The Great Exchange
Leonardo da Vinci went to France in his old age (1516); all the great men of art and nobility in that country admired him, but so far as is known he left no work of art in France. Andrea del Sarto went to France (1518) and soon fled from it. Giovanni Battista, called Il Rosso, was lured from Florence to France (1530) and remained there until his death. Giulio Romano received urgent invitations from France, but the charm of Mantua held him; so he sent his foremost assistant, Francesco Primaticcio, in his place (1532). Francesco Pellegrino also went to France, then Giacomo da Vignola, Niccolo dell'Abate, Sebastiano Serlio, and perhaps more than ten other famous artists. At the same time French artists were eager to travel to Italy and visit the palaces of Florence, Ferrara and Milan, and the newly built church of St. Peter then rising in Rome. Since the victory of Greek art and thought over ancient Rome, no such abundant exchange of cultural blood had taken place between two nations.
Gothic and Classical in Stone
French and Flemish artists were hurt by this seduction of Italian art, and in truth for half a century (1498-1545) the history of French architecture was a royal battle between the Gothic style, which had taken root in every heart, and the manners and tastes seeping into France from the conquered Italy that had triumphed over it. The picture of this battle shows in the stones of the Loire chateaux. In them the Gothic style still had the upper hand and the mark of Gallic master-masons was visible on the plan; that is, each was a fortress in the manner of feudal strongholds, ringed by a moat that protected it on every side, with castle-style towers rising majestically at each corner, large mullioned windows inviting in the sunlight, steep-sloped roofs with edges to throw off snow, and dormer windows peering from the roofs like monocles. But the Italian conquerors were allowed to lower the pointed Gothic arches of the doorways and return them to the old Roman round arch; to make facades with rows of rectangular windows, backed by engaged square pillars, and pediments over the doors; and to adorn the interiors with classical columns, capitals, friezes, stucco, round moldings, arabesques, and carved cornucopias spilling plants, flowers, fruits, animals, half-length figures of kings and mythological gods. In principle the Gothic and classical styles were incompatible, but the discernment and sound taste of the French managed to create a balanced beauty from their union, and this was one of the chief reasons that made France the Greece of the modern world.
The Fever of Building
The fever of building, or as a wandering French commander called it "the disease of building," had now seized France, or rather the temperament of Francis. To the north part of the old chateau of Blois, as a residence for Queen Claude, he added a new wing (1515-1519); its architect was a Frenchman, Jacques Sourdeau, and the style was entirely Renaissance. Finding a staircase unsuitable for joining that wing, Sourdeau solved the problem by designing one of the marvels of the architecture of that age: on the outside of the building he placed a spiral stair rising three stories inside an octagonal tower and ending at a well-proportioned loggia that stood out from the roof, and at each floor the stair reached a balcony adorned with statues and carving.
After the death of his unfortunate queen, Francis turned his architectural taste to the chateau of Chambord, five kilometers south of the Loire and sixteen kilometers northeast of Blois. There the dukes of Orleans had built a hunting lodge, and Francis turned it into a great palace of 400 rooms with stables for 1,200 horses (1526-1544). Its architecture was mostly in the manner of Gothic castles and so elaborate that building it, with 1,800 workmen, took twelve years. French designers made the north facade charming but confused, since they used a large number of towers, lantern-caps, pinnacles and decorative carving; but inside they placed a double spiral staircase, one for ascending and the other for descending, in a magnificent manner unique of its kind. Francis loved Chambord as a rich hunting ground; there he gathered his courtiers around him with all their ceremony and splendor, and there he spent the retreat of his later years. Most of its interior decoration was destroyed by revolutionaries in 1793, in a delayed revenge for the pleasures and extravagances of kings. Another chateau, called Madrid, in the Bois de Boulogne, which had passed to the Franciscans, was wholly destroyed during the Great Revolution; its facade, decorated with a kind of tin-glazed earthenware, was the work of Girolamo della Robbia.
The Nobles Build
Luxury was not the king's alone. Many of his favorites built chateaux for themselves that still look to the viewer as if imported from fairyland. One of the most perfect is Azay-le-Rideau, on an island in the river Indre. Gilles Berthelot, after building it (1521), rose to be treasurer of France. Thomas Bohier, the chief tax-collector, built Chenonceau, which the book places in Normandy (1513). Jean Cotereau, minister of finance, rebuilt Maintenon (as given in the book). Guillaume de Montmorency raised a lofty chateau at Chantilly (1530, another casualty of the Great Revolution); his son Anne de Montmorency, constable of France, founded Ecouen near Saint-Denis (1531-1540). Villandry was restored by Jean Le Breton, who held ministerial office; and Charles d'Espinay completed Usse. To these add the chateaux of Valencay and Semblancay in Tours, Lallemant at Bourges, Bourgtheroulde at Rouen, and hundreds of other castles and country houses, all products of the reign of this reckless king, in order to judge the wealth of the great and the poverty of the people of that time.
Fontainebleau
Francis, who felt at home there, resolved to repair and complete the chateau that Louis VII and Louis IX had built at Fontainebleau; for according to Cellini it was "the only place in his kingdom that the king loved more than any other." The round keep and the chapel were kept, the rest was pulled down, and in its place Gilles Le Breton and Pierre Chambiges built a group of sumptuous buildings and residences in Renaissance style, joined together by the "Gallery of Francis I." The facade was not particularly striking, perhaps because the king, like the merchant princes of Florence, feared that a splendid display of the palace, so near the capital, might draw the nation's evil eye upon him. Francis exercised his love of beauty on the interior, and for this he sought the help of Italian artists trained in the decorative traditions of masters like Raphael and Giulio Romano.
Rosso and the Gallery of Francis I
For ten years (1531-1541) Il Rosso, so called for the redness of his face, worked on the decoration of the Gallery of Francis I. Vasari describes our artist, then thirty-seven, as a man "of handsome appearance, with grave and pleasing speech, an excellent musician, a skilled philosopher," and "a clever architect, as well as a sculptor and painter"; and indeed all-round men of this kind were the men of that flourishing age. Rosso divided the walls of the gallery into fifteen panels and filled each in the "advanced Renaissance" manner with the following decoration: carved wainscoting and inlaid paneling of walnut; frescoes showing mythological and historical scenes; a molded stucco border of human and animal figures, medallions, weapons of every kind, shell ornaments and garlands of flowers and fruit; and finally a coffered ceiling with deep wooden moldings. The combination of all these elements gives the viewer a feeling of warm color, bodily beauty and unequaled delight. The king approved them and gave Rosso a house in Paris with an annual income of 1,400 livres, as Vasari says; the artist "lived like a nobleman, with servants, and gave great banquets for his friends." Rosso took on several Italian and French sculptors and painters, and they formed the nucleus of the "School of Fontainebleau." At the height of his success and splendor his Italian temperament brought him to ruin: he accused one of his assistants, Francesco Pellegrino, of stealing his property. When Pellegrino's innocence was proved after some time under interrogation, Rosso, from shame and remorse, took his own life, dying in great suffering at forty-six (1541).
Primaticcio
Francis mourned him, but he had already found a successor in Primaticcio, an artist able to carry on Rosso's work with the same alluring imagination. When Primaticcio set foot in France (1532) he was a handsome young man of twenty-seven; the king soon recognized his many-sided talent in architecture, sculpture and painting and gave him a group of artist assistants, at first a sufficient salary and then the revenues of an abbey; thus the offerings of the faithful were spent on an art that caused fear and disgust among the clergy. Primaticcio drew designs for the royal tapestries, carved a masterly chimneypiece for Queen Eleanor's room at Fontainebleau, and expressed his gratitude for the king's patronage by decorating the room of the Duchess d'Etampes at Fontainebleau with stucco figures and paintings. His paintings were repeatedly destroyed in later repairs to the chateau, but the figures remain in their old glory; in particular the stucco figure of a woman, her arms raised toward the cornice beneath the high ceiling, is counted among the most beautiful works of French sculpture. How could a king in love with art and with unveiled beauty prefer the dry rule of Calvinism to a church that tolerates such statues with indulgence? (The book's sentence is garbled here and has been reconstructed.)
The death of the pleasure-loving king and the accession of the stricter Henry II did not endanger Primaticcio's position, nor did they refine his artistic style. Now (1551-1556) he was busy with design, painting and carving in the "Hall of Henry II" at Fontainebleau, with the help of Philibert Delorme and Niccolo dell'Abate. In this hall too the paintings have been damaged and lost, but the grace and delicacy of the female figures still charm, and the end wall is full of the dignified splendor of Renaissance art. More beautiful still, according to the historians (since it was destroyed in 1738), was the "Gallery of Ulysses," decorated by Primaticcio and his assistants with 161 scenes from the Odyssey.