LATER REVIVED CLASSIC DESIGN
In this chapter we must consider an epoch of transition for northern
Europe. Chapter VI dealt with the time of change in Italy; but there was
only a brief era of transition there, so rapid and direct was the
change. The Italians were ready to accept an imitation of classical
architecture, in the hope that the real classical architecture would
follow. No matter how poor the imitation, how inadequate the study had
been, to the Italians it was so natural that architects should study
that which they, the Italians, had always considered the best
architecture, that they were willing to forgive mistakes. In the North
things were as different as possible. The mighty Gothic school was as
vigorous and full of energy as it had been at any time since the middle
of the thirteenth century, that is to say, since the day of its first
brilliant culmination: and every one, every mason, every carpenter,
every bishop or abbot, every noble or great officer, knew what a
building or a detail ought to be without asking the opinion of any
student of the Roman past. The North, generally, was as reluctant to
admit the importance of any such studies as the South was ready to
insist upon them. So it was that only the bodily transportation of the
court for many months from France to central Italy, and this at a time
when the Risorgimento in architecture was at its most glorious height,
could suffice to turn the nobles of the court to care for the stately
methods of design introduced by the modern students of antiquity. It was
in 1494 that Charles VIII started for Rome: for five years from that
time the nobles of his court saw much more of Italy than they did of
their own country. They came back little by little, after the accession
of Louis XII, full of the glories that they had seen. To them it was
evident that the Italian palace with its grandiose staircase, its
stately ordonnance of windows on the front, its dignity, its rather
cold reserve, was more worthy of a prince than the more homely and
natural buildings they had left behind them in France--buildings which
were of the same style and spirit as the village churches, and of the
houses even of the less wealthy citizens.
And yet there is a living proof of the difficulty which even at this
late date the classical styles had to establish themselves in France.
Plate L shows that wing of the château at Blois which was built about
1500 and which is called the wing of Louis XII. Plate LI shows the
adjoining stretch of building, that which was built about 1525 and which
is known by the name of François I. In the earlier wing shown in Plate
L, although the Italian war had been going on for years before a stone
of it was laid or cut, there are no signs of any study whatever of
classical details. The building is what it would have been had there
been no invasion of Italy by the preceding king--had no French nobleman
dreamed of bringing home Italian workmen and Italian ideas. The pointed
arch is pushed to one side and replaced by the three-centred arch and by
the lintel, but altogether from reasons of convenience, and without the
slightest thought of pleasing thereby the students of antiquity. The
high and steeply pitched roof remains, the simple and obvious
fenestration with openings put where they are needed, and only a
secondary reference to delicacies of proportion; the uneven lengths of
the quoins and _chaînes_[48] of the window jambs, the traceried parapet
and sunken panels, and even the foliated sculpture, all is of the middle
ages; nor is there anywhere a pilaster, a classical column, or the
suggestion of an entablature.
So in the building of the next reign, that of Francis I, shown in part
in Plate LI, the progress of study towards antiquity is visible. Here
there are pilasters but such as a Roman of the empire would have thought
very odd ones, and, in a way, there is an entablature between the second
and third row of windows; and so the capitals have a little touch of the
Ionic style, at least in the flat wall to the right of the great
staircase. But in every respect, in the high roof, the huge and richly
ornamented chimneys, the free treatment of the fenestration, the still
more free and easy handling of the staircase, with its ramps and
openings treated with an obvious eye to spirited effect, and with but
little care for classical gravity of proportion, all is still mediæval.
The reader will understand that the arches on the left of the staircase,
with Roman engaged columns between them and the entablature which they
carry, were an addition of the time of Gaston of Orleans, about 1640:
all this has been swept away by the restoration under Duban: for the
object of that restoration was mainly the putting of these two great
divisions of the palace into the state they were in in the reign of
Henry III, for instance, when the States General were held in one of its
great halls, namely, the one of which a small part is seen on the left
in Plate L.
The student, as he approaches either of these interesting buildings, has
to remember that the style of the earlier one, Plate L, was compelled to
make room for the newer style, as that in its turn was soon out of
fashion and was replaced by the more severely classical buildings which
are mentioned below. The evolution was not perfect, the growth was not
merely natural and inevitable, the style did not ripen, growing slowly
from point to point of development, from simpler to richer, from less to
greater pitch of complication. It was the constant influx of fresh
appeals from Italy and from Italianized travellers, sometimes nobles of
the great court, like the Constable of Montmorency, sometimes princes of
the church, like the two cardinals of Amboise, and sometimes scholars
only, humble students of Greek and Latin,
[Illustration: CHATEAU AT BLOIS (LOIR ET CHER), FRANCE, WING OF FRANCOIS
I. FRANCE.]
[Illustration: PLATE LI.]
[Illustration: CHATEAU OF ECOUEN (SEINE ET OISE), FRANCE, COURTYARD.]
[Illustration: WOLLATON HALL, NOTTS, ENGLAND.]
[Illustration: PLATE LII.]
like Rabelais and La Boétie. The next step was taken by that very
Constable of Montmorency, who, being then at the height of his wealth
and influence in the State, began the new château of Écouen, after
1540--an early date, but the work was put into the hands of an
uncompromising classicist, Jean Bullant. Plate LII shows a part of this
château, the flank on the right hand as one enters the great court by
the chief gateway. Here the classical orders are more at home, and
although the high roof, the monumental chimneys, and the huge and
towering dormers are still of the French Renaissance proper, with but
little direct Italianate influence, it is easy to see how everywhere in
the mouldings, in the larger details, the classical feeling of the
architect has had its way. Even his dormer windows, picturesque, and, in
a way, mediæval as they are in design, have pilasters and a Doric
frieze, all approximated in their proportion to the classical standard.
As for the main wall, it only needs a glance at the portico of columns
in the middle of it, to see how the proportions of those two orders
have swayed the design from end to end. This front, except the two
dormers in the middle, which are later, is very nearly of the same date
as that building which is shown in Plate LI. But the transition to
neo-classic art is much farther advanced. The student will see in these
disciplined details, this systematic spacing and shaping, the beginning
of that tranquil and rather slow evolution which is seen again in