, not Protestant, and was not started till 1574, when all the three Coligny brothers were dead. The well-known paintings in the upper rooms are probably fifty years later than the last of the Colignys. ' Sauvageot. Pi.. CXLII ■^'Hl % # -^^.4'*'^^.'i: I ,ti V' P ■iV .-.ill >s . loi) (LK .MUET, ARCHITECT) 11. lu IAC1-. ]■. lOlJ PIERRE LE MUET loi 1567, and that the work was completed in 1630. The property once belonged to the Bussy Rabutin family, but was sold by them to the De Saulx in 1528. Besides the three great houses, Pontz, Chavigny, and Tanlay, Le Muet includes in his second edition three hotels in Paris, as having been completed before 1647. None of these houses now exists. The Hotel Davaux in the Rue S. Avoye was a large house with an entrance through an archway into a courtyard bounded on the left by an adjoining house, and on the other two sides by the house buildings. The stables, base-court, and offices are rather ingeniously planned in an irregular space to the right. The gallery, chapel, and principal rooms were on the first floor. The faqades to the court were remark- able for the use of a colossal Corinthian order' running through two storeys, instead of the orders above orders which Le Muet had used at Tanlay, and altogether the details of the house appear to have been very advanced for a building designed before 1647. Sauval says that its garden front was copied from the Louvre.^ The house of the President Tuboeuf (not to be confused with the Hotel Mazarin, though also in the Rue Vivienne) is fully illustrated in the Petit Marot. An archway from the street led to the oblong court, 64 ft. by 54 ft. To the left were kitchen and offices, to the right stables and coach house, at the further end of the court a suite of three rooms, with the main stair- case in the left hand corner. The centre block had three storeys, the other three sides of the court were carried up two storeys, the entrance block being built over, an unusual feature in plans of this date; and a gallery, 87 ft. by 17 ft. 4 in., running the full length of the stable wing. The exterior was plain even to baldness, and the only decoration that Le Muet allowed himself was an engaged order of Doric pilasters on very lofty pedestals in the facade opposite the main entrance. Sauval says that this house was most cleverly designed for a small site by Pierre Le Muet, " I'un des premiers architectes de notre tems," and that to all its magnificence within Le Muet had added " I'orgueil des dehors . . . avec beaucoup de I'art et de succes." Le Muet here for the first time built the chimneys in the thickness of the walls, instead of the immense stacks hitherto in use, and dispensed with the beams in use hitherto by using thicker joists closer together.^ As shown in the Petit Marot, the house could hardly have been an attractive building, but ' The south fagade opposite the entrance of the Hotel Lamoignon (Rue Pavee au Marais, Paris) has a similar order unfluted. ^ Sauval, iii, 6 and 50. ' Ibid., ii, 202-204. I02 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE Le Muet, who was a skilful planner, had made his reputation by his book and work in the country, and he was employed to build some important hotels in Paris, almost as it seems when the Fronde was in full swing, when Gondi was manipulating the populace of Paris, and the Duchesse de Chevreuse was amusing herself with a series of futile intrigues. The Hotel Davaux, and the house for Tuboeuf, the Hotel de I'Aigle, Hotel de Beauvilliers, Hotel de Chevreuse or de Luynes, and the earlier part of the Palais Mazarin, appear to have been designed by Le Muet somewhere about this period. The dates of these houses are uncertain. The Palais Mazarin (now " La Cour de I'Administration de la Bibliotheque Nationale") is prob- ably the earliest, but its history is very obscure. Sauval ^ says that the Hotel was begun by Charles Duret de Chevre, President des Comptes, added to by the President Tubceuf, and finally completed by Cardinal Mazarin, who added three galleries, a library, base-court, gardens, and buildings extending up to the Rue Richelieu, and covering the greater part of the ground between the Rue Vivienne, the Rue des Petits Champs, and the Rue Richelieu. Sauval does not mention any architect. Blondel was unable to discover who he was. D'Argenville m.akes no reference to the Palais Mazarin. Its design has been attri- buted to Fran9ois Mansart as well as to Le Muet, and it seems very unlikely that if Le Muet had designed this important house before 1647 he would have omitted all mention of it in the third edition of his book, published in that year. According to Bauchal the house was begun in 1633. Considerable additions were made by the Cardinal between 1647 and 1649, when the palace with its contents was put up for sale. The Cardinal was very nearly ruined, in 1651 Tuboeuf put in a claim on the building for the 680,000 livres still due to him from Mazarin, and in 1652 Parliament ordered the sale of the whole, but the King interposed from Poitiers, and during the delay the Cardinal recovered his position. The Palais Mazarin, incomplete and greatly altered as it is, is the only one of the hotels mentioned above now left in Paris. It stands at the angle of the Rue Vivienne, and the Rue des Petits Champs, forming a three-sided court with a screen in front in brick and stone. The centre bay opposite the entrance projects slightly from the fa9ade, and terminates in a segmental pediment enclosing a lofty window, with figures of War in the right-hand spandril and of Peace in the left, with arms and ships in the background. The quoins to ' Sauval, ii, 173. See also Piganiol de la Force, " Desc. de Paris," iii, 53. Vl. CXI.Vl ,x_:>. [ll. TO KACE P. 102 Pi. rXlAlll Hi Iff*' w cyiluuim. tlr. JLiriJuur •.u- 1 Ui^/lf SBajti£ par ie S' n mdl 2 < < = z 5 c i (!■. lO(l) 1. 1/-I >-../■ [ll. ID l-ACK !■. Io6 'i,. CLl n. TO FACT [■. 107 I CHAPTER XVIII FRANCOIS MANSART FRANgOIS MANSART stands by himself in the history of French Architecture. Not only was he an acknowledged master in his art, a man of indisputable genius, who summed up all that was best in the work of his contemporaries and predecessors, but he was a man of distinct and curious personality. Lemercier and Le Muet may have their places assigned them, but Frangois Mansart was too great an artist to be classified. Mansart was born at Paris in 1598.' His father was a certain Absalom Mansart, carpenter to the King, who died ^ when Mansart was a boy, and the latter is supposed to have received his training in architecture from his brother-in-law, Germain Gautier, one of the royal architects, who was employed on the Parliament House at Rennesand was killed by accident on the works in 1635.^ Perrault says vaguely that his father was an architect. Blondel, who was sounder in architectural criticism than in history, says that the Mansart family originally came from Rome, but had been settled in France for 800 years " et avait rempli successivement les emplois d'architecte, de peintre, et de sculpteur de nos Rois." The only mention of any of the family known is an entry in the annals of the Louvre and Tuileries for 160S, of 500 livres "a Jehan Mansart, autre sculpteur, pour ses gaiges de lad. ann^e, a lui nouvellement accordez par brevet de xi juin 1606," and an entry in 1 61 8 of similar payment to Pierre Mansart, sculptor, in place of his father Jehan.* No one has suggested that Francois Mansart went to Italy, or what, if any, further training he received in architecture, but, as D'Argenville justly says, this was the less material owing to his rare natural endowments, his "exquisite taste, just and solid intelligence aiming always at proportion and rich and noble imagination." His earliest work is said to have been the Hotel de la Vrilli^re or ' Perrault, " Les Hommes illustres qui ont paru en France." D'Argenville's account is based in the main on Perrault. ^ D'Argenville, i, 545. ^ Bauchal, Diet., 249, Gautier. * Berty, "Top. Hist.," etc., ii, 205, 211. 107 io8 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE de Toulouse (now the Banque de France).' This was followed by the entrance to the Church of the Feuillants at Paris, and the Chateaux of Berni, of Balleroy in Normandy, of Blerancourt, and Choisy-sur-Seine. Blondel says that the Hotel de Toulouse, in its original form, and before the considerable alterations by De Cotte in 17 19 for the Comte de Toulouse, was only a private house, built for Raymond Phelippeau in 1620, but unfortunately he does not make it clear which part of the vast plan given in his book is original, and which of it is the work of De Cotte and later architects. Blondel treats the design in the main as by Mansart, and apologizes for his severe criticism of the work of an architect for whom he had so profound an admiration. The Hotel de Toulouse with its gardens occupied a large and very awkward site at the acute angles formed by the Rue Neuve des Bons Enfants and the Rue de la Vrilliere. From the first the site presented difficulties, and when the later alterations were made it was found to be so con- tracted that the stables had to be placed underground with access by a double ramp. Mansart's general conception of the plan was to place the Court of Honour in the centre, with a kitchen court to the left with separate entrance to the street, and in the large triangular space to the right an oblong base-court with offices on the street side, and in the triangular spaces still left over, a stable court at the apex of the triangle, and an office court further down the Rue Neuve des Bons Enfants for offices. How much of this was by Mansart and how much by De Cotte does not appear from Blondel's account. The principal rooms as usual faced the gardens and were on the further side of the Court of Honour, which Blondel says was too small for its purpose, though it was 70 ft. wide by 95 ft. long, exclusive of the peristyles on either side. On the left-hand side was a very large staircase,^ lit from the kitchen court, with a vestibule opening on to the forecourt. This part of the plan must have been most inconvenient. The kitchen and offices are placed in a remote corner, with no access to the principal rooms except across the courts, and as the house grew two other kitchens were added at corners of the building. In Blondel's ' Blondel, "Arch. Frang.," iii, 26. Blondel's illustrations show the house as altered by De Cotte. The date 1620 is very doubtful. '' The dimensions of the grand escalier were 55 ft. by 25 ft., exclusive of the vestibule which measured 25 ft. by 25 ft. The hotel was remodelled in 1800 by Delaunay for the Banque de France, and it has been largely altered and extended since, in 1 860-1 and 1870-5. MM. Guadet and Pascal, in their historical notes to Blondel, say that the " Galerie Doree " and the trompe were constructed from Mansart's original design unde Questerl. I'l. CI. II [Mtu.'t III' 1 1.1. \iv. \.\ \ i;iM.ii.Ki'. ^/,; CIlLKlllOl TIIK t. : l'.\KI>(l'. IO9) (.\i.\N3.\i;i , ,\ki III I i-.i I ) fll. Ill F.MK 1-. luS Pi,. CLI: [ll. lo i-'.\ri-, !■. loS FRANCOIS MANSART 109 eyes the most serious faults were the placing of the grand staircase in the left-hand side "contre tout pr^cepte de convenance," and the total neglect of vista in the planning of the forecourt, and it appears that the garden elevation had all the faults of overcrowding and bad planning, the " licences condamnables " so assiduously pointed out by Blondel. But the entrance to the hotel with the simple Doric order was con- sidered a masterpiece by the connoisseurs. There were men in France already capable of appreciating a sense of scale and delicacy of touch beyond the reach of the official architects, and Mansart early took up that position of isolated pre-eminence which with certain personal qualities marked him out as a man by himself. The ability shown in the Hotel de Toulouse, in spite of the faults pointed out by later critics, probably lead to his employment by Louis XIII to design the west front of the Church of the Feuillants in the Rue St. Honore, in 1624 or 1629.^ The result, however, was disappointing. The design was in three bays, a doorway in the centre flanked by pairs of detached Ionic columns with niches and figures in the side bays and engaged columns at the ends. The entablature was returned round each pair of columns with the usual result of breaking up the lines and losing all breadth of treat- ment. Above the second order he placed an eccentric attic-storey with ugly trusses and clumsy obelisks at the ends, and the whole design appears to have been immature and over elaborated. Blondel says " ce fut . . . le coup d'essai de cet architecte qui, dans la suite, devint si cdebre, qu'il pent etre regarde comme le plus habile de tous nos architectes Fran^ais" ("Arch. Fran9.," iii, 95). The treatment of the orders reminds one of De Brosse's clumsy design at St. Gervais. The obelisks were stumpy in outline and had bands of ornament in the manner of De I'Orme. The figures seemed too big and leaned pre- cariously upon the pediment,'^ and the attic storey is meaningless. Blondel says that the detail was excellent, but that the whole com- position savoured of the Gothic manner and of the ignorance of the right use of sculpture that prevailed early in the seventeenth century. Blondel gives as a foil and corrective to this vicious design a very simple entrance built in 1676, apparently from Mansart's design, which he says had always appealed to him as one of the best things ' Destroyed in 1804. In the view published by Marietta the rebuilding of the church is attributed to Marie de Medicis. Blondel says Louis XIII paid for it in 1629, but the date given in his engraving is 1624. ' They were carved by Guillin "qui depuis a fait dans nos Edifices Fran^ais quelques ouvrages passables." no FRENCH ARCHITECTURE of its kind in France, and yet, he adds, men unversed in the art would not understand that a mere square doorway with four columns and a frontispiece can deserve such praise. " Quelle difference cependant entre un ouvrage d'architecture el^ve par un homme d'un vrai m^rite, et un autre du meme genre erige par certains architectes." Man- sart was still a young man, and the design of the Feuillants is characteristic of an enthusiastic but inexperienced architect full of his knowledge of detail, but as yet unable either to place it or to reject it wholly. It is peculiar to architecture that while sculptors and painters have often arrived early, there is scarcely an instance of first-rate architects having done so, for the latter have no opportunity of experi- ment such as the sculptor and the painter can make with little difficulty, and have to gain their experience of scale by their buildings. Probably no one would have more sincerely condemned this early exploit of the Feuillants than Mansart himself in his maturer days. So strongly did he feel the imperfection of his own work that, as we shall see later on, this scrupulous diffidence actually wrecked his career. If the date (1620) given by Blondel for the Hotel de Toulouse is correct Mansart, who was then twenty-two, must have been singularly precocious, for De Brosse was still alive, Lemercier rapidly coming to the front, and it is difficult to see how he can have sufficiently distin- guished himself by this date to have been entrusted with such im- portant works as the Hotel de Toulouse and the Feuillants before he was thirty. Indeed, the whole history of Mansart's early years is obscure — where he learnt his art, how he started, how he made his reputation, who were his first employers, is still unknown. There are vague legends of his work in Normandy, and it appears to be pretty well established that he was the architect of the great house of Balleroy, south-west of Bayeux. Traces of his manner are also, I think, to be found at Daubeuf and Cany, near Fecamp, both attributed to Mansart, but later in date than Balleroy. The astonishing thing is that Mansart should appear, out of space as it were, as architect of the Hotel de Toulouse and the Feuillants on the one hand, and of a great country house such as Balleroy on the other. For Balleroy is no mere manor- house, but a great nobleman's house, approached in the true seigneurial manner by an avenue and spacious roadway with the houses of the village on either side. A causeway crosses the deep hollow that lies between the village and the chateau, and leads to the entrance gates of the forecourt with screen walls to right and left, terminating at the outer angles in circular pavilions. On either side of the forecourt are Pi.. CI. IV III. HI lACK I'. IIO FRANgOIS MANSART iii low ranges of buildings, and a flight of steps leads up from the fore- court to the court of honour, placed on a platform surrounded by a deep dry moat with isolated square pavilions at the two advanced angles, and on the further side of the court the house itself dominating the whole and terminating the vista that opened from beyond the village. The house is of unusual height, in the earlier manner of Louis XIII, with quoins and rustications, no orders, and steep pitched roofs with lucarnes. The main building has a large central pavilion three storeys high, with lucarne windows, a belvedere and cupola, and on either side are lower buildings in two storeys with lucarnes, but the storeys are of great height, and both here and at Lentheuil near Caen, the impression of great height rather than horizontality is unusual and not entirely satisfactory. Balleroy was begun in 1626.' Its details re- semble those of the Hotel Mazarin at Paris, and it is clearly an early work, yet Mansart's quality is beginning to tell, in the scale and fine proportions of the facade and the reticence and austerity of its treatment. Of Mansart's work at Choisy-sur-Seine and Bl^rancourt I can ascertain nothing. The house at Choisy belonging to Mademoiselle de Montpensier was designed by the elder Gabriel with gardens by Le Notre. In the engraving published by Mariette^ no reference whatever is made to Mansart. Berni, now destroyed, is only known to us through Perelle's engravings. It appears to have been the first version of what Mansart afterwards carried out more success- fully at Blois and Maisons. The plan on the entrance side of Berni consisted of a corps de logis, or main block with a central pavilion carried as usual a storey higher than the rest of the buildings, wings ran out from this to the court, with circular buildings terminating in domes and cupolas in the re-entering angles, screened on the ground floor by quadrant colonnades running out from the centre pavilion to the angles of the fronts of the wings. Broad rusticated pilasters run up the angles of the building, and with the exception of the colonnades of the entrance front, no order was used on the exterior. As usual with Mansart each block of building had its separate roof, that is the ridges did not run through. Not far from Lentheuil, and between Caen and Bayeux, there is a remarkable fragment of a great undertaking never completed, and probably designed by Mansart, the entrance screen and garden of what is now the farm of Bre9y. The entrance ' It is said to have been completed in 1636, and was decorated with paintings by Mignard. ^ Nothing now remains of this building except two " Pavilions des Suisses." 112 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE consists of a central archway 1 1 ft. wide with square-headed doorways on either side measuring lo ft. by 5 ft., and screen walls beyond divided into bays by Ionic pilasters surmounted by an enriched architrave and very graceful urns. The mouldings to the openings are the big bolection mouldings usual from about 1620 onwards, and above the central archway there is admirably designed and executed sculpture. The total length is some 75 feet. The court in which the archway opens is now used as a farmyard. On the further side is a plain seventeenth-century house with farm buildings on either side of the court, but at the back of the house is a very interesting garden, designed in three levels with flights of stairs, terraces round three sides of the upper garden, piers, carved trusses, and a sump- tuous balustrade along the upper terrace, and the retaining wall at the upper end of the garden. The date of the garden and of the entrance and screen wall I should put at about 1630. It appears as if the owner, having built his magnificent entrance, and completed his garden, had come to the end of his resources and had to content him- self with the plainest house that would shelter himself and his house- hold. Mansart was totally indifferent to considerations of cost. The essential thing to him was to get his idea realized, and if his client came to grief in the process that was his affair and not his architect's — but the architect paid the penalty in the end. Mansart was now fairly established, and soon after 1630 appears to have been appointed architect to Gaston de France, Due d'Orleans, who in 1635 instructed him to prepare designs for the complete re- buildine of the Chateau de Blois.^ All the north-west side of the Chateau opposite the entrance built by Charles d'Orleans, father of Louis XII, was pulled down, and here Mansart designed the stately block of buildings that occupies the whole of the side opposite the entrance, perhaps the finest example of domestic neo-classic in France. The composition is very simple; a central pavilion slightly higher than the adjacent buildings with advanced wings. A curved colonnade with coupled Doric columns connects the centre of the fa9ade with the wings, and above the colonnade the building continues for two more storeys with an Ionic order on the first floor, and a composite on the second. The great slate roof sweeps round unbroken by dormers, with one con- tinuous sky-line. There are several peculiarities in detail, which make it clear that Mansart contemplated carrying his building all round the ' Sauval, vii, 307, says of Blois, " Gaston de France, Due d'Orleans, I'a ruine pour y jetter les fondements d'un superbe Palais." Pi. CLV o ►J CO II. lO 1A( K !■. 112 Pi,. CLVI ^-C -^^^.v- ^B|3^:. / "^ 4f53§&M^,: •■r>.i^ xr*^. -J o o d o [11. in l-Ai K !■. 112 FRANgOIS MANSART 113 courtyard. The design stops abruptly at the east end of the south wing facing the river, and on the north side, where his building abuts on the Fran9ois I wing, the work is left all rough, the stones torn out and not replaced. Gaston d'Orleans very soon got into difficulties,' and the work was abruptly suspended a few years after it was begun. Only eight out of the twenty-two Doric columns of the peristyle were completed, the top member of the entablature was left en bloc, the architrave and frieze were worked on the central entrance but not over the side, and several details of the magnificent staircase were left un- finished. The great staircase occupies an oblong compartment 36 ft. by 30 ft., some two thirds of the centre pavilion. The stairs are only carried up to the first floor, above which a bold stone cove comes out from the walls to an oblong opening with recesses on the two long sides. Above the cove is a gallery or landing running round the four sides, and above the landing the wall continues oval in plan with recesses to the window openings, and terminates in a superb oval dome with a cupola. The whole of this intricate design is carried out in stone, and it is one of the most astonishing pieces of masonry in existence, dependent for its stability on highly ingenious combinations of straight and curved arches and their resultant forces. The design and scale of the ornament are inimitable. Here at length Francois Mansart found himself, and it would be hardly too much to say that ^is staircase alone would justify his reputation as the finest domestic architect of the world. Mansart's work at Blois has been condemned in the most ignorant manner, as cold, frigid, and uninteresting, beside the flamboyant detail of Francois I. Such criticism proceeds from a misconception of architec- ture, and from the ingrained fallacy of treating it as a matter of orna- ment. To all who care for rhythm and proportion, scale and symmetry, in architecture, to all who can appreciate the austere reticence of a great artist, Mansart's building at Blois will always appeal as a masterpiece of design. Maisons appears to have followed Blois. In 1642 Ren^ de Longueil, President-a-Mortier of the Parliament of Paris, an able and unscrupulous magistrate of great wealth,^ determined to build himself a house worthy of his estate at Maisons Lafitte, as it is now called, on ' Gaston de France, Due d'Orle'ans, third son of Henri IV, and brother of Louis XIII, married Mile, de Montpensier (who died in 1627) and, in 1632, Margaret of Lorraine. He was engaged in all the plots against Richelieu, and played a deplorable part in the Fronde. He died in 1660. ^ " C'est un dangereux homme s'il y parvient, et qui fera bien crier du monde." A letter from Guy Patin, the doctor, quoted by Nicolle, " Le Chateau de Maisons," 58. II Q 114 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE the banks of the Seine. Mansart went down with his client to settle the site, and undertook the work on condition that he had carte-blanche and was to be allowed to alter his work as and when he liked. He was said to have actually pulled down one of the wings of Maisons and rebuilt it to an altered plan, a matter of some 100,000 francs extra,' but De Longueil was rich, and he was also ambitious. If money could do it he meant to have the most perfect house of its kind in France, and lie certainly succeeded, for in Perrault's time,^ and even in its present melancholy state, it has been the aim of many an artist's pilgrimage. The house as it was left by Mansart is shown in the Petit Marot (five plates), and in two fine engravings by Perelle,^ which show the forecourt without the terrace and the warden side facing the Seine with its terraces and parterres which have now entirely disappeared. As shown in Marot, the plan consisted of a forecourt surrounded by a moat and double balustrade, three steps lead up from the forecourt to a broad low terrace occupying the whole width of the fa9ade between the wings, a reminiscence of the Luxembourg, and a most inconvenient arrangement, as carriages had to draw up some forty feet short of the front door. The principal entrance is in the centre pavilion, with a suite of rooms to the left, the principal staircase and a suite of rooms beyond it to the right. In front of the wings on the forecourt side are two oval chambers, 25 ft. in diameter with entrances on three sides, those on the outer side near the moat having a semi- circular recess, the whole enclosed in a rectangular outer plan with chambers of irregular shape in the outer angles, and masses of masonry occupying the greater part of the angles abutting on the main build- ing. The chamber on the left facing the house was the Chapel, that on the right was placed there to match the Chapel. They are import- ant in the history of French architecture as being the first deliberate use of oval or circular rooms which became so common in later French work. Mansart himself was greatly taken with this plan for chapels, he added an oval chapel at the end of the Oratory, and designed the very remarkable Church of St. Marie in the rue St. Antoine on a circular plan with recesses. With this exception, the plan of Maisons is not remarkable or original. There is little provision ' Nicolle, "Le Chateau de Maisons," 16. ^ Perrault, " Les Hommes lUustres," 208. ' Marot's plan shows a raised terrace round two sides of the forecourt, reached by flights of ten steps on either side of the entrance, and kept within the moat. This terrace is not shown in Perelle's view. It is possible that it was one of Mansart's many projects altered in execution. FRANCOIS MANSART 115 for separate access to the rooms. The grand staircase only reaches the first floor, and the attics and Voltaire's room are reached by a narrow stairs formed in the thickness of the walls. There are a number of supplementary staircases, but Mansart's pre-occupation was not in the least with the exigences of domestic service. His business as he conceived it was to design the finest suites of reception rooms and state bedrooms possible, to provide noble entrance halls and approaches, to clothe them in the most perfect architectural form and to leave the rest to find itself. As to the cost, Mansart was perfectly careless, and it appears not to have entered into his calculations in the slightest degree. Within the limits that he set himself he was completely successful. The main staircase is characteristic of Mansart in its subtlety of design. It is set in an oblong compartment, about 2 7 ft. 6 in. by 25 ft.' A bold stringcourse runs round at the first floor level, with slightly project- ing panels 6 ft. 6 in. wide in the centre of the sides. Above these panels are four groups of children, representing the Arts, a concert of music. Love and Marriage, and the Art of War.- On either side of these groups are Ionic pilasters, canted on plan sufficiently to admit of an oval entablature above them, supporting a gallery with an oak balustrade of intersecting curves. Above and behind this is a second entablature, above which is the dome with a coved opening to the cupola at the top. To the left of the staircase is " the King's Room," the principal room of the house. This was some 80 ft. long from end to end, by 27 ft. wide. The end bay next the fireplace was divided off by a balustrade from the rest of the room, a feature supposed to be the prerogative of Royalty, though it was soon adopted by the nobility,' and even by the upper bourgeoisie. At the end is a magnificent chimney-piece with a great oval frame for a portrait, swags, cornucopias, canephori, and eagles, supporting a cartouche above the upper entablature. The entrance hall on the ground floor, with its columns and pilasters, its ' These dimensions are taken from Marot's plan. ^ The existing figures are plaster casts of the originals, which were carved in stone by Gerard von Obstal. ^ " Tous gens de lustre, Tous gens de dais et balustre." The "Muse Royale," 1686, of a meeting of distinguished personages quoted by Nicolle, ■" Le Chateau de Maisons," 35. In the wing to the left of this room are some well designed Empire decorations with caryatide balusters in the drum of the cupola, and a fine old flock paper of the date, in grisaille and faded red. Out of this room opens a small circular boudoir, still covered behind the paper with frescoes of gods and goddesses "all standing naked in the open air," and probably dating from the time of Mansart. ii6 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE groups after Sarrazin, and its bas-reliefs by Guerin, is still pretty much as Mansart left it, except that the superb grilles of polished iron are no longer there.^ These grrilles are said to have cost De Longueil 40,000 crowns, and they were of a piece with the whole character of the work. De Longueil is said to have spent 12,000,000 livres on Maisons.' Mansart built walls of prodigious thickness, cellars of immense size and depth, ^ and accepted nothing but the best material and work- manship throughout his building. Sarrazin, Gilles Guerin, Van Obstal, and Philippe Buyster were employed on the sculpture. Now Sarrazin was the first rector of the newly established academy of painting and sculpture,^ Guerin and Buj'ster were professors, and these men were the leading sculptors of the time. Nobody knew how De Longueil found the money. There Avere legends that he had found 40,000 gold pieces of the time of Charles IX when pulling down his house in Paris, but his enemies had no doubt in the matter at all. In 1650 he succeeded in getting himself appointed " Surintendant des Finances," on the death of d'Emery, on the principle of "au plus larron la bourse," according to Guy Patin. He only held the post for a year, but he managed to clear himself, and was able to enter- tain Anne of Austria and the little King at Maisons in 1651. The later history of Maisons is characteristic of that of many of the great French houses. Its prosperous days lasted more or less till the middle of the eighteenth century. Voltaire came here in 1723 and lived in the house; but in 1777 the last representative of the De Longueils sold the property to the Comte d'Artois for less than a quarter of what it had cost his ancestor to build the house. The Comte dArtois, finding the place more expensive than he had expected, tried to tempt Louis XV I into buying it by suggesting that he could demolish the Chateau, and so extend the forest of St. Germain-en- Laye right down to the borders of the Seine. In 1804 the Marechal Lannes, Due de Montebello, bought the property for 400,000 francs. Lannes, who was killed by a cannon ball at Essling, amused himself by planting poplars to represent ' They are now in the Louvre, in the Galerie d'ApolIon, and the Pavilion de THorloge. " Something hke a million of our money. Yet the total length of the main fagade is only about 240 ft. by 90 ft. at the sides. ^ They go one stage, and in places two, below the bottom of the moat. The walls on the ground floor are six feet thick, and all the woodwork of the roofs and attics is in oak. There are some bad settlements on the river side, otherwise the stonework is in excellent preservation. * Founded in 1648. Pi,. CIA' I II. in I'Arii 1'. I 16 Ti,. CLVUI ^■^ ^ :3 ^ (i o o I II. rO PACK 1'. I \(i FRANgOIS MANSART 117 the position of his troops in one of his victories, and it was probably Lannes who had that remarkable " Empire " room carried out on the first floor. At this date the formal garden still survived, but the beginning of the end was near. The bridge over the Seine was build- ing from 181 1-22, and the workmen gave infinite trouble to Madame de Montebello. Blucher was here in 1815, and finally, in 1818, Madame de Montebello sold the property to Jacques Lafitte the banker, a very rich man who possessed not the slightest taste and finally ruined himself by his political speculations. He replaced the panelling with wall papers of 1825, pulled down and sold as old materials the stables which Mansart had built to the left of the forecourt,' destroyed what was left of the gardens, and finally in 1834 broke up the park into building plots. In 1849 his executors sold the place to a M. Thomas, who, with the help of an " architecte paysagiste," skilled in designing what the French choose to call the "jardin anglais," put the final touch to the barbarities of Lafitte. Anything more melancholy than Maisons in its present state it is difficult to imagine. What was once the avenue of approach is dotted about on either side with the most detestable little villas and bungalows, Moorish houses, Swiss chalets, and the like. Yellow bricks, red bricks, green paint in the wrong place, blue slates, all the worst details of modern French art — and at this stage it is worse than anything we have in England — insistently shout their vulgarity from their little plots. The forecourt is a waste of grass. There is no one in the house but the caretaker and his dogs." There is no vestige of the gardens and just to the left of the house and in front of it a red brick hotel is rising in all its blatant impudence. It is not to be wondered at that the great days of architecture should be past, when noble monuments such as Maisons are so neglected. The furniture dealer, the bric-a-brac man, and the man of all trades have indeed carried the day. They have stifled architecture and successfully concentrated the whole artistic interest of the layman on the contents of their shops. The entrance pavilion of Gevres-en-Brie is attributed to Mansart, ' These stables are described by D'Argenville in his "Voyage Pittoresque des Environs de Paris." They were eleven bays in length with pavilions at the ends. The centre of the fagade for five bays was advanced with a colonnade carrying an attic storey, above which was a clock turret. Dogs were carved on the centre bay, and a trophy upheld by lions and horses surmounted the centre window on the ground floor. The description is not very clear, but suggests an anticipation of the trophies of the stables at Chantilly. " Maisons is now the property of the State. ii8 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE and Perrault/ repeated by d'Argenville, says that he designed the gardens and a great part of the exterior of the Chateau de Fresnes. At Fresnes he is said by Perrault to have built a chapel on the exact model of the Val de Grace, which Perrault pronounced a masterpiece. How it was possible to reproduce that great church on the scale of a private chapel without making it ridiculous Perrault does not say. Fresnes was destroyed in 1828. At La Fert6 Saint Aubin in the Sologne, the Chateau of La Fert6 was rebuilt from his designs, between 1635 and 1650, and in 1659 he designed the Chateau of La Ferte Reuilly, near Issoudun (Indre). Whether the Chateau of Cany near Fecamp was designed by Mansart is unknown. The forecourt, some 240 ft. wide by 400 ft. long, exclusive of the demilune at the end round which the river is brought, is finely designed, and the house stands well at the further side of the court of honour with its surrounding moat. But the house itself, in which the brick and stone as used seem to have changed places, is mannered and unattractive, and the effect on the further side is spoilt by the transformation of the old formal " canal " or water-piece into a meandering lake. Daubeuf, also near Fecamp, is a less pretentious house, but a delightful example of the Louis XIH manner in brick and stone and is, I incline to think, an early work of Mansart/ There can be little doubt that Mansart did a great deal of work of which no record remains to us, and that the buildings known to be by him are probably not a tithe of what he actually did, for, at any rate till the catastrophe of the Val de GrSce, Mansart was constantly employed by some of the most important people in France. ' Perrault says he designed the gardens and exterior of Gevres-en-Brie ("Les Hommes Illustres," 208). ^ An inscription over a door in the left-hand wing of the forecourt front states that Daubeuf was built in 1629 by Charles de Auben and Louise de Brie, his wife. In the pedi- ments of the centre bays is the rather arrogant motto: " Pereat nomen peribit honor," but these pediments are possibly not original. The bold entrance archway to the avenue has a segmental cornice with horizontal returns which recalls the treatment of the chapel at Cany, and certain features in the Church of S. Marie in the Rue St. Antoine. CHAPTER XIX FRANCOIS MANSART [continued) OF the hotels in Paris that Mansart designed our knowledge rests on what can be gleaned from Blondel's " Architecture Frangaise," and Marot's engravings.' Mansart himself seems to have been much too modest a man to publish his own designs. Le Muet, Cottard, and Anthoine Le Pautre did not hesitate to do so, but Mansart had no capacity for self-advertisement, and possessed few of the qualities that make the successful man. As with Inigo Jones, his reputation has to rest on a few fragments only of what he did, but in his case too they are fragments of inimitable excellence. One of his earliest domestic works in Paris appears to have been the transformation of the Hotel Carnavalet. This hotel was built in the sixteenth century,'^ probably by Jean Bullant for the President des Ligneris. The President's son sold it to Frangoise de la Baune, Dame de Carnavalet, and the house ' The following is a list of the hotels in Paris by Francois Mansart given by Marot and Blondel. A. Le Petit Marot. 1. The house of the Commandeur du Jars, or "du Gert." Plan, two sections, three elevations. 2. Hotel d'Aumont. Plan, three elevations, one section. 3. Hotel d'Argouge, otherwise Carnavalet. Plan, section, three elevations, as it was before Mansart's alterations. B. Le Grand Marot. 4. Hotel Carnavalet (see above). 5. Hotel de la Vrilliere (or Toulouse). 6. Hotel de Conti, or Hotel de Guenegaud. Entrance. C. Blondel, " Architecture Fran^aise." 7. Hotel de Conti, or Guenegaud. 8. Hotel d'Aumont "| g. Hotel Carnavalet J 10. Hotel de Toulouse, originally de la Vrilliere. 11. Maison de Senozan, originally Hotel de Jars. ' Blondel, "Arch. Fran^.," ii. " Cet hotel jusqu'en 1578 porta le nom du President des Ligneris, qui I'avait fait batir sur les desseins de Jacques Androuet du Cerceau et de Jean Bullant." 119 I20 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE has borne her name ever since. At some period in the seventeenth century, however, it was known as the Hotel d'Argouge, and it is so described in the engravings of the Petit Marot. In Marot's plates the building is shown as consisting of a rectangular block with an interior court 64 ft. by 54 ft. The entrance was from the Rue de Sevign^ under a barrel vaulted archway to the court. To the right and left were rooms with newel staircases to the upper floor; and to the right again, treated as part of the fa9ade, were the stables with eight stalls and a coach-house communicating with the main court, and having on the street side a separate arched entrance on the extreme right. On the left-hand side of the court was an open arcade in five bays with balustrades, and above this was the gallery. Mansart altered this part In order to obtain a balance with the other two sides; unfortunately his sculptor was unable to match the original figures, though these are by no means worthy of Goujon.^ To the right, and beyond the coach- house, was the grand staircase, 20 ft. by 18 ft, approached from a vestibule 20 ft. by 12 ft." The principal rooms occupied the further side of the court, arranged en suite, and chiefly noticeable for a circular room, 22 ft. in diameter, with six niches, and four openings, a most unusual feature in a plan of that date, so unusual, in fact, that I incline to think the plan must have been altered after Bullant's death by Jean du Cerceau, whom Blondel has probably wrongly described as Jacques. The elevations were, as usual, treated with separate pavilion roofs, that is, each section of the building had its roof to itself, joining the adjacent roofs at the lower part only and not having continuous ridges. This was a survival of the older roof, framed with small timber scantlings, but it was a costly arrangement owing to the labour entailed in fixing all the hips and valleys and gutters, and unsatisfactory in outline as it rendered any length of line impossible. On the street facade the old elevation was extraordinarily ugly. On either side of the centre entrance were pavilions in three storeys, and above the plinth the walls were divided into four compartments by bands and stringcourses, in each of the two lower divisions were oblong windows crowded in between the strings, and above were great staring dormers, breaking through the eaves in the bad manner of Bullant and terminating in ' Blondel believed eight of the twelve figures to be by Goujon, and says " les huit de Goujon sont autant de chefs d'ceuvres pour la beautd, Texpression, et le choix des attitudes." " Indignor, quandoque hotms dormifat Homerus." ^ The staircase, which appears to have been very elaborate, the circular room, and the stables, have all disappeared in the present Galleries. Pi.. CLIX o II. Ill KAi K r. : JO Pi,. CLX J ■ I ■ ■ i-t— J-t / c;»35" Uotles SXoifea KKONT I'XEVAIKIN (.KllllNIl I'L.W llulia, Ii'aKi.iiI!!,!', (//- I AUNAVAI.Kl (I'. I .'o ) (rKluK 111 M AN^Akl S AI.MJ; Al UiNs; (.1 In. I O 1- Al K I . 1 2u Pl. clxi HUTKI, ll'AKliOUGk r;/' CA RN A\A l.ia ( I'. Ijo) (ski THIN ■niKiil'iill rklNCll'Al. COl'UT) U. lo I'ArK F'. 1211 FRANgOIS MANSART 121 segmental pediments. Three similar dormers appeared in the recessed bay above the central entrance. Mansart's treatment of the facade is one of the most suggestive episodes in French domestic architecture in the seventeenth century. He left the central entrance absolutely as it was on account of Jean Goujon's sculpture. " If," says Blondel, " Mansart's great capacity were not known throughout all Europe, the care that he took to preserve the masterpieces of Jean Goujon would have been enough to render eternal the memory of this illustrious man." Blondel felt very strongly on the subject of French architecture and ancient buildings. That reckless logic which leads the modern French architect to remove everything that stands in the way of his preconceived idea of what the old building may have been hundreds of years ago, or might be if he had had the handling of it from the first, appears to have been not less mischievous in the eighteenth century than it is at the present day. " How many architects," says Blondel, "far inferior to Mansart, have buried admirable work in oblivion, from fear that it might destroy their own productions, or from some ridiculous vanity of supposing that any thing not carried out in their time and under their own orders was not worth preservation ? " These words were written over a hundred and fifty years ago, yet for twenty or thirty years in the last century Viollet le Due was rampant in France, palming off on a credulous public quite hypothetical versions of mediaeval architecture, and reducing that great art to mere histrionics. Architects in England were no better, and it is only now that the mischief has been done that some sense has been awakened of the value of genuine ancient monuments, and people have begun to realize that an ancient monument handled in the manner of Viollet le Due, ipso facto ceases to be an ancient monument. One has far more sympathy with the direct brutality of the architect of the seventeenth or eighteenth century than with the shallow sentiment- alism of his successor in the nineteenth. The seventeenth-century man, unless he was a sensitive artist like Mansart, altered, demolished, and rebuilt in happy unconsciousness that he was doing anything in the least unreasonable. He believed in his own tradition, and what more natural than to act on that belief.'' The results were certainly alarm- ing. The twirligigs and frillings of Boffrand's choir stalls hardly suit the sombre dignity of Notre Dame, but at any rate there was here no pretence or affectation of righteousness. If later generations disliked such work they could remove it, and matters stood as they were. But the restorers of the nineteenth century had the effrontery to persuade II R 122 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE the public that they were giving them the very thing itself, the ancient mediaeval monument purified of later excrescences, omitting to inform the public that a great part of what they were handing over was their own work, and that to make way for this work they had swept away features of the last three centuries which had become an inseparable element in the life and history of the building itself. Mansart was too fine an artist, too genuine in his own enthusiasm for architecture, to play any such tricks with the Hotel Carnavalet. He religiously preserved the central entrance on account of its sculpture, but he dealt with the rest of the facade in a drastic and masterly fashion. There can be little doubt that the fagade, as Bullant and Du Cerceau left it, was clumsy and ill considered. Mansart swept away all the windows and dormers, substituted in the end pavilions single windows with rustications on the ground floor and pairs of Ionic pilasters in the second floor, and carried an Ionic entablature the full length of the fagade broken only by the pediments over the pavilion bays. The details throughout are of admirable refinement.^ The only weak part in the design is the separation of the roofs, a practice to which, for some unintelligible reason, Mansart persistently adhered. The Hotel Conti^ stood on the site of the Hotel de la Monnaie. It was first known as the Hotel de Nevers, then as the Hotel de Guenegaud, the secretary of state who employed Mansart, and who ultimately exchanged this house with the Princesse de Conti for a house on the Quai Malaquais. Mansart carried out considerable alterations and additions here, but Blondel's engraving of the entrance is all that is now known of his work. It was a remarkable design, no orders or pedestals, merely a deep recess in a rusticated wall with an elliptical head, in which was set the entrance, a rectangular doorway with a cornice on consoles, above which was a cartouche supported by figures of two boys. A modillion cornice and slate roof covered in the top. The entrance was much esteemed by the connoisseurs for its simplicity, ' Blondel says, of his own engravings, "on y remarque, trop indistinctement, ce coulant, ce gracieux, et tout ensemble cette fermeti!, qu'un sgavant architecte et qu'un habile sculpteur S9aurait allier dans leur compositions," and he adds that it is for this reason that those who hope to practise architecture ought to verify their reading by the study of masterpieces on the spot. Most of the bad work in modern architecture is due to the student's neglect of this golden rule. ^ In Blondel's time it was proposed to build a Hotel de Ville on the site of this house. The proposal was not carried out, but in 1771 it was pulled down, and the Hotel de la Monnaie built on its site. Pascal and Guadet say that at the end of the Impasse de Conti two pavilions and one or two details of the old Hotel still remain. I'l. ci.x 'I'llK Hdl Kl, CliN I I (p. I 2 2) nil iiiiTi-.i. i)'.\i'.Mo.\ I (1'. 123) [II. 10 I'ACE !■. 122 FRANgOIS MANSART 123 its fine scale and proportion. Mansart was an original thinker in architecture; here as elsewhere in his work he anticipated the grand manner of the Academicians of Louis XIV. The Hotel d'Aumont is still standing in the Rue de Jouy, and is occupied by the Pharmacie Centrale de France.' This hotel was built in 1648-9 for Michel Antoine Scarron. Blondel, who reproduces Marot's plates, adds that they show the building in the state it was before it was altered by Fran9ois Mansart, who, according to Blondel, only added a grand staircase which has since disappeared. M. SelHer discovered a contract, dated 4th May 1649, under which Scarron's son-in-law, afterwards the Due d'Aumont, paid over a sum of 30,000 livres, which was to cover payments to Michel Villedo, a well-known contractor of the time, and others, and a payment of 204 livres to Louis le Vau, Architecte du Roi, for plans and designs. M. Sellier's explanation is that Le Vau designed the entrance fagade to the Rue de Jouy and the two sides to the court, but that Mansart designed the principal block of buildings opposite the entrance, and facing to the gardens. The entry quoted is circumstantial enough, but there are difficulties in the way. In the first place, the Due d'Aumont did not get possession of the house till 1656, after the death of his father-in-law, and in the contract the house is described as consisting of " plusieurs bastiments, corps de logis, grand court, escurie, offices, caves, cuisine," etc., all of which tally exactly with the building as shown in Marot's prints, which include the main block (corps de logis). Moreover, the Duke did not begin his purchases of additional property till 1662," and these purchases were not completed when he died in 1669. Mansart was quite out of favour in the latter years of his life, and it is improbable that he would have been employed after the death of Mazarin, with whom he was identified by the Cardinal's enemies. Then there is the amount paid to Le Vau; 204 livres as a commission on 30,000 livres would have been quite inadequate if Le Vau had designed and carried through the building; according to modern notions he would have received at least 1,500 livres.^ It is possible that Le Vau prepared the ' See Sellier, " Anciens Hotels de Paris," 160-256, for a detailed account of this build- ing. It was in a house on this site that Richelieu was born in the year 1585. ' Ibid., 199, et seq. ' Sauval, "Hist, et Antiquit^s," ii, 157, says the Marechal d'Aumont had two houses, one in the Rue de Jouy (the one described in the text) the other in the Place Royale. The latter, he says, though the smaller of the two, was " un bijou." It had a Salon h. I'ltalienne, designed by Le Vau, enriched with figures and ornaments by Van Obstal, and painted by Vouet. It was lighted by two tiers of windows, one above the other. The chimney-piece 124 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE first design, but was superseded by Mansart, and received this exiguous fee in payment for his rejected design. M. SelHer finds a technical difference between the three sides of the court and the principal block; I could find no such difference when I examined the buildincr. Le Vau's O touch was heavy and commonplace, there is no comparing it with Mansart's refined and sensitive design, and on the evidence of the building itself it appears to me that Blondel was wrong in saying that Marot's plates show the building before Mansart touched it, and that on the contrary they show it as it was actually carried out from Mansart's designs. Daviler, to whom Blondel refers, expressly mentions the entrance of this Hotel d'Aumont as having been designed by Mansart; ' and on the other hand, the grand staircase to which Blondel refers as by Frangois Mansart is actually, in Daviler, a grand staircase at the Chateau of St. Cloud, erected from the design of Jules Hardouin Mansart,^ at least twenty years later. I take, then, the design of the Hotel d'Aumont to have been by Francois Mansart, and to have been made soon after 1650. It is characteristic of Mansart at his best. He relied for his main effect on spacing, rhythm, and proportion, for details he used rustications, aus- terely simple but perfectly adequate mouldings, and a delicate manner of surface reliefs in the slightly raised panels, handled indeed in a way that no other French architect has ever reached in the absolute justice of their values. The carved ornament consists of masks, swags, and was in stucco and gold, with a vaulted ceiling, and an alcove on which Bouret, one of the most excellent wood carvers of the time, had lavished all his skill. By a skilful arrange- ment of mirrors it was possible to see all that was passing in this salon. Vouet was also said by Blondel to have painted the ceiling of the Hotel d'Aumont in the Rue de Jouy. Blondel reproduced Marot's prints without acknowledgement, and it appears from his brief note that he knew very little about the house. It is quite possible that Blondel has confused the two accounts. ' Daviler, " Cours d'architecture," i, 116 (ed. 17 10): "si la vue est ^troite, prendre la Porte dans un renfoncement au mur de face, comme feu Monsieur Mansart I'a pratique a I'Hotel d'Aumont, Rue de Jouy." ' Ibid., i, 5, 17. M. Sellier asks, not unnaturally, what has become of this stair- case, and seems to think that D'Argenville refers to it in the following century. D'Argenville says " L'Hotel d'Aumont, Rue de Jouy, a ^t^ bati par Francois Mansart. L'escalier est remarquable, le vestibule qui lui sert d'entr X o z 11. TO I'ACK r. 131] FRANCOIS MANSART 131 up by a succession of deep buttresses, faced with Corinthian pilasters, round which the entablature is returned, and above which are figures of boys standing in front of consoles which take the design back to the circle of the dome; but even here the designer could not stop, and must needs break his mouldings again, and place meaningless candel- abra above each console, which do not clear the outer surface of the dome itself The result of these ingenious devices is to destroy all breadth of effect and to lose the majestic sweep of the mouldings and entablature round the base of the dome, so splendidly managed by Wren at St. Paul's. All this part of the Church of the Val de Grace seems to me second-rate work, and I do not for one moment believe that Mansart was responsible. His treatment of the dome and drum of the Church of the Visitation was very different, as severe and masculine as the dome of the Val de Grice is fussy and affected. Either Le Muet, or more probably Le Due, was the offender. Le Due, who in spite of his reputation was originally a builder and an inferior architect, seems to have taken unwarrantable liberties with Mansart's design. Blondel says justly " II faut qu'un architecte soit citoyen," by which he means a loyal man and a good sportsman, " sans cette quality essentielle il sacrifie le bien general au plaisir de mettre au jour quel- ques-unes de ses productions particulieres. Le Muet, Le Due, Le Vau, Dorbay, Du Cerceau, et peut-etre Perrault, ont ete dans ce cas." The parsimony and timidity of Anne of Austria had its reward. Mansart was attacked on two grounds. In the first place he had worked for Mazarin at the Palais Mazarin, and at the time of the Fronde to be connected in any way with Mazarin was sufficient to make any Frondeur one's personal enemy, quite enough at any rate to incur the formidable enmity of such arch intriguers as the Duchesse de Chevreuse, an old friend of Anne of Austria. In the second place, he was undoubtedly ex- travagant. A superintendent of finance might afford to have half his house built and rebuilt without a murmur, but when Mazarin held the purse, even Anne of Austria herself was straitened. She lost her nerve, and dismissed Mansart from all further connection with the work. After that the outside was a failure. But the great quality of his design is still apparent in the interior, so lonely in its austere magnificence. Mansart was a real thinker in architecture, an idea that had once taken hold of his imagination remained with him as material to be worked upon again and again to a more complete and perfect expression. The plan of the Val de Grace is a development on a much larger scale of that of the Church of the Visitation, with the addition of a noble nave to the west. 132 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE There are the chapels opening out of the central space, and off to the right, in the same relative position as at the Visitation, was the Choir of the Religieuses, screened off from the main body of the church. At the east end and at the back of the high altar is the Chapel of the Holy- Sacrament, circular in plan. This is now shut off by a rather solid en- closure, blocking up the vista that might otherwise have been obtained, and which was probably intended by Mansart, for few architects have been more keenly alive to the effects to be obtained by skilful and unusual methods of lighting. How far Mansart got with the interior is not known. The nave with its Corinthian pilasters and entablature, its barrel vault coffered and enriched, the beautifully treated side chapels raised three steps above the nave, seem to be certainly his design un- altered. The arches to these chapels are set back in a recess some six inches, and as the arches are kept low there is ample room for the fine spandril figures by Michael Anguier.^ Blondel considered the interior the finest of its kind in France. "Tout le pav^ de cette eglise est com- parti de fort beaux marbres de differentes couleurs, sur le pave s'eleve une ambulatoire dont on ne peut trop admirer la distribution, la decora- tion, et I'ordonnance, et Ton peut avancer qu'il n'est peut-etre pas en France d'^difice sacr6 dont I'aspect interieure inspire d'avantage les fideles p^netr^es de la religion, cet amour pour la pidte, ce recueille- ment et tout ensemble cet admiration qui generalement satisfait tous les hommes de bien, et qu'on rencontre rarement dans nos autres eglises." ^ " Les hommes de bien " is characteristic of the eighteenth century ; but the criticism does not overstate the case. The impression made by the interior is one of extraordinary dignity. It is one of that rare class of neo-classic churches which avoid on the one hand the banalities and vulgarity of the later Jesuit manner, and on the other ' These figures are finely designed in regard to relief, weight in the composition and scale, and are more satisfactory than the oval panels in the pendentives of the dome, also by Anguier, but probably done under Le Due. The spandril figures are in pairs. From east to west on the south side. They are: (i) a female figure repelling Cupid, a figure with lilies and Cupid in the corner ; (2) a figure with a pelican in her piety, a figure with her hand on her breast, and Cupid in the corner ; (3) a figure with a skull, and a figure with the scales of justice. On the north side from west to east : (i) a figure with a bridle, and another with helmet, club, and lion's skin ; (2) a figure with a palm branch and church in the corner, and a winged figure with a flaming heart on a book in her lap ; (3) a figure with tables of stone in right hand, a torch and book in left, and a figure of Charity with two children. Michael Anguier was born at Eu in Normandy and died in 1686. There is a fine Amphitrite by him in the gardens of Versailles, now in the Louvre. He was the younger brother of Francois Anguier, and much the better sculptor of the two. = Blondel, ii, 64. FRANgOIS MANSART 133 the frigid accomplishment of pedantic classic. There is something con- vincing about the interior of this church. Mansart and Anguier, Anne of Austria herself, meant what they were doing. They were inspired by genuine and high ideals, and they did not fail of their purpose. It is the more to be regretted that Mansart was not allowed to carry out his noble design. The catastrophe of the Val de Grace seems to have been the turn- ing-point of his career. Mansart put up a model of the church at the Chateau de Fresne,' but it must have been a poor consolation to carry out such a design on half or a third of the scale, and it is doubtful if he ever recovered from the blow. D'Argenville says that about this time (the middle of the seventeenth century) he designed the Church of St. Marie at Chaillot, originally a village outside Paris, made into a fau- bourg of Paris by Louis XIV.^ Mansart's last appearance was some ten years later, when Colbert was considering plans for the completion of the Louvre. Mansart showed him several sketch designs, for all of which Colbert expressed his admiration, but told the architect that he must definitely fix on some one of his designs to be submitted to the King as final. " This condition," says D'Argenville, " appeared harsh to a genius accustomed to independence, and so he preferred to sacri- fice such a favourable occasion for the exercise of his talents, rather than give up his freedom to change his ideas if any better occurred to him." It was a characteristic ending to a great career. Mansart died only four years later, in 1666. His latter days were embittered by the intrigues of his enemies and rivals. He was accused of making money by robbing his clients. He was viciously attacked in a pamphlet as having been threatened with the rope at the Palais Mazarin for having nearly destroyed the building. His enemies stated that his ceilings and panelling were filled with " golifichets," and that " il n'a prepare que des nids pour les araign^es au lieu de donner place, comme il le devait, a quelque excellent peintre, pour y produire quelque ' About twenty miles from Paris, between Claye and Meaux, now destroyed. Blondel promised full details of it in that fifth volume which was never issued. Piganiol de la Force says it was " la plus belle chose de Royaume " (ix, 243). The Chateau belonged to the Chancellor d'Aguessau and consisted " d'un seul corps de logis, decor^ de trois ordres d'architecture," with two advanced pavilions, at the extremities of which were engaged circular towers. * Piganiol de la Force, ii, 392, says that, in 1651, Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I, bought the house of the Marechal de Bassompierre at Chaillot, and established here a sisterhood of the Visitation de Ste. Marie, but he says nothing about Mansart's having designed a church, and says that a church here was entirely rebuilt in 1704. 134 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE riche pensee." ' Mansart is not the only architect who has suffered from the attacks of jealous rivals, and these statements may be dismissed at once as interested and malicious libels. It is quite evident that he was not a man of business. " Cet excellent homme qui contentoit tout le monde par les beaux ouvrages, ne pouvoit se contenter luy-meme; il lui venoit totijours en travaillant de plus belles idees que celles oil il s'etoit arreste d'abord, et souvent il a fait refaire deux et trois fois les memes morceaux pour n'avoir pu en demeurer a quelque chose de beau, lorsque quelque chose de plus beau se presentoit a son imagi- nation."^ The small portrait of Mansart engraved by Edelinck shows a thin, pensive, rather melancholy face, not unlike that of John Locke, totally different from that of his astute and most successful nephew, Jules Hardouin, as painted by Rigaud, with his full-bottomed wig and his robes of the Order of St. Michael. Refined and sensitive to the last degree, an enthusiast for all that was noblest in his art, Frangois Man- sart was nowhere with the unscrupulous adventurers who crowded the French Court in the middle of the seventeenth century. But he laid down the lines of modern French architecture on a sure foundation. " Fran9ois Mansart," says Blondel, " may be regarded as the most skilful architect France has ever produced. All the productions of that illustrious man are remarkable for their purity and severity. Few in truth are struck with this kind of perfection. . . . They even regard with a kind of indifference this beautiful simplicity and repose so skil- fully produced by our great architects, and are unmoved by that cor- rectness which fixes our reason, satisfies our intelligence, and inspires us with a reasonable and considered veneration for all that is beautiful. Nowadays one regards as an effort of genius an infinite variety of forms and a merely ephemeral frivolity which is called a beautiful disorder. People prefer the difficult, the singular, the extraordinary. But what an abuse of architecture this is. Of all the arts, architecture is the least susceptible of variety. Artists should search deep in the sources of what is truly beautiful, and should recollect that these ancient buildings which have acquired immortality have only done so because they have been recognized as beautiful by competent judges^ throughout all ages." ' "Mansarade, ou I'Architecte Partisan," 1651, quoted by Laborde, " Le Palais Mazarin." The inspiration of this attack is obvious. ' Perrault, "Les Hommes Illustres," ed. 1698, 210. " Personnes d'un vrai merite et qui sgauroit se preserver de toute prevention" (iii, 50). I have paraphrased Blondel freely in order to get at the gist of his somewhat obscure panegyric. Pi.. CLXIX > a I ri. TO TAi i. r. 1 34 FRANgOIS MANSART 135 Mansart stands apart from his contemporaries and even from his successors, able as they were, in the completeness of his art, his sense of scale, his admirable feeling for proportion, and his splendid simpli- city of statement. The part that he played in French architecture was that which Inigo Jones played in England, and Peruzzi in Italy. Each of these men was first and essentially an artist, other things only in im- material degrees. Their qualities were not those that make for imme- diate success, but they are qualities which, when abler men of affairs have had their day and been forgotten, will make future generations turn again and again to those rare artists who under adverse circum- stances have preserved their ideals untarnished to the end. CHAPTER XX FRENCH ARCHITECTURE, I 600 TO I 66 I THE death of Francois Mansart closes the third lap in the history of French neo-classic architecture. Although, as I have pointed out, he anticipated several of the characteristic methods of the school of Louis XIV, he himself belongs to the older generation, and his transcendent skill was shown not least of all in the handling of motives such as orders above orders, which were common both to him and to Lemercier, and which were definitely rejected by the best of his successors. Architects were so plentiful in France in the seventeenth century, and architecture was so vital and so progressive, that half a generation makes a perceptible difference. Charles Errard, architect and painter and first director of the French Academy in Rome, was born in 1606.' Le Vau,^ though a younger man, was almost Mansart's contemporary in regard to his architectural career, Cottart, Francois Blondel,^ and Anthoine Le Pautre "* were some twenty years younger. Some of their work, that of Le Vau in particular, falls within the period dealt with in this history, and Le Vau had become one of the leading architects in France ten years before Mansart died. But these men belong more essentially to the age of Louis XIV. In the latter years of his life Mansart seems gradually to have withdrawn from practice. His exploits at Maisons had cost him the Val de Grace, and his fas- tidious standard of attainment and total disregard of economy had frightened the Court, and Le Vau, a far inferior man, superseded him as the fashionable architect. Le Vau began the Hotel Lambert in 1650, Vaux le Vicomte in 1653, and succeeded Lemercier at the Louvre and Tuileries in 1655. But in spite of these dates, he belongs to the Grand Siecle rather than to the time of Mazarin and Anne of Austria. The sixty years or so between the final establishment of Henri IV on the throne of France and the death of Mazarin in 1661, mark a very important period in the history of French architecture. I have pointed out the check in its development due to the wars of the Ligue, and as ' Died 1689. '' 1612-70. ' 1617-86. ' 1621-91. 136 I'l. ri.xx I ji •i; ^ Z o o z o Y. II. TO KACli I'. 137] FRENCH ARCHITECTURE, 1600— 1661 137 the result of these wars the comparative barrenness of the last thirty years of the sixteenth century. The re-establishment of the arts in France was really due to Henri IV. He brought back the Court to Paris, and considering the conditions under which he worked, made the most astonishing progress in the improvement of the civil architec- ture of the capital. The Place Royale, the Place Dauphine, and the great Place on the north of Paris which was never completed, are land- marks in the history of municipal architecture, and though, judged by the standards of later Paris, they may seem insignificant, it was a remarkable achievement to have conceived of them at all. Moreover, with Henri IV begins the era of the Paris hotels, large and important town houses, planned with some regard for comfort and convenience. The fashion for building was fairly started again, nor was it confined to Paris. After fifty years, during which domestic architecture in the country was more or less at a standstill, the habit of building great country houses was resumed. Richelieu led the way with his new town and prodigious house at Richelieu, followed by such houses as Coulom- miers, Pontz, Tanlay, and Chiverney in the Sologne, a complete and, so far as the house is concerned, perfect example of the art of the time. Chiverney,^ to which I have already referred, was begun about 1634, with gardens on the scale of the house. Felibien speaks of a grand parterre with seventeen figures of " Pierre de lie " standing in the centre, and at the corners of the alleys, " toutes fort belles et de la main de Gilles Guerin de Paris." There were fountains, a circular water-piece, and a canal, and close to the house was a garden house decorated, in his early days, by Nicholas Poussin. All of these have been swept away for the usual "jardin anglais," but the house is an excellent instance of the style of Louis XIII. ^ Gaston d'Orleans began the rebuilding of Blois, and his wife, Marie de Montpensier, had the house of St. Fargeau in Burgundy remodelled, and the fa9ades to the court refaced with brick and stone. A characteristic manner had now established itself for the French country house. The flat engaged pilasters of Ancy-le-Franc and Fontainebleau, the orders that the later Valois had used with greater skill and knowledge, the intricacy of De I'Orme, the audacious imagina- tions of Bullant, were no longer in fashion, and in their place came into ' See vol. ii, pp. 50-51. '' M. Fouquier, " Les Grands Chateaux de Prance," i, So, speaks of Chiverney as " une style qui atteignit son apogee sous Louis XIV." It is, of course, in a manner that had gone out of fashion long before that date. H T 138 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE use a comparatively plain manner, which depended for its effect on simple spacing and proportions, and limited its ornament to quoins and rustications at the angles and round door and window openings — the manner of Henri IV and Louis XIII. There are many excellent examples scattered about France to which I have already referred. At Vizille in Dauphine, Lesdiguieres, one of the ablest officers of Henri IV, and Duke and Marechal de France, had a house built for him in this manner on a scale which recalls faint memories of the great days of Anne de Montmorency. The house was begun in 1601, from the designs of the "architects to Monseigneur," Pierre la Cuisse and Guillaume Lemoine. In 1606 Denis Benoit, painter and glass-maker, was em- ployed to make the windows of the Chateau, and in 1609 the Duke had a foundry established on the terrace of Vizille to cast the bronze figure for the fountain of theChateau. Jacob Richier of Grenoble, who belonged to the family of Ligier Richier, was one of the Duke's sculptors,' and was engaged on the sculpture of the great entrance from 161 6 to 1624. In the latter year he received 1,200 livres for a fountain with a figure of Neptune and three sea-horses, and other works at the Chateau. In the gallery of Vizille the Duke had a series of pictures painted by Antoine Schamart of Brussels, then living at Grenoble, representing his military exploits in the years 1592-7.^ Vizille is an early example of the Henri IV manner. Sully's house at Rosny, and the house of Nicolas de Jay at Bevilliers Breteuil, both in the He de France, were built some twenty years later. There are others in Berri and elsewhere, but the richest districts of France in fine domestic architecture of this period are Burgundy for the first quarter of the century, and Normandy for the thirty years that followed. Beau- mesnil, Chambray, Daubeuf, Eu, Miromesnil, Montgomery Ducey, St. Aubin d'Ecroville,^ are all houses of brick and stone, designed in this severe and simple manner, by men who must have been very capable architects; though, with the exception of the architect of Balleroy, the names of none of them have reached us. ' " Comme on le voit, Lesdiguiferes tint a I'honneur d'encourager les beaux arts, il s'^tait entoure d'artistes distingues, auxquels il accordait les titres honorifiques, en les attachant au nombreux personnel de sa maison quasi-royale " (" Les Artistes Grenoblois," Maignien, 300). ^ Schamart made his contract for the work in 161 r, and undertook to follow the topographical drawings of Jean de Bains, Ingenieur G^ographique du Roy. Schamart was to receive 150 livres tournois for each picture. In the fire at Vizille, loth November 1825, all these pictures were burnt, except two, which had been sent to Grenoble for repair. " These houses are illustrated in M. Fouquier's series of the photographs of the "Grands Chateaux de France," but no plans or sections are given. Pl. CLXXl •ojit ^u cofic d.e la. ccur de VJi-ofiA