FRENCH RENAISSANCE.
Italian masters were summoned to the court of France as early as the reigns of Charles VIII. (1483-1498) and Louis XII. (1498-1515), but it was chiefly Francis I. (1515-1547) who by his zealous advocacy brought about a reformation in Architecture and won France over to the Renais sance. Since there were summoned to France such prominent Italian masters as Leonardo da Vinci, Benvenuto Cellini, Serlio, Primaticcio, etc., it is indeed surprising that only certain Italian forms and motives. obtained acceptance, that the entire arrangement of the structures followed the traditions of the fifteenth century, and that the new art-speech found application in outward ornamentation only. Without doubt these mas ters worked more in the line of other arts than directly in Architecture, and it may be that some of their works—in which the Italian manner appeared conspicuously—have disappeared; but the conditions of life in France as a whole differed from those of Italy, and the French Late Gothic, which had found an entirely characteristic expression, was too powerful to permit the new style to predominate except in the decorative arts. Thus the ensemble of the edifices is that of the Late Gothic works.
The striving after high and wide spaces became even less than in the earlier period; the high, broad hall in which the feudal lord assembled his retainers diminished in importance, while the small dwelling-rooms gained, for a dwelling needs only moderate height. Nobility of proportions had not belonged to the French Late Gothic, and in the French Renaissance also we find bizarre rather than noble proportions.
The were only of subordinate importance, as the of the thirteenth century still sufficed for the requirements, since even their completion, after the eye for hundreds of years had been ac customed to see them as incomplete as a torso, was not taken to heart— were built according to the medireval system, which was so firmly estab lished that no one imagined it possible to erect a church according to any other plan. Therefore only purely external classical forms were used as an outward decoration.
of the Sixteenth works of the fifteenth cen tury which had their external decoration in the new style are extant—or, at least, are known; therefore the new forms begin with the sixteenth century. The Château Gaillon (r5o2-15ro) is indeed destroyed, yet a remnant rebuilt in the court of the Ecole des Deaux-Arts at Paris shows low storeys in which semicircular arches are not yet employed; so that the low reversed curved arch, which is common also in the Late Gothic of France (pi. 37, figs. i, 6), appears among the new forms. The Palais de
Justice at Dijon belongs to the same early period, and has also a mixture of old and new forms, as is likewise the case in the Chateau Chenonceaux (15[5-1523).
The Chateau Billy, also begun in r5r5 (pl. 44, fig. has the ancient round towers of the previous period. These, however, no longer serve simply for defence, but have great windows in the fashion of the time and are prepared for habitation. The entire main building no longer recalls the castle, but has high roofs, gables, and windows reaching to the cornice, above which are dormers enriched with fanciful gabled decora tion, just as in the palace of Late Gothic times.
The Chateau lllois, begun in 15r6, allows the mixed architecture to appear still more plainly in a pleasing want of harmony—pleasing because the naiveté of the mixture, the richness and the ornamentation of the details, completely disarm criticism, and almost make up for the absence of what theory may consider correct. How can the sloping lines of the staircase (fig. 6) be in harmony with the pilaster architecture? How can the Gothic recuryed arches, the baldachins, the gargoyles, be in har mony with the purely decorative elements of the pilaster ornamenta tion? The massive cornice—partly a reminiscence of the projecting water-table—weighs upon the light pilasters and entablature most inhar moniously, and yet how charming is the effect, since it is so characteristic and shows us how the old and the new were commingled at the court of Francis I.! The blending of antique and modern elements is effected in the most highly-original manner in the Château St. Germain, which Francis I. caused to be rebuilt, retaining at the same time a portion of the medireval work. Here massive buttresses of brick form the frame in the court, and between these the arcades are inserted. Gothic elements come out strongly also in the choir of St. Etienne du Mont at Paris, built in 1517– 15.11. Only isolated Renaissance elements are mingled here, but in the remainder of the structure these come out more strongly, and in the tol erably late facade (including also the yet later additions, pl. 45, fig. 6) are completely predominant.