ARCHITECTURE OF THE EARLY RENAISSANCE IN FRANCE
On the north of the Alps the Renaissance had not the same meaning that
it had in Italy, and in France, where its influence was first felt, the
art naturally assumed a different character. The term “Renaissance” is
not, in fact, properly applicable here, for the French people had not
had a classic past, and the adoption of architectural forms derived
from classic antiquity was not at all natural for them. Through the
developments of a noble history they had acquired and perfected a
peculiar genius which had found expression in forms of art that were
radically different from those of ancient times; and in now departing
from the principles of this art they did violence to their own native
traditions and ideals.
It has been often affirmed that French architecture was but
superficially changed by the Renaissance influence, and that its
essential character survived beneath the Italian dress.[114] This
is not wholly true. The Italian influence did effect a fundamental
change in this architecture by giving it, as we shall presently see,
a factitious, in place of a natural, character. This point has been
overlooked by those writers who have maintained that the French
artistic genius suffered no loss of integrity while yielding to the
Renaissance movement.
But it must not be forgotten that the native art had lost its best
character long before the Italian influence supervened. The finest
Gothic impulse was spent before the close of the thirteenth century,
and the feeble spirit and florid extravagance of the Flamboyant style
which now prevailed betrayed a weakened condition of the national
artistic mind which made it an easy prey to the foreign innovations.
Until the sixteenth century the Gothic style survived in its decadent
forms. Yet in some quarters before this time an interest in the
arts of antiquity was gaining foothold, and a few Italian artists
had come into France and wrought some small architectural works in
the neo-classic manner. But the way appears to have been opened for
a more general movement in the new direction when the French upper
classes began to construct fine houses adapted to the requirements of
luxurious life. This movement was favoured by the changed conditions
of the times. Concomitant with the cessation of feudal turmoil and the
need for fortified castles was a great increase of material wealth,
far exceeding that which France had enjoyed at any former time in
its history. Life and property were now secure, population grew,
the towns enlarged their borders, and the resources of the king and
the nobles were correspondingly enlarged.[115] These conditions had
found expression in architecture during the fifteenth century in such
palatial houses as that of Jacques Cœur at Bourges, and the Hôtel Cluny
in Paris. These houses, though retaining the irregular character of
mediæval French castles, have no defences, and are abundantly lighted
on all sides by large window openings. They are the forerunners of the
Renaissance châteaux.
To understand the early French Renaissance château it is necessary
to recall the character of the feudal castle of the Middle Ages out
of which it was evolved. The plan of the feudal castle was generally
irregular and its outline picturesquely broken. But its irregularity
and picturesqueness were not the result of any purpose on the part of
its builders to produce a picturesque effect. It was a consequence
of the natural conformation of the rugged site to which the building
had to shape itself, of the need for defensive towers, and of the
conditions of climate calling for high-pitched roofs, more or less
broken by dormers and chimney-stacks.
The earlier palatial residences of the open country were in many
cases the older castles remodelled or enlarged, and opened, by great
windows cut through their massive walls, to the light and air.[116] And
although there was no longer need for such defences as would withstand
the siege of a feudal army, it was still for some time necessary to
provide for security against roving bands of marauders which continued
to move about, and thus the surrounding fosse and the drawbridge were
retained for a considerable time after the loopholes and embattled
towers of the Middle Ages had become unnecessary.
[Illustration: FIG. 110.--Cornice of Blois.]
In cases where the château was a wholly new building, it was generally
placed on even ground, and the plan became symmetrical. Yet still the
outline remained broken with the steep gables, chimneys, and dormers
that are proper to a northern climate; and even the towers, turrets,
and other features of feudal architecture were largely retained. The
French château, as has been often remarked, was never transformed
into any likeness to the Italian villa; but it was, nevertheless,
so radically changed as to lose that admirable logic of design
which distinguishes the French architecture of the Middle Ages. The
composition of the Renaissance château is factitious in the sense
of being artificially made up; it is not, like the mediæval castle,
an outgrowth and expression of natural conditions and actual needs.
Thus while it is still peculiarly French in character, it is not an
expression of the French genius in its integrity. The French genius in
its integrity has not been manifested in architecture since the Middle
Ages.
The earliest palatial houses of the Renaissance in France are
ornamented with debased Gothic details almost exclusively. The
neo-classic elements are introduced sparingly, and are hardly
noticeable in the general effect. An illustration of this is afforded
in those parts of the château of Blois which were built under Louis
XII. Here the egg and dart scheme is worked on the lower members of
the cornice, while elsewhere the mediæval details are retained. This
cornice (Fig. 110) is a curious medley, though of no exceptional kind.
Against a flat lower member is a corbel-table (a Romanesque feature)
treated in a Flamboyant way, the small arches being splayed and having
the three-centred form. The crowning mouldings have approximately
true Gothic profiling, while a Flamboyant parapet of elaborate design
surmounts the whole.
[Illustration: FIG. 111.--Azay le Rideau.]
[Illustration: FIG. 112.--Portal of Azay le Rideau.]
Of the distinctive early French Renaissance architecture, which took
form during the reign of Francis I, a fine example is the château of
Azay le Rideau (Fig. 111). This building was an entirely new structure,
not a mediæval one remodelled. It is of moderate dimensions, and,
although it has considerable beauty, it well illustrates the hybrid
and factitious character of early French Renaissance design. There was
no need of defences, yet round towers are set on the angles simulating
those of feudal times, and each one of these is crowned with a low
overhanging story supported on corbels, and having a superficial
resemblance to the mediæval machicolated gallery. This overhanging
attic is carried along each side of the building, and its numerous
small square windows are so spaced as to give the intervening wall
solids somewhat the appearance of battlements, while steep gables,
crowned with spiky pinnacles, and high dormers and chimneys make up a
total composition of great picturesqueness. The larger features are all
of mediæval form, but the windows are flanked with classic pilasters
and crowned with entablatures. The most elaborate, and least admirable,
feature of this building is an ornamental bay (Fig. 112), not seen in
the general view here shown (Fig. 111), which embraces the main portal.
This bay is worthy of analysis because it is a highly characteristic
example of French Renaissance design in which distorted neo-classic
details are worked into a pseudo-Gothic scheme. The composition is
plainly derived from the neighbouring castle of Châteaudun, which was
built at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and ornamented in the
Flamboyant Gothic style. In Châteaudun (Fig. 113) a staircase tower
rises over the main portal of the south façade in four stories. The
front of this tower, which is flush with the wall of the façade, is
treated as an enriched bay, the upper two stories of it reaching above
the main cornice, and being flanked by round turrets overhanging the
wall, which is corbelled out to support them. The portal is double, and
each upper story of the bay has a pair of large openings. All of these
openings have the Flamboyant depressed arches, and the whole bay is
flanked by buttresses, while a smaller buttress is set against a middle
pier that rises through the composition. All of these parts have the
characteristic Flamboyant forms and ornamental details. The openings
are splayed, and their profilings have the sharp Flamboyant arrises.
The buttresses have the multiplicity of angular members set obliquely,
with the simulated interpenetrations, and the niches and canopies, of
the latest Gothic style.
[Illustration: FIG. 113.--Châteaudun.]
Returning now to the portal of Azay le Rideau (Fig. 112), we find
this scheme substantially reproduced, but with greatly altered
details. In place of the buttresses we have a remarkable combination
of columns, pilasters, and other neo-classic ornaments put together
so as to produce a pseudo-Flamboyant Gothic effect. The portals and
windows are flanked with pilasters and crowned with entablatures, and
the whole is bounded right and left by superimposed columns broken
by highly ornamented niches, and banded by the string courses and
entablatures. On the first floor over the portal the window pilasters
are made to appear as hidden behind tall ornamental niches, composed
of many neo-classic and nondescript elements, arranged in the manner
of the details on Flamboyant buttresses. Only small portions of the
base mouldings of the pilasters appear beneath this filigree overlay.
In the story next above, the central pilaster only is hidden in this
way, but here a part of the capital, instead of the base, comes into
view. The manner in which the pseudo-Gothic features are adjusted to
the neo-classic elements of the composition is curious in other ways.
The pilasters of the several superimposed orders are, of course, of
equal length in each story, and their entablatures make strongly marked
horizontal lines. But the nondescript ornaments laid over these orders
are carried up to unequal heights, all of them crossing the middle
entablature, and the finial of the central one reaching above the
architrave of the top entablature, while the lateral pilasters of this
upper order are wholly exposed to view, except that the finials of the
canopies over the niches below cover parts of their bases. The mixture
of neo-classic and pseudo-Gothic forms is carried out in the details
of these superimposed ornaments. Under the base of each niche are two
diminutive pilasters, set obliquely so as to present an arris in front,
like the angular members in Flamboyant buttresses, as in Châteaudun,
and between these is a small shaft supporting a corbel which forms
the base of the niche. The niche is flanked by slender pilasters set
obliquely in conformity with those below, but these pilasters are
almost entirely hidden from view by very salient nondescript ornaments
worked on the face of each. The mouldings of the grouped bases, which
are of different magnitudes, interpenetrate in Flamboyant fashion, and
the canopies over the niches are made up of miniature entablatures on
curved plans ornamented with filigree, and each of them is surmounted
by a group of minute niches with statuettes, and crowned by a finial.
The windows have the depressed arches of the Flamboyant style, with
panelled dadoes beneath, as in Châteaudun; but their profilings are
pseudo-classic, and they have keystones at their crowns. The total
scheme is more mediæval than classic, notwithstanding the free use of
neo-classic orders. To produce a continuity of upright lines, and thus
emphasize the Gothic effect, the entablatures are broken into ressauts
over the pilasters, and are carried around the lateral columns, as
before remarked. The double portal is the only part of the composition
that is quite free from mediæval elements. The order and the arches are
here combined in the ancient Roman manner, as they are, indeed, in the
upper stories; but here the arches have the Roman semicircular form,
and the order is not overlaid with other ornaments. Classic proportions
are not at all observed. The pilasters are short, and are raised on
high pedestals, which are necessary to the composition in order to give
the effect of adequate foundation for the superstructure. The design
as a whole has no reason on structural grounds, nor has it any logic
of simulated structure. Such merit as it has is of a purely abstract
ornamental kind entirely extraneous to the building. Apart, however,
from its factitious general character, and its incongruous details, the
château of Azay le Rideau has a thoroughly French character, and is one
of the finest monuments of the early Renaissance in the country.
[Illustration: FIG. 114.--Part of the Portal of
Chenonceaux.]
Among other châteaux contemporaneous with Azay le Rideau, and of
similar character, are Chenonceaux and La Rochefoucauld. Of Chenonceaux
the portal (Fig. 114) is worthy of notice as an instance of a different
manifestation of the survival of Flamboyant ideas in the treatment of
neo-classic details. In this portal we have again the three-centred
form of arch, with a keystone and continuous imposts.[117] The jambs
and archivolt are in three planes, or orders, of shallow projection,
with simple mouldings of semi-Flamboyant effect. No entablature
surmounts this portal, but a corbelled cornice supporting a heavy
balcony passes over the arch. This balcony has a curved ressaut at
each end carried on a massive corbel in graduated rings of overhanging
masonry, with a compound support beneath consisting of a stout pilaster
and two small shafts. The Flamboyant idea running through this
nondescript scheme is shown in the depressed form of the arch, and by
the simulated interpenetrations at the imposts of the pilasters.
In La Rochefoucauld we have an instance of a mediæval fortified castle
transformed into a palatial residence. The most noticeable features
here are the superimposed arcades of the court. In these arcades we
have orders of pilasters used in the Roman way to frame in the arches,
but these arches have the Flamboyant three-centred form. In the top
story the number of arches is doubled, and the entablature over them
is crowned with an ornamental parapet and finials. The vertical lines
of the superimposed pilasters, made continuous by ressauts in the
entablatures and carried up through the parapet by the finials, give a
semi-Gothic expression to the ancient Roman scheme.
[Illustration: FIG. 115.--Part of the court façade of
Blois.]
In those parts of the vast châteaux of Blois and Chambord that were
built in the time of Francis I a richer phase of this early French
Renaissance architecture is found. The eastern wing of Blois, which
had been begun by Louis XII, illustrates this. On the side facing the
court the walls are panelled, not as they sometimes were in the earlier
buildings, as at La Rochefoucauld, by interpenetrating mouldings of
Flamboyant profiling, but by three superimposed orders of pilasters,
in which a continuity of upright lines is given by shallow ressauts
in the entablatures (Fig. 115). The pilasters are here irregularly
spaced in conformity with the window openings of the work that had
been begun, and considerably advanced, under the preceding reign;
and have the novel addition of ornamented bead mouldings set on the
edges of the pilasters, and along the under edges of the entablatures,
while in each of the panels thus framed the salamander and crown are
carved in relief. In the deep and elaborate cornice, dentils and
modillions and the egg and dart are worked in with Gothic gargoyles and
a corbel-table; while a rich parapet crowns the whole, and dormers of
picturesque form, with pseudo-classic orders surmounted by gables and
pinnacles, rise against the vast high-pitched roofs which are further
broken by ornamented chimney-stacks. A survival of the later Gothic
habit of design is further shown in the continuity of upright lines
obtained by the ressauts already remarked. But the most remarkable
feature of this façade is the great polygonal staircase tower that
rises through it. Four vast piers like buttresses, reaching from the
ground to the main cornice which is carried out so as to crown them,
are treated like colossal pilasters with rich Corinthianesque capitals,
and are banded above the middle with mouldings of classic profiling.
Yet on the face of each of these members is a corbelled niche, with a
rich canopy and statue in late Gothic style. These piers are connected
by three stages of ramps with panelled parapets elaborately ornamented
with small pilasters, carvings in relief, and gargoyles issuing from
their base mouldings. The whole composition is crowned with a dormer
having a square opening on each side, grouped pilasters on the angles,
an entablature with compound ressauts over the pilasters, and with
gargoyles reaching from the cornice, and a balustrade over all.
The reader should consider well the meaning of all this, and observe
how the persistence of the native French habits of design, without the
logic of the former time, was still giving a largely mediæval aspect
to works in which details from the Italian Renaissance, modified
and combined in strangely new ways, were being more and more freely
introduced.
On the garden side this wing of Blois has a different design, and shows
a survival of the Flamboyant depressed arch in the window openings
necessitated by the form of the earlier façade, which is incased
in that of Francis I.[118] The windows of this earlier façade were
spaced and proportioned so as to make wide and narrow voids and solids
alternate in a very irregular manner. In the work of the sixteenth
century, which overlays this, superimposed pilasters are set in pairs
on the wider solids, and single ones adorn the narrow piers. The
pilasters of the lower order rest on tall pedestals supported on spurs
rising out of the batter wall of the basement, while the upper order
is set on plinths resting on the entablature of the order beneath.
This upper order has a plain corbel-table in place of an entablature,
with a simple cornice, and gargoyles over the pilasters. Over this is
the novel feature of an open gallery covered by an extension of the
main roof which is held up by columns of no distinct order, with a
balustrade in each interval. Similar galleries were afterward in some
instances produced by extending the roofs over originally uncovered
terraces below the eaves, supporting the extension on wooden posts--as
at La Rochefoucauld.
The walls of Chambord, the next vast château of the early French
Renaissance, are adorned with pilasters as at Blois, though the design
below the cornice is much simpler. Above the cornice, however, it is
the richest of all the great French châteaux, and with its steep roofs
and manifold dormers, chimneys, and central lantern, it presents an
aspect which for multiplicity of soaring features resembles a late
Gothic building. It is not worth while to give an extended analysis
of its redundant details which, with its vast chimneys adorned with
free-standing orders, niches, panelled surfaces, and pinnacles; its
dormers with overlaid orders of pilasters, pediments, scrolls, and
endless filigree ornaments; and its great lantern with inverted
consoles on entablatures forming flying-buttresses (where there is
nothing to be buttressed), make up a bewildering complex without
structural meaning or artistic merit. Viollet le Duc has well remarked
that “Chambord est au château féodal des XIII^e et XIV^e siècles ce que
l’abbaye de Thélème est aux abbayes du XII^e siècle: c’est une parodie.”
The same general character, though in less florid development, marks
those parts of Fontainebleau which are contemporaneous with Blois and
Chambord. This is true also of Écouen, where the architectural scheme
is comparatively simple. Instead of superimposed orders the walls of
Écouen are adorned with continuous pilasters banded by the mouldings of
entablatures that crown each of the stories. These details are in very
shallow relief, the wall spaces enclosed by them are not panelled as at
Blois and Chambord, and the windows have no framing members. Even the
dormers have a marked sobriety of design, though they are framed with
small orders, and crowned with fantastic pediments made up of classic
elements and filigree ornaments.
The architect Bullant, who appears to have had a large part in the
design of Écouen, was among the first French architects of the
Renaissance to travel in Italy. In Rome, as he tells us in his
book,[119] he had measured some of the ancient monuments, and in
the great portico of the court he reproduced the order of a Roman
temple.[120] This portico embraces both stories of the building, and
is, I believe, the earliest example in France of the reproduction of
an ancient order without any admixture of mediæval details, or Italian
corruptions. In the main body of the building it was natural that the
architect should modify and adjust his neo-classic details in the
prevailing manner of his time; but this colossal portico gave him an
opportunity to carry out fully the classic Roman ideas which he appears
to have imbibed during his Roman sojourn. It was impossible, however,
to make any organic connection between this ancient scheme and the
building to which it is attached, and it stands against the façade as
an utterly foreign interpolation.
An exceptional building of the early French Renaissance is the château
of St. Germain en Laye. The top story of this building is vaulted, and
to meet the vault thrusts a series of deep buttresses is ranged along
each façade. These buttresses are connected by arches at the level of
the floor of the principal story[121] and beneath the main cornice,
and entablatures, which crown the basement and the principal floor,
break around them. They are adorned with pilaster-strips of Romanesque
proportions, connected by small blind arches, capped by ressauts of the
main cornice, and pierced with water-ducts ending in gargoyles. The
arched windows are in pairs (one pair in each story between each pair
of buttresses), and are framed with pilaster-strips and entablatures
surmounted with pediments. The balconies formed by the ledges over
the lower arches are enclosed with balustrades, and balustrades
connect the buttresses over the main cornice. The roof is very low and
invisible, thus there are no dormers, but large chimneys ornamented
with blind arcading break the sky line.
Such is the early Renaissance architecture of France. Notwithstanding
its factitiousness, and its ornamental incongruities, it still has,
as I have said, a distinctly French expression, though it has not
the reasonable character of the native art of the Middle Ages in its
integrity. But the departure from their own ideals and traditions
was destined to be carried further, and at length to reach results
which should still more profoundly contradict the true native spirit.
This further transformation was wrought during the second half of the
sixteenth century under the influence of several noted architects who
stand in relation to the French Renaissance very much as Vignola,
Palladio, and their followers stand in relation to that of Italy. The
art of these men will be considered in the next chapter.