THE LOUVRE OF FRANCIS I AND ITS SUCCESSORS
One can attribute the demise of the Old Louvre to the coming of Charles
V to Paris in 1539. This royal residence, hastily put in order to
receive his august presence, seemed so coldly inconvenient and
inhospitable to his host, Francis I, that that monarch decided forthwith
upon its complete reconstruction and enlargement. Owing to various
combinations of circumstances the actual work of reconstruction was put
off until 1546, thus the New Louvre as properly belongs to the reign of
Henri II as to that of his father.
Francis I, more than any other European monarch of his time, or, indeed,
before or since, left his mark as an architect of supreme tastes over
every edifice with which he came into personal contact. His mania was
for building--when it was not for affairs of the heart--and so daring
was he that when he could not get an old fabric to remodel he would
brave all, as did Louis XIV at Versailles, and erect a dream palace in
the midst of a desert. This he did at Chambord in the Sologne. At Paris
his difficulties were perhaps no less, but he had his materials and his
workmen ready at hand.
Francis's repairs and embellishments to the Old Louvre were by no means
perfunctory, but he saw possibilities greater than he was able to
perform with the means at hand. He first razed the central tower, or
_donjon_, and scarce before the departure of his royal guest, was
already dreaming of replacing the entire fabric with another which
should bear the same name. One has read of the monarch's thoughts when
he was awaiting the coming to Paris of his old enemy in the peninsula;
how he regretted the moment when he should sally out to meet him and
leave his new-found friend, the Duchesse d'Etampes, in spite of her
pleadings for him to remain by her. All this is mere historic incident,
and has little to do with Francis's art instincts and ambitions. He
probably thought this very thing himself when he replied to the
importunate lady: "Duchesse, I must tear myself away without more ado; I
go to meet my brother monarch at Amboise on the Loire."
It was Francis I, the passionate lover of art, who collected the first
pictures which formed the foundation of the present collections of the
Musee National du Louvre. He bought many in foreign parts, and many
others were brought from Italy by Italian artists, whom he had commanded
to the capital: Primaticcio brought with him, upon his arrival, more
than a hundred antique statues. These art objects were first assembled
at Fontainebleau and ornamented the apartments of the king. Among them
were Da Vinci's "La Joconde" and Raphael's "Holy Family and Saint
Michael."
Henri II, Henri IV, and Louis XIII did little to enrich the art
collections of the palace, but Louis XIV charged his minister, Colbert,
with numerous purchases. In 1661 he bought the fine collection left by
Cardinal Mazarin, and ten years later purchased the contents of the
celebrated gallery belonging to the banker Jacob of Cologne. The state
expended for these acquisitions nearly six hundred thousand _livres_,
and received for this sum six hundred paintings and six thousand
drawings.
It was at this period that the royal collections were transferred to
Paris, a little before the death of Colbert, when they were placed in
the galleries of the Louvre; though it was a hundred years later that a
national museum was actually created. This was virtually brought about
from the fact that the royal collections were transported in a great
part to Versailles, only to be returned to Paris in 1750, transferred
again to Versailles, and ultimately to be returned to Paris under the
sheltering wing of the grand old Louvre.
The Museum of the Louvre, the Museum National et Central des Arts, is
the outgrowth of a Decree of the Convention, dated July 27, 1793. It was
aided and enriched considerably under Napoleon I, that passionate lover
of the beautiful, who, none too scrupulously, would even seek to "make a
campaign" in order to acquire art works for the museum of his capital.
Many of these abducted art treasures (like the horses of Saint Marc, for
instance) were afterwards returned to their original owners, but the
nucleus of this unrivaled art museum was chiefly due to the consul and
emperor.
As soon as Charles V had left the Louvre demolition was at once begun by
Francis, and in 1541 an Italian, Serlio, was bidden prepare a set of
plans for the Renaissance glory that was to be. Serlio, refusing, or
debating the price, was cast aside for the Frenchman, Lescot, whose plan
was adopted.
The work can in no way be said to have suffered by the change of plans,
for though Pierre Lescot was as yet a name unknown in the world of
architecture his talents were sufficiently great, magistrate and
parliamentary counsellor though he was, to give to Paris what has ever
been accounted its chief Renaissance glory.
Work was begun at once, a work which was not interrupted by intrigues of
court, of love, of war, nor by the deaths of Francis I nor his
successor, Henri II.
Although the work was begun in an energetic manner it was 1555 before
the western wing was ready for the hand of the sculptors, but from this
time on, judging from the interpolated monograms of Charles IX and Henri
IV on the south wing, work progressed less hurriedly. The two other
constructions, which were to enclose the quadrangle to the north and
east, were completed under such circumstances that there has never been
a question as to their period.
For fifteen years the work went on, when suddenly it was abandoned as
were the plans of Lescot. A sole wing, that following the Seine and
abutting at right angles against the Pavilion de l'Horloge, had
resulted.
The sculptures of its south facade, as well as certain of its interior
decorations, were entrusted to Jean Goujon (1520-1572), who became a
victim of the horrible night of Saint Bartholomew, planned in the same
Louvre by the wily Medici.
Henri II often dwelt over Lescot's plans and devices, and, on one
occasion, when the poet Ronsard was present, demanded of the architect
the meaning of the decorations surrounding a great _oeil-de-boeuf_
window, two kneeling figures, one blowing a trumpet, and the other
extending a palm branch. "Victory and Fame," replied Lescot. And, in
honour of the architect and his sentiment, Ronsard composed his
"Franciade." The detail was actually by Goujon, whose design it was,
under the oversight of the master architect. One may see this _chef
d'oeuvre_ to-day just above the courtyard portal to the west.
At the death of Henri II, Catherine de Medici came here to live alone,
and built the great extension, which stands to-day and joins the Old
Louvre with that portion along the banks of the Seine by the double
arch, through which swing the autobusses coming from the Rive Gauche
with such a Juggernaut grind that fears for the foundation of the palace
are ever uppermost in the minds of those responsible for its
preservation.
[Illustration: _The Louvre_]
It is in this Catherine de Medici portion of the Louvre (1578) that the
present Galerie des Antiques is installed, and which is usually
thronged, in season and out, with globe-trotting sight-seers who give
seldom a thought to its constructive elegance and its association with
the Medici.
With the first years of the reign of Charles IX, there is to be remarked
a notable slowness of procedure with regard to the construction of the
New Louvre. This was brought about chiefly by the conception of the
Tuileries and the work which was actually begun thereon. Soon a gigantic
idea radiated from the ambitious mind of Catherine de Medici. In this
connection it must be remembered, however, that Catherine, so commonly
reviled as "the Italian," was not all Italian; French blood flowed
through her veins through that of her mother, Madeleine de la Tour
d'Auvergne. She came first to France, landing at Marseilles, whence she
arrived from Leghorn, and forthwith commenced her journey Parisward,
arriving finally at the Louvre as the bride of Prince Henri in the guise
of a simple, clever girl, though indeed she was twenty years the elder.
Now she dreamed of uniting her chateau of the Tuileries with that of the
king by a long, connecting gallery. She put action to the thought and
under Pierre (II) Chambiges, a relative of the Chambiges of
Fontainebleau and Saint Germain, the Petite Galerie, a mere means of
communication between the two chateaux, and not the least to be likened
to a defensive structure, was begun and work thereon carried out between
1564 and 1571, though it remained for Thibaut Metezeau, in 1595-1596, to
carry it on a stage further under Henri IV.
This architect introduced the notorious mezzanine, which has so
intrigued historians of the Louvre because of the unequal elevations of
the various floors, a procedure which was unavoidable save by recourse
to a substitution less to be objected to than the existing fault.
Actually the connection with the Tuileries was made by the prolongation
of this gallery by the Ducerceau brothers in 1595. The work existing
to-day, but only in its reconstructed form, is the same as that
completed by Napoleon III (1863-1868).
Charles IX and Henri III, though making the Louvre their residence,
practically had no hand in its embellishment. The former gave his
energies and ideals full play in the Saint Bartholomew massacres and
shot at poor unfortunates who fled beneath the windows of his apartments
on the quay-side of the Louvre. This, if not the chief incident of his
association with the fabric, is at least the best remembered one. Henri
III, too, led a scandalous life within the walls of the Louvre and fled
on horseback, smuggled out a back door, as it were, on a certain May
evening in 1588, never more to return, for the Dominican monk Jacques
Clement killed him with a knife-thrust before he had got beyond Saint
Cloud.
The accepted tale of the part played by the famous window of the Louvre
in the drama of Saint Bartholomew's night is as follows: As the signal
tolled from the belfry of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois it was answered by
another peal from the great bell of the Palais de Justice, where, within
a small apartment over the watergate of the Louvre, the queen and her
two sons were huddled together not knowing what might happen next. The
multitude streamed by on the quay before the palace, and, finally, amid
all the horror of Coligny's murder, and the throwing of his body from a
window of the Louvre to the street below, Charles IX stood at his window
regarding the fleeing Huguenots as so much small game, shooting away at
them with an arquebuse as they went by, and with an unholy glee, even
boasting that he had killed a score of heretics in a quarter of an hour.
Historians of those exciting times were perhaps none too faithful
chroniclers and Charles's "excellent shots" in his "royal hunt," and
hideous oaths and threats such as: "We'll have them all, even the women
and children," are not details as well authenticated as we would like to
have them. Like Rizzio's blood stains they lack conviction.
The ambitious white-plumed Henri de Navarre, when he became Henri IV of
France, set about to connect the tentacle which stretched southward from
the Old Louvre with the Tuileries (a continuation of the project of
Catherine de Medici), and, by the end of the sixteenth century, had
built a long facade under the advice of the brothers Ducerceau. This
work was added to on the courtyard side under the Second Empire, when a
reconstruction, more likely a strengthening of underpinning and walls
because of their proximity to the swift-flowing waters of the Seine, of
the work of Henri IV was undertaken.
Joining the Tuileries and this work of Ducerceau was the celebrated
Pavilion de Flore, a work of the Henri IV period rather than that of
Catherine de Medici.
From the Pavilion de Flore to the Pavilion de Lesdiguieres ran this long
gallery of the Ducerceau and numerous interstices and unfinished vaults
and arches leading towards the Old Louvre were, at this epoch, completed
by Metezeau and Dupaira. The chief apartment of this structure became
known as the _Galerie Henri IV_, and was completed in 1608.
At the death of Henri IV, Richelieu, who at times builded so well, and
who at others was a base destroyer of monuments, demolished that portion
which remained of the edifice of Charles V. The work of Pierre Lescot
was preserved, however, and to give symmetry and an additional extent of
available space the rectangle facing Saint Germain l'Auxerrois to-day
was completed, thus enclosing in one corner of its ample courtyard the
foundations of the earlier work whose outlines are plainly traced in the
pavement that those who view may build anew--if they can--the old
structure of Philippe Auguste. In mere magnitude the present quadrangle
is something more than four times the extent of the Louvre of the time
of Charles V.
This courtyard of the Louvre is perhaps that spot in all Paris which
presents the greatest array of Renaissance art treasures. From ground to
sky-line the facades are embroidered by the works from the magic hand of
the _Siecle Italien_. Jean Goujon himself has left his brilliant
souvenirs on all sides, caryatides, festoons, bas-reliefs, statues and
colonnades.
Enthusiasm and devotion knew no bounds among those old craftsmen, but
all is well-ordered, regular and correct. "He who mentions the Louvre to
a Frenchman gives a greater pleasure than that of Mehemet-Ali when one
praises the pyramids." In a way the Louvre is the most magnificent
edifice in the universe; "four palaces one piled up on another, _une
ville entiere_." And when the Louvre was linked with the Tuileries in
the real, what a splendour it must have been for former generations to
marvel at! "_La plus belle et la plus grande chose sous le soleil._"
This work of aggrandizement of the quadrangle was carried out by the
architect Lemercier on the basis of a project adopted in 1642, and, to a
great extent, completed before the arrival of Anne d'Autriche, twenty
years later.
This queenly personage had ideas of her own as to what sort of a
residence she would have in Paris, and beyond her personal needs little
was done for the moment towards actually linking up the various loose
ends, each more or less complete in itself, which now composed the Paris
palace of the French monarchs.
Her son, the king in person if not in power, was not likely to be
endowed with instincts which would put him in the rank of the
traditional castle or palace builders of his race; it was literature,
music and painting which more particularly flourished during his reign,
and so the Austrian contented herself at first with merely putting the
former apartments of Catherine de Medici into condition for her personal
use and building a Salle-de-Spectacle, and--happy thought--a
Salle-des-Bains.
Louis XIV, as he found time, after the war of the Fronde, actually did
bethink himself of completing, in a way, the work of his elders, and
charged the architect Levau to finish off the north wing, which was done
in 1660. A year later the Galerie Henri IV was practically destroyed by
fire and rebuilt by Levau, who gave the commission for its interior
decoration to Lebrun.
Soon the south wing was completed, leaving only the gap for the eastern
facade which was intended to be the chief entrance to the mass of
buildings, which still bore the comprehensive name of "The Louvre."
For the accomplishment of this facade, the demolition of certain
dwellings of the nobility which had clustered around the royal fabric
was necessary, and the Hotels du Petit Bourbon, de Villequier, de
Chaumont, La Force, De Crequy, de Longueville, and de Choisy fell before
the picks of the house-breakers. Levau commenced work on the facade at
once, and made rapid progress until 1664, when an abrupt order came for
him to stop all work. Political conspiracy, graft, if you like, was at
work, and Colbert, little favourable towards Levau, made a proposition
to the king to open a competition for the design and execution of the
facade. Willingly enough, his mind doubtless more occupied with other
things, Louis XIV agreed, and a general call was sent out to all French
architects to enter the lists. Confusion reigned, and Levau was about to
be recalled when Colbert spied an unrolled parchment in the corner and
pounced upon it eagerly as the means of saving him from the dubious
efforts of the former incumbent.
It was the "non-professional" plan submitted by a doctor in medicine,
one Charles Perrault. Jealous competitors made all sorts of criticisms
and objections, the chief contention being that if by any chance an
architectural design by a "pill-roller" proved pleasing to the eye it
was bound to be impracticable from an economic or constructive point of
view, or both. This is often enough true, and it proved to be so in this
case, for in spite of a certain amount of advice from an expert Italian
builder, who had come to Paris to help the good doctor with his
difficult task (for he actually received a commission for the work and
completed it in 1674), the facade did not fit the rest of the fabric
with which it was intended to join up, and to-day it may be observed by
the curious as being several feet out of line with the structure which
faces on the Rue de Rivoli.
Louis XIV practically had no regard for the Louvre and its architectural
traditions; his palatial garden-city idea, worked out at Versailles,
shows what an innovator he was. He allowed the Louvre to be filled up
with all sorts of riffraff, who were often given a lodging there in
place of a money payment for some service rendered. The Louvre thus
became a sort of genteel poor-house, while king and court spent their
time in the more ample country-house behind the Meudon hills.
By 1750 the Louvre had become little more than an immense ruin, humbled
and desecrated; a veritable orphan. The Marquis de Marigny, Surintendant
des Batiments Royaux, obtained the authorization to chase out the
parasites and clean up the Augean stable and put things in order as best
pleased his esthetic fancy, but only with the early years of the
nineteenth century did the Louvre become a real palace again and worthy
of its traditions.
From 1803 to 1813 the architects Fontaine and Percier were constantly
engaged in the work of repairs and additions, and built (for Napoleon I)
the gallery which extends from what is now the Place Jeanne d'Arc to the
Pavillon de Rohan, along the Rue de Rivoli. This detached portion (bound
only to the Tuileries) was finally joined to the seventeenth century
work of Lemercier under Louis Napoleon in 1852. This gallery, the work
of "moderns," is no mean example of palace-building, either. It was the
work of Visconti and Lefuel, and with the adoption of this plan was
finally accomplished the interpolation of that range of pavilions which
gives the architecture of the Louvre one of its principal distinctions.
Named after the principal ministers of former administrations--Donon,
Mollien, Daru, Richelieu, Colbert, Turgot, etc., these pavilions break
up what would otherwise be monotonous, elongated facades.
The inauguration of this last built portion of the palace was held on
August 14, 1857, the occasion being celebrated by a banquet given by
Napoleon III to all the architects, artists and labourers who had been
engaged upon the work. In the same Salle, two years later, which took
the name of Salle des Etats, the emperor gave a _diner de gala_ to the
generals returning from the Italian campaign.
Still further resume of fact with regard to the main body of the Louvre,
as well as with respect to its individual components, will open
never-ending vistas and pageants. It is not possible in a chapter, a
book or a five-foot shelf to limn all that is even of cursory interest.
The well-known, the little-known and the comparatively unknown mingle in
varying proportions, according to the individual mood or attitude. To
some the appeal will lie in the vastness of the fabric, to others in the
varied casts of characters which have played upon its stage, still
others will be impressed with the dramatic incidents, and many more will
retain only present-day memories of what they have themselves seen. The
Louvre is a study of a lifetime.
To resume a none too complete chronology, it is easy to recall the
following important events which have taken place in the Louvre since
the days of Henri III, the period at which only the barest beginnings of
the present structure had been projected.
In 1591 a ghastly procedure took place when four members of the Conseil
des Seize were hung in the Salle des Caryatides by orders of the Duc de
Mayenne.
Like the horoscope which foretold the death of Henri III, another royal
prophecy was cast in 1610 that reminds one of that which perhaps had
not a little to do with the making away with the last of the Valois
princes.
The Duc de Vendome, the son of Henri IV by Gabrielle d'Estrees, handed
the king a documentary horoscope signed by an astrologer calling himself
La Brosse, which warned the king that he would run a great danger on May
14 in case he went abroad.
"La Brosse is an ass," cried the king, and crumpled the paper beneath
his feet.
On the day in question the king started out to visit his minister,
Sully, at the Arsenal. It was then in turning from the Rue Saint Honore
into the Rue de la Ferroniere that the royal coach, frequently blocked
by crowds, offered the opportunity to the assassin Ravaillac, who,
jumping upon the footboard, stabbed the king twice in the breast.
After having been wounded the king was brought dying to the Louvre. His
royal coach drew up beneath the vault through which throngs all Paris
to-day searching for a "short cut" from the river to Saint Honore. It
was but a short, brief journey to the royal apartments above in the
Pavilion de l'Horloge, but it must have been an interminable calvary to
the gallant Henri de Navarre. The body was received by Marie de Medici
in tears, and the Ducs de Guise and d'Epernon clattered out the
courtyard on horseback to spread the false news that the king had
suffered no harm. Fearing the results of too precipitate publishing of
the disaster no other course was open.
A gruesome memory is that the Swiss Guard at the Louvre surreptitiously
acquired a "_quartier_" of the dismembered body of the regicide and
roasted it in a fire set alight beneath the balcony of Marie de Medici
as an indication of their faithfulness and loyalty.
It was Sully, the king's minister, who ran first up the stairs to
acquaint the queen of the tragedy--faithful ever to the interests of his
royal master. In spite of this, one of the first acts of Marie de Medici
as regent was to drive the Baron de Rosny and Duc de Sully away. Such is
virtue's reward--sometimes.
* * * * *
"Lying on his bed, his face uncovered, clad in white satin and a bonnet
of red velvet embroidered with gold, was all that remained of Henri IV
of France and Navarre. Around the bed were nuns and monks from all the
monasteries of Paris to keep vigil of his soul."
So ends the chronicle closing the chapter of the relations of Henri IV
with his Paris palace.
No particularly tragic event took place here for some years. Henriette
de France, widow of Charles I of England, taking refuge in France from
the troublous revolt at home, lived in the Louvre in 1644. She had at
first been graciously received by Mazarin, but was finally accorded only
the most strict necessities of life, a mere lodging in the Louvre, a
modest budget and a restricted entourage.
In 1662, under Louis XIV, Moliere and his troup, in a theatre installed
in the Salle des Caryatides, gave the first "command" performance on
record. The plays produced were, "Nicodeme" and "Le Docteur Amoureux."
An "art note" of interest is that Sylvain Bailly, the first curator of
the Musee du Louvre, was born within its precincts in 1736.
In the dark days of July, 1830, the populace attempted to pillage and
sack the palace, but after a bloody reprisal retired, leaving hundreds
of dead on the field. The _parterre_ beneath the famous colonnade was
their burial place, though a decade later the bodies were exhumed and
again interred under the Colonne de Juillet in the Place de la Bastille.
Le Notre, the gardener of kings, laid out the first horticultural
embellishments of the palace surroundings under Louis XIV, and with
little change his scheme of decoration lasted until the time of Louis
Philippe, who made away with much that was distinctive and excellent.
Napoleon III came to the front with an improved decorative scheme, but
the hard flags of to-day, the dusty gravel and the too sparse
architectural embellishments do not mark the gardens of the Louvre as
being anything remarkable save as a desirable breathing spot for Paris
nursemaids and their charges.
The iron gates of the north, south and east sides were put into place
only in 1855, and at the Commune served their purpose fairly well in
holding the rabble at bay, a rabble to whose credit is the fact that it
respected the artistic inheritance enclosed by the Louvre's walls. No
work of art in the museums was stolen or destroyed, though the library
disappeared.