LESCOT AND DE L’ORME
Among the architects of the later French Renaissance Pierre Lescot and
Philibert De l’Orme were preëminent. The change which they effected
gave the French architecture a more marked neo-classic dress, yet
still without wholly eliminating its native character. This change was
of course analogous to that which had been wrought in Italy by the
later designers of that country, but the resulting forms in France
were different from those of the Italian art, and were to the last
peculiarly French, though, as before remarked (p. 179), not expressive
of the French genius in its integrity. This was entirely natural.
The architecture of a people inevitably retains much of its original
character while yielding to foreign influences. It had been so with
the Italian art of the Middle Ages when it was subjected to the Gothic
influence, and it could not be otherwise with the French art of the
sixteenth century when the later Renaissance wave swept over it.
Lescot and De l’Orme came strongly under the influence of Vignola
and Palladio, their Italian contemporaries, and they fully accepted
the Italian belief in the superiority of the neo-classic principles
of design to those which had given rise to what they considered the
architectural barbarisms of the Middle Ages. Lescot, says Berty,[122]
“was one of the first French architects to employ the ancient style in
its purity,” and De l’Orme, according to Milizia,[123] “exerted all his
industry to strip architecture of her Gothic dress and clothe her in
that of ancient Greece.”
[Illustration: FIG. 116.--Du Cerceau’s engraving of the
Fountain of the Nymphs.]
Lescot is said to have designed the Fountain of the Nymphs, now known
as the Fountain of the Innocents,[124] in Paris, in collaboration
with Goujon, the sculptor. In this work there is nothing whatever
of mediæval character. In its present condition it is, indeed, very
different from what it was originally. It first (1550) stood on the
corner of two streets with a façade of two bays on one street and a
return of one bay on the other. In 1788 it was taken down and reërected
in the square of the Innocents on a square plan, a fourth façade
being then added. Figure 116, from an engraving by Du Cerceau,[125]
illustrates the original design, each bay of which is nothing more
than a reproduction of the scheme of a Roman triumphal arch, with a
short pediment over the attic. The whole structure is raised on a
high basement of plain character with lions’ heads for water-spouts.
Such pure imitation of the antique does the architect little credit
as a designer, and it is hard to understand how such works could have
been regarded as monuments of a regenerating art. The sculptures by
Goujon which adorn this structure have, in my judgment, no monumental
qualities, nor any notable merits of design. Their movements are
awkward, and their lines ill composed. The influence of the decadent
Italian art is marked in them, without any new qualities that should
entitle them to distinction.
Little is known of the early training of Lescot beyond what is told
in a poem by Ronsard,[126] from which we learn that in his youth he
had occupied himself with painting and geometry, and that at the age
of twenty he began the study of architecture. He does not appear to
have visited Italy, and his knowledge of ancient art must, therefore,
have been acquired at second hand; very likely in great part through
Serlio’s book which had been published in 1537. A woodcut (Fig. 117) on
page 127 of this book,[127] giving the design of an ancient Roman arch
in Verona, might have served as a model for the Fountain of the Nymphs.
He must also have come in contact with Serlio himself, who in 1541 had
been called into the service of the French king.
The capital work of Lescot was the early part of the new Louvre, begun
about 1546 on the site of the old castle of Philippe Auguste which
Francis I had demolished in order to rebuild in the new style. The
new scheme was apparently intended to cover almost precisely the same
area that had been occupied by the mediæval structure, and the old
foundations were to be utilized in the new building. Thus in conformity
with the older castle Lescot’s design embraced a square court; but only
a part of this project was actually carried out, namely, the wings
on the south and west sides. And of these the south wing afterward
suffered a damaging alteration by the architect Lemercier who enlarged
the court to about four times the area that Lescot had intended. Thus
the only part of Lescot’s work which has survived substantially intact
is that part of the existing west side which extends from the southwest
angle to the great western pavilion. This portion is figured by Du
Cerceau,[128] and save for some alterations in the timber roof the
existing fabric agrees with his print.
[Illustration: FIG. 117.--Roman arch, Serlio.]
[Illustration: FIG. 118.--Part of Du Cerceau’s print of
Lescot’s Louvre.]
In this design (Fig. 118) there is no survival of the character of a
mediæval stronghold, though the rectangular pavilions, which break the
long façades, and the high pitched roofs are feeble echoes of the
mediæval French traditional forms. It is worthy of notice that Lescot’s
projecting bays have no meaning apart from their æsthetic effect in
the external architectural scheme. In the feudal castle the towers had
of necessity to stand out beyond the curtain walls in order from their
loopholes and battlements to defend them. But the salient pavilions of
the Louvre have no function; they do not even materially enlarge the
interior, but are purely ornamental features. The scheme includes two
stories and an attic, each of which is adorned with a classic order. In
the basement and in the principal story the orders consist of fluted
Corinthian pilasters on pedestals, while in the attic short pilasters,
with their surfaces panelled in the Lombard Renaissance manner, are
used. The principal orders only have complete entablatures, the order
of the attic having only a cornice with a frieze which takes in the
capitals, and this cornice is surmounted by a parapet with filigree
ornamentation. In the intercolumniations of the basement order arches
are sprung beneath the entablature in the Roman fashion, each arch
embracing a narrow window with a segmental head concentric with the
arch, while the window openings of the upper stories are rectangular,
those of the principal floor having alternately round and angular
pediments on consoles.
In the pavilions we have in each story a variation of the scheme of
the Fountain of the Nymphs. The imitation of Serlio’s cut (Fig. 117
above) is closer, Corinthian columns being used instead of pilasters
as in Serlio’s design. But in the basement the architect has made
marked changes in the central bay, omitting the arch, and cutting
out a portion of the entablature. This last device, of which, as
we have seen, the later Renaissance architecture of Italy affords
many instances, is not only a violation of the principles of classic
design which these architects were professing to restore, but it is
a barbarism, because it breaks the continuity of those lines which
in such a composition should have the expression of binding the
parts together. In the story above the entablature is not completely
broken; the architrave and frieze only are cut in order to insert a
tablet. In the attic, however, the cornice is cut out completely, and
a segmental arch is sprung over the opening to form a pediment as a
crowning feature of the pavilion. The traditional logic of French
design is thus completely ignored by Lescot, and he abandons himself
to capricious methods of composition as completely as the Italians
had done. It is surprising not only to find the French people thus
following the Italians in their irrational misuse of structural forms
in ornamentation, but also to find them, after having produced in the
Middle Ages the most living and beautiful forms of foliate sculpture
that the world has ever seen, resorting to the heavy and formal
festoons of decadent Roman art, as Lescot has done in these friezes of
the Louvre.
Another noticeable characteristic of this phase of Renaissance design
in France is its excessive profusion of ornament. The wall surfaces
are embossed with reliefs, or set with niches, disks, or tablets until
no broad plain surfaces remain. Such extravagance of ornament is
characteristic of later Roman, and debased Gothic, but it is foreign to
the finest classic, and the pure Gothic, art.
Of the architectural work of De l’Orme little is now extant, and the
most of that which has survived has suffered such alterations that we
can form from the monuments themselves but an imperfect idea of their
original aspect. We have, however, in the fragments that remain, in Du
Cerceau’s prints, and in the illustrations to his own writings, enough
to show that he was a man with little artistic genius, though he had an
ardent passion for architecture as he understood it.[129] He was among
those architects of his time who went to Rome to study the antique, and
he tells us in his book[130] that he dug about their foundations, and
made drawings and measurements. His most important work was the palace
of the Tuileries, begun in 1564. Of this gigantic scheme only a small
part, the central part on the garden side, was completed by De l’Orme,
and this was much altered by successive architects before the building
was destroyed in 1871. The plan, as given by Du Cerceau (Fig. 119), is
symmetrical, but it is broken by projecting bays and angle pavilions
more pronounced than those of the Louvre. These features, survivals of
the mediæval plan, distinguish the French Renaissance architecture from
that of Italy to the last.
[Illustration: FIG. 119.--Plan of the Tuileries, from Du
Cerceau.]
[Illustration: FIG. 120.--Tuileries, from Du Cerceau.]
The external façade (Fig. 120) has a single story with an attic of
broken outline, and in it the architect made use of a peculiar form of
Ionic column of which he speaks[131] as follows: “I make here a short
digression to speak of the Ionic columns which I have employed in the
above-mentioned palace of her Majesty the Queen Mother.[132] ... The
said columns are sixty-four in number on the side facing the garden,
and each one is two feet in diameter at the base. They are not all of
one piece, since I could not find so large a number of such height as
was necessary.... I have fashioned them as you see (Fig. 121), and
with suitable ornaments to hide the joints; which is an invention that
I have never yet seen in any edifice either ancient or modern, and
still less in our books of architecture. I remember to have made nearly
the same in the time of his late Majesty Henry II, in his château of
Villers Cotterets, in the doorway of a chapel which is in the park,
and it was very graceful, as you may judge from the figure which I
give.” Further on he proposes that this shall be called the French
order, saying: “If it was allowable for the architects of antiquity, in
different nations and countries, to invent new columns, as the Romans
invented the Tuscan and the Composite, the Athenians the Athenian,
and, long before the said Romans, those of Doris the Doric, of Ionia
the Ionic and Corinthian, who shall forbid us Frenchmen from inventing
some, and calling them French, as those might be called which I have
invented and used in the porch of the chapel of Villers Cotterets?” Of
this column De l’Orme, in his book, gives several variants, showing how
the salient drums, or rings, may be variously ornamented or left plain,
or may be varied in their proportions; and he gives also a design for a
doorway (Fig. 122)[133] in which he employs a Tuscan order treated in
this way.
It is hard to conclude what to think of De l’Orme’s claim to this
column as his own invention, and of his statement that he had never
seen one of its kind in any building, or in any book of architecture;
for such a column was not a new thing, though it may not before have
been used in France. Several examples of practically the same column
occur in Serlio’s book, which was published in 1537 when De l’Orme
was but twenty-two years of age,[134] one of which, in a design for a
doorway, is here (Fig. 123) reproduced.
[Illustration: FIG. 121.--De l’Orme’s column.]
Of this doorway Serlio says: “Although Doric doorways may be designed
in other ways, yet most men are pleased with novelty, and with that
which is not too common, and they have satisfaction especially from
that which, though being mixed, still retains its character, as in this
doorway where, although the column, the frieze, and other members are
broken, and covered with rustic work, nevertheless the form is seen
well defined in all its proportions.”[135] He does not affirm that this
novelty was his own invention, but he seems to imply that it was.
However this may be, he was writing long before De l’Orme could have
produced such a column as his design shows. The château of Villers
Cotterets built for Henry II, in which De l’Orme remembered to have
made columns somewhat like those of the Tuileries, could not have been
begun before 1547, the year of Henry’s accession, and ten years after
Serlio’s book was published.
[Illustration: FIG. 122.--De l’Orme’s doorway.]
[Illustration: FIG. 123.--Doorway, Serlio.]
An ancient adumbration of this form of column occurs in the Porta
Maggiore in Rome, where it has the appearance of an unfinished work,
the drums being roughly shaped to be finished after they were set
up, in the customary ancient manner. Such an example may well have
suggested to the architects of the Renaissance the idea embodied in
Serlio’s cut. Sansovino made use of this form of column in the façade
of the Zecca in Venice, which was commissioned by the Council of Ten
in 1535, and at Genoa, in the wall that was built to enlarge the
circuit of the city, there is a portal bearing the date 1553, in which
the scheme figured by Serlio is carried out. This peculiar column had
therefore undoubtedly been in existence, both in a book of architecture
and in actual monuments, before De l’Orme was writing. It is, of
course, quite possible that he may have devised his scheme in ignorance
of the Italian examples, but whether he did or not is for us a matter
of little importance. It is, I think, an architectural monstrosity, and
reflects little credit on its designer.
It may be further remarked concerning De l’Orme’s claim to this column
as his own invention, that it expresses an idea which was at the
bottom of most of the architectural misconceptions and mistakes of
the Renaissance, the idea that architectural excellence may result
from independent personal effort to be original. I think it may be
said that the artistic aberrations of the Renaissance arose largely
from this false notion. The conscious effort to be original in
architecture is inevitably disastrous. The personal contributions of
individuals in architectural development consist of little more than
small improvements on lines of endeavour common to large bodies of men.
The aggregate of such improvements finally become conspicuous, and
mark fundamental changes of architectural styles; but the part of any
individual in such changes is hardly noticeable. Noble architecture has
always been, and must, I think, always be, mainly a social, communal,
and national, not a personal product. De l’Orme failed to consider that
the ancient orders were not inventions of individual designers, but the
outcome of a process of evolution toward which the ingenuity of large
numbers of men through long periods of time had contributed. He thought
that he might himself invent a new order, and call it French. He ought
rather to have called it by his own name, for it was not French in the
sense of being a product of the collective French genius. Had he and
his contemporaries had more discernment, they might have realized that
a true French order was already in existence in that very Gothic art
which they vilified, that the shaft and its load of the twelfth-century
national style was such an order, a true evolution out of the ancient
orders superbly adapted to new conditions.[136]
As for De l’Orme’s façade for the Tuileries, as an architectural
composition, little in the way of praise can, I think, be said.
The basement arcade (Fig. 120, p. 202) is but an adaptation of the
wearisome Roman scheme of pier and arch overlaid with an order in
which the Roman form of column gives place to the peculiar one just
described and called his own invention. This deformed column has an
Ionic capital, and De l’Orme tells us that he employed the Ionic
order here because it had been as yet little used, and “because it
is feminine, having been invented after the proportions of women and
goddesses,”[137] and is therefore suitable for the palace of a queen.
In this façade the monotony of the long range of arches with their
orders is partly relieved by a ressaut in the entablature over every
fourth bay, and this ressaut only is supported by columns, pilasters
of similar character being used in the intervening bays. The attic
story reproduces with variations some of the architectural vagaries
of Vignola and his followers. Tall, rectangular dormers alternate
with oblong panels crowned with broken pediments, and flanked with
coupled hermæ. In this composition the native French characteristics
of design survive in hardly anything more than the broken outline of
the attic, and the steep roof behind it.[138] That such architecture is
shaped on mathematical proportions, and has an orderly and rhythmical
distribution of parts, does not make it good architecture. Proportion
and rhythm of this mechanical kind cannot, as I have before said, make
a fine work of art.[139]
[Illustration: FIG. 124.--Doorway of De l’Orme.]
What we know of other important works by De l’Orme, as the châteaux
of Anet and Saint Maur, shows the same lack of a fine artistic sense.
The lay-out of these vast pleasure-houses may be well adapted to the
requirements of the courtly life of the time. De l’Orme understood the
needs of this life, and was ingenious in providing for them, but such
ingenuity constitutes but a small part of an architect’s equipment,
and may exist without any artistic aptitude. It is only in so far
as such ingenuity is accompanied by a genuine artistic sense that a
fine work of art can be produced. De l’Orme undoubtedly worked with a
steady regard for what he considered artistic design, but his works
show, I think, that he was devoid of true artistic genius. If further
illustration of this be desired, it may be abundantly found in the
numerous architectural projects published in his book, of which the
doorway (Fig. 124) is a fair example.[140] Of this composition the
author remarks as follows: “I give you here following another form of
doorway being square and straight in its covering, and having pilasters
at the sides, in which one sees only the plinths of their bases under
the said pilasters, which are larger at the top than at the bottom;
which is the contrary of the columns and pilasters made according to
measure [_i.e._ according to neo-classic proportions?] which
are narrower at the top than at the bottom. But such an invention is
produced according to the suggestion and fancy that presents itself,
like many others; which, provided the proportions are well observed,
are always found to have a pleasing effect, which is an easy thing to
do by those who have experience and skill in architecture. You see how
in this design which I figure, in place of capitals mutules in the
form of consoles carry the soffit of a tympanum or frontispiece, which
is cut out, as is seen, and has its cornices above and ornaments on
acroteria, as may be seen in the figure with all the other ornaments,
and pieces cut out which make the covering of the doorway, and above
a tablet with another tympanum and other ornaments. To describe all
in detail would require too much time, but you can easily understand
from the drawing, which is of a Doric doorway having three steps which
are well shown, as in the other doorways, when they are raised above
the ground.” These remarks, like the drawing itself, show clearly
that design with De l’Orme was a matter of purely capricious fancy,
regulated only by a mechanical system of proportions. If the rules of
proportion be “well observed,” he thinks that such a crazy composition
as this, with its foolishly deformed members, may have a “pleasing
effect.”
[Illustration: FIG. 125.--Façade of Charleval, Du
Cerceau.]
It is not worth while to follow this phase of the French Renaissance
art much further, but Du Cerceau gives one other design that is worthy
of a moment’s attention for its freakish irrationality and, I will not
hesitate to say, ugliness, the project for the château of Charleval,
begun for Charles IX, but not far advanced in construction at the
time of his death, and never completed. The exterior façade of the
_basse-court_ is divided into a long series of bays (Fig. 125) by
colossal rusticated pilasters of two orders, embracing the two stories
into which the elevation, above the basement, is divided. Each pilaster
is crowned with a section of an architrave and frieze, in the form of a
ressaut of two orders, which interpenetrates the bed mouldings of the
continuous cornice. Since the architrave and frieze are not carried
along the intervening walls, the pilasters have no real entablature to
support even in appearance. Another unmeaning freak of design in this
façade is the kind of variation of the details of the several bays
which it exhibits. The rectangular windows are in one bay surmounted
with round archivolts, in the next with curved pediments, in another
with angular pediments above and curved ones below, in another with
curved pediments above and round archivolts below, in still another
with curved pediments above and a single one embracing both windows
below; and so on with continued change with no purpose but that of mere
change.[141] Viollet le Duc[142] commends the architect of this façade
for seeking what he calls a grand disposition without abandoning the
logical principles of his predecessors. But the great French master
appears to me to err in his reasoning here, as frequently elsewhere in
his discourse on the architecture of the Renaissance. The great order
of Doric pilasters used in this façade fills, he says, exactly the
function of buttresses, and he then proceeds to defend the whole scheme
by saying that, “Taking the order as a buttress it is possible, without
violence to reason, to cut it by a floor” (_i.e._ to divide the
space between the pilasters into two stories). But there is no sense
in taking the order as a buttressing system, for there is nothing in
the structure to require buttressing; and if there were, the pilasters
of an order, even though doubled, as in this case, would not form an
effective buttress system. It is in nothing but the general arrangement
of the main lines that such a composition can be said to bear any
resemblance to an organic mediæval system in which buttresses have a
function, and are shaped so as to express it.
[Illustration: FIG. 126.--Interior façade of Charleval,
Du Cerceau.]
The interior façade of the same building (Fig. 126) presents a
different scheme. The great order here has fluted pilasters, and
the division of the building into two stories is not expressed on
the outside. Viollet le Duc remarks on this façade as follows: “The
architect wished here not only to accent the great order more clearly,
but also to hide entirely the floor of the upper story;[143] and
in adopting this scheme, contrary to the logical principles of the
architects of the Middle Ages, he has carried it out with remarkable
skill. The line of the floor, naturally placed at the level _A_,
is cut by arched niches, so that the eye does not suspect its
existence, and is forced to embrace the whole front as if it were one
stage.” And he adds: “C’était là l’œuvre d’un artiste consommé.”[144]
Thus in one case the architect is lauded for employing the order like
a buttress system to justify its embracing two stories, while in the
other he is praised for giving a deceptive appearance of only one
story; so that this part of the design may, as the writer says in
another place, be in better scale with the order. But the distinguished
author betrays embarrassment in dealing further with these
architectural incongruities of Renaissance design, and after remarking
that the architects of this time have resorted to various devices
for overcoming the difficulties arising from the lack of harmony
between design and construction (“entre la mode d’architecture et les
convenances”), which, he says, have occasioned them much torment, he
exclaims (p. 376): “Voilà cependant où conduit l’oubli des principes
vrais.” It is indeed far into devious paths that the architect is led
by departure from the true principles of design.
A few remarks on the church architecture of the French Renaissance may
be added here. It was natural that in church architecture the mediæval
structural forms should largely survive. The French people could not
adopt those semi-classic basilican forms of building that were natural
to Italy. Thus, while now professing to despise their own noble Gothic
art, they still retained through the sixteenth century the later
Gothic structural system with no essential modification. This is well
illustrated in the church of St. Eustache in Paris, which was begun
as late as 1532. It is a very large cruciform Gothic structure, with
double aisles and a range of side chapels, overlaid with Renaissance
details. Pilasters and entablatures, variously distorted in order to
fit them to the Gothic proportions and functions, take the place of
vaulting shafts and string courses in the interior of the nave, while
on the outside similar members are used with less distortion because
of a different division of the stories giving proportions more nearly
agreeing with those of classic art. The chapels opening out of the
outer aisles have only half the height of these aisles, and thus the
exterior has two stories where there is but one inside. An entablature
crowns each of these stories, and the upper one has a pseudo-Doric
character. The buttresses above the chapels have two superimposed
orders of pilasters, and are crowned with urns on pedestals. Thus was
a frankly Gothic structure made agreeable to the French taste of the
sixteenth century by a barbarous misapplication of mixed and distorted
classic details.
The persistence of Gothic structural forms is shown further in the
church of St. Etienne du Mont, begun in 1517. In the parts belonging
to the original construction almost no classic details occur. It is
Flamboyant Gothic of a peculiar type in which vaulting of almost true
Gothic form is sustained by plain cylindrical columns of unusual
height. The church has no triforium, but the columns are connected
by arches at the usual triforium level, and these arches carry a
balustraded passageway. The archivolts of this arcade have classic
profiles and keystones, and the balustrade is of neo-classic form.
In the west front, begun in 1620, neo-classic features are adjusted
to Gothic outlines, and the central portal, in the form of a Roman
triumphal arch, is furnished with columns modelled after those of De
l’Orme which he claimed as his own invention.
The church of SS. Gervais and Protais at Gisors has a Flamboyant west
front in parts of which Renaissance features have been inserted in
different degrees of compromise with Gothic forms and adjustments. The
north tower below the cornice has no such features, but the south tower
has been completely masked by a late Renaissance covering in three
stories of pseudo-classic orders of which the uppermost is incomplete.
The main portal is flanked by pilasters, and has splayed jambs and
a splayed archivolt, with an entablature at the impost. A segmental
arch over this supports a ledge on which is set a tabernacle of three
arches, faced by a Corinthian order having no continuous entablature
but only entablature blocks, and an attic over the central arch crowned
with a curved pediment. It is unnecessary to analyze this west front
further; it presents one of the most confused jumbles of incongruous
elements anywhere to be met with.
A different manifestation of Renaissance caprice is found in the florid
exterior of the apse of St. Pierre of Caen, which is made up of details
of a sixteenth-century Lombard character applied to a Flamboyant
structural scheme. The round arch and the complete circle take here the
place of the pointed forms, and pilasters against the angles have short
Flamboyant buttresses set against them, the faces of these buttresses
being treated like Lombard Renaissance pilasters.
One of the most remarkable designs to be found in the Renaissance
church architecture of France is that of the portal of the north
transept of St. Maclou of Pontoise. It belongs to the early period, and
is much like what we have seen in the portal of the château of Azay le
Rideau (p. 182). The opening is round-arched and has a narrow splay. It
is flanked by pilasters and crowned with an entablature surmounted with
a fanciful pediment of broken outline, ornamented with a tablet and
death’s-head, and flanked by finials of nondescript design. This portal
is again flanked by colossal pilasters, rising from pedestals almost as
high as the arch impost, and reaching to the cornice at the level of
the aisle roof. Against each of these pilasters a short, fluted column,
with a capital of pseudo-composite form, rises from a pedestal engaged
with the pilaster pedestal. The portion of the pilaster that rises
above this column is treated like a niche, with a base resting on the
capital of the column, and with an ornamental canopy above that rises
through the capital of the pilaster.
It is unnecessary to extend further these tiresome descriptions. The
foregoing examples are enough to show how irrational was the use
made of neo-classic details in the church architecture of the French
Renaissance, and how they were engrafted on a Gothic structural scheme.
It was in this manner that the French architects of the time sought to
“reform the Gothic and bastard styles.”