Catherine de' Medici's building projects

Catherine de' Medici's building projects included the Valois chapel at Saint-Denis, the Tuileries Palace

Tuileries Palace

The Tuileries Palace was a royal palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the River Seine until 1871, when it was destroyed in the upheaval during the suppression of the Paris Commune...

, and the Hôtel de la Reine in Paris, and extensions to the château of Chenonceau

Château de Chenonceau

The Château de Chenonceau is a manor house near the small village of Chenonceaux, in the Indre-et-Loire département of the Loire Valley in France. It was built on the site of an old mill on the River Cher, sometime before its first mention in writing in the 11th century...

, near Blois

Blois

Blois is the capital of Loir-et-Cher department in central France, situated on the banks of the lower river Loire between Orléans and Tours.-History:...

. Born in 1519 in Florence to an Italian father and a French mother, Catherine de' Medici

Catherine de' Medici

Catherine de' Medici was an Italian noblewoman who was Queen consort of France from 1547 until 1559, as the wife of King Henry II of France....

was a daughter of both the Italian

Italian Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...

and the French Renaissance

French Renaissance

French Renaissance is a recent term used to describe a cultural and artistic movement in France from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in northern Italy in the fourteenth century...

. She grew up in Florence and Rome under the wing of the Medici

Medici

The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside,...

popes, Leo X

Pope Leo X

Pope Leo X , born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, was the Pope from 1513 to his death in 1521. He was the last non-priest to be elected Pope. He is known for granting indulgences for those who donated to reconstruct St. Peter's Basilica and his challenging of Martin Luther's 95 Theses...

and Clement VII

Pope Clement VII

Clement VII , born Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici, was a cardinal from 1513 to 1523 and was Pope from 1523 to 1534.-Early life:...

. In 1533, at the age of fourteen, she left Italy and married Henry

Henry II of France

Henry II was King of France from 31 March 1547 until his death in 1559.-Early years:Henry was born in the royal Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, the son of Francis I and Claude, Duchess of Brittany .His father was captured at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 by his sworn enemy,...

, the second son of Francis I

Francis I of France

Francis I was King of France from 1515 until his death. During his reign, huge cultural changes took place in France and he has been called France's original Renaissance monarch...

and Queen Claude of France. On doing so, she entered the greatest Renaissance court in northern Europe.

King Francis set his daughter-in-law an example of kingship and artistic patronage that she never forgot. She witnessed his huge architectural schemes at Chambord

Château de Chambord

The royal Château de Chambord at Chambord, Loir-et-Cher, France is one of the most recognizable châteaux in the world because of its very distinct French Renaissance architecture which blends traditional French medieval forms with classical Renaissance structures.The building, which was never...

and Fontainebleau

Château de Fontainebleau

The Palace of Fontainebleau, located 55 kilometres from the centre of Paris, is one of the largest French royal châteaux. The palace as it is today is the work of many French monarchs, building on an early 16th century structure of Francis I. The building is arranged around a series of courtyards...

. She saw Italian and French craftsmen at work together, forging the style that became known as the first School of Fontainebleau

School of Fontainebleau

The Ecole de Fontainebleau refers to two periods of artistic production in France during the late Renaissance centered around the royal Château de Fontainebleau, that were crucial in forming the French version of Northern Mannerism....

. Francis died in 1547, and Catherine became queen consort of France. But it wasn't until her husband King Henry's death in 1559, when she found herself at forty the effective ruler of France, that Catherine came into her own as a patron of architecture. Over the next three decades, she launched a series of costly building projects aimed at enhancing the grandeur of the monarchy. During the same period, however, religious civil war gripped the country and brought the prestige of the monarchy to a dangerously low ebb.

Catherine loved to supervise each project personally. The architects of the day dedicated books to her, knowing that she would read them. Though she spent colossal sums on the building and embellishment of monuments and palaces, little remains of Catherine's investment today: one Doric

Doric order

The Doric order was one of the three orders or organizational systems of ancient Greek or classical architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian.-History:...

column, a few fragments in the corner of the Tuileries gardens, an empty tomb at Saint Denis. The sculptures she commissioned for the Valois chapel are lost, or scattered, often damaged or incomplete, in museums and churches. Catherine de' Medici's reputation as a sponsor of buildings rests instead on the designs and treatises of her architects. These testify to the vitality of French architecture under her patronage.

Influences

Historians often assume that Catherine's love for the arts stemmed from her Medici

Medici

heritage. "As the daughter of the Medici," suggests French art historian Jean-Pierre Babelon, "she was driven by a passion to build and a desire to leave great achievements behind her when she died." Born in Florence in 1519, Catherine lived at the Medici palace

Palazzo Medici Riccardi

The Palazzo Medici, also called the Palazzo Medici Riccardi after the later family that acquired and expanded it, is a Renaissance palace located in Florence, Italy.-History:...

, built by Cosimo de' Medici

Cosimo de' Medici

Còsimo di Giovanni degli Mèdici was the first of the Medici political dynasty, de facto rulers of Florence during much of the Italian Renaissance; also known as "Cosimo 'the Elder'" and "Cosimo Pater Patriae" .-Biography:Born in Florence, Cosimo inherited both his wealth and his expertise in...

to designs by Michelozzo di Bartolomeo

Michelozzo

thumb|250px|[[Palazzo Medici]] in Florence.Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi was an Italian architect and sculptor.-Biography:...

. After moving to Rome in 1530, she lived, surrounded by classical and Renaissance treasures, at another Medici palace (now called the Palazzo Madama

Palazzo Madama

Palazzo Madama is a palace in Rome that is currently the home of the Senate of the Italian Republic.It was built atop the ruins of the ancient baths of Nero, next to Piazza Navona...

). There she watched the leading artists and architects of the day at work in the city. When she later commissioned buildings herself, in France, Catherine often turned to Italian models. She based the Tuileries

Tuileries Palace

The Tuileries Palace was a royal palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the River Seine until 1871, when it was destroyed in the upheaval during the suppression of the Paris Commune...

on the Pitti palace

Palazzo Pitti

The Palazzo Pitti , in English sometimes called the Pitti Palace, is a vast mainly Renaissance palace in Florence, Italy. It is situated on the south side of the River Arno, a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio...

in Florence; and she originally planned the Hotel de la Reine with the Uffizi palace

Uffizi

The Uffizi Gallery , is a museum in Florence, Italy. It is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world.-History:...

in mind.

Catherine, however, left Italy in 1533 at the age of fourteen and married Henry of Orléans

Henry II of France

, the second son of King Francis I of France

Francis I of France

Francis I was King of France from 1515 until his death. During his reign, huge cultural changes took place in France and he has been called France's original Renaissance monarch...

. Though she kept in touch with her native Florence, her taste matured at the itinerant royal court of France. Her father-in-law impressed Catherine deeply as an example of what a monarch should be. She later copied Francis' policy of setting the grandeur of the dynasty in stone, whatever the cost. His lavish building projects inspired her own.

Francis was a compulsive builder. He began extension works at the Louvre

Louvre

The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...

, added a wing to the old castle at Blois

Château de Blois

The Royal Château de Blois is located in the Loir-et-Cher département in the Loire Valley, in France, in the center of the city of Blois. The residence of several French kings, it is also the place where Joan of Arc went in 1429 to be blessed by the Archbishop of Reims before departing with her...

, and built the vast château of Chambord

Château de Chambord

, which he showed off to the emperor Charles V

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

Charles V was ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Charles I, of the Spanish Empire from 1516 until his voluntary retirement and abdication in favor of his younger brother Ferdinand I and his son Philip II in 1556.As...

in 1539. He also transformed the lodge at Fontainebleau

Château de Fontainebleau

into one of the great palaces of Europe, a project that continued under Henry II

Henry II of France

. Artists such as Rosso Fiorentino

Rosso Fiorentino

Giovanni Battista di Jacopo , known as Rosso Fiorentino , or Il Rosso, was an Italian Mannerist painter, in oil and fresco, belonging to the Florentine school.-Biography:...

and Francesco Primaticcio

Francesco Primaticcio

Francesco Primaticcio was an Italian Mannerist painter, architect and sculptor who spent most of his career in France.-Biography:...

worked on the interior, alongside French craftsmen. This meeting of Italian Mannerism

Mannerism

Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...

and French patronage bred an original style, later known as the first School of Fontainebleau

School of Fontainebleau

. Featuring fresco

Fresco

Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...

es and high-relief stucco

Stucco

Stucco or render is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as decorative coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture...

in the shape of parchment or curled leather strapwork

Strapwork

In the history of art and design, the term strapwork refers to a stylised representation in ornament of strips or bands of curling leather, parchment or metal cut into elaborate shapes, with piercings and often interwoven...

, it became the dominant decorative fashion in France in the second half of the sixteenth century. Catherine later herself employed Primaticcio to design her Valois chapel. She also patronised French talent, such as the architects Philibert de l'Orme

Philibert de l'Orme

Philibert DeLorme was a French architect, one of the great masters of the French Renaissance.He was born at Lyon, the son of Jean Delorme, a master mason. At an early age Philibert was sent to Italy to study and was employed there by Pope Paul III...

and Jean Bullant

Jean Bullant

Jean Bullant was a French architect and sculptor who built the tombs of Anne de Montmorency, Grand Connétable of France, Henri II, and Catherine de' Medici. He also worked on the Tuileries, the Louvre, and the Château d'Écouen...

, and the sculptor Germain Pilon

Germain Pilon

Germain Pilon was a French Renaissance sculptor.-Biography:He was born in Paris. Trained by his father and Pierre Bontemps, Pilon was an expert with marble, bronze, wood and terra cotta; from about 1555 he was providing models for Parisian goldsmiths...

The death of Henry II from jousting

Jousting

Jousting is a martial game or hastilude between two knights mounted on horses and using lances, often as part of a tournament.Jousting emerged in the High Middle Ages based on the military use of the lance by heavy cavalry. The first camels tournament was staged in 1066, but jousting itself did not...

wounds in 1559 changed Catherine's life. From that day, she wore black and took as her emblem a broken lance. She turned her widowhood into a political force that validated her authority during the reigns of her three weak sons. She also became intent on immortalizing her sorrow at the death of her husband. She had emblems of her love and grief carved into the stonework of her buildings. She commissioned a magnificent tomb for Henry, as the centrepiece of an ambitious new chapel.

In 1562, a long poem by Nicolas Houël likened Catherine to Artemisia

Artemisia II of Caria

Artemisia II of Caria was a sister, the wife and the successor of the king Mausolus. She was a daughter of Hecatomnus, and after the death of her husband she reigned for two years, from 353 to 351 BC...

, who had built the Mausoleum

Mausoleum of Maussollos

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus or Tomb of Mausolus was a tomb built between 353 and 350 BC at Halicarnassus for Mausolus, a satrap in the Persian Empire, and Artemisia II of Caria, his wife and sister....

at Halicarnassus

Halicarnassus

Halicarnassus was an ancient Greek city at the site of modern Bodrum in Turkey. It was located in southwest Caria on a picturesque, advantageous site on the Ceramic Gulf. The city was famous for the tomb of Mausolus, the origin of the word mausoleum, built between 353 BC and 350 BC, and...

, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

The Seven Wonders of the World refers to remarkable constructions of classical antiquity listed by various authors in guidebooks popular among the ancient Hellenic tourists, particularly in the 1st and 2nd centuries BC...

, as a tomb for her dead husband. Artemesia had also acted as regent for her children. Houël laid stress on Artemesia's devotion to architecture. In his dedication to L'Histoire de la Royne Arthémise, he told Catherine:

You will find here the edifices, columns, and pyramids that she had built both at Rhodes and Halicarnassus, which will serve as remembrances for those who reflect on our times and who will be astounded at your own buildings–the palaces at the Tuileries, Montceaux, and Saint-Maur, and the infinity of others that you have constructed, built, and embellished with sculptures and beautiful paintings.

Valois Chapel

In memory of Henry II, Catherine decided to add a new chapel to the basilica of Saint Denis, where the kings of France were traditionally buried. As the centrepiece of this circular chapel, sometimes known as the Valois rotunda

Rotunda (architecture)

A rotunda is any building with a circular ground plan, sometimes covered by a dome. It can also refer to a round room within a building . The Pantheon in Rome is a famous rotunda. A Band Rotunda is a circular bandstand, usually with a dome...

, she commissioned a magnificent and innovative tomb for Henry and herself. The design of this tomb should be understood in the context of its planned setting. The plan was to integrate the tomb's effigies of the king and queen with other statues throughout the chapel, creating a vast spatial composition. Catherine's approval would have been essential for such a departure from funerary tradition.

Architecture

To lead the Valois chapel project, Catherine chose Francesco Primaticcio

Francesco Primaticcio

Francesco Primaticcio was an Italian Mannerist painter, architect and sculptor who spent most of his career in France.-Biography:...

, who had worked for Henry at Fontainebleau. Primaticcio designed the chapel as a round building, crowned by a dome, to be joined to the north transept

Transept

For the periodical go to The Transept.A transept is a transverse section, of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In Christian churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform building in Romanesque and Gothic Christian church architecture...

of the basilica. The interior and exterior of the chapel were to be decorated with pilaster

Pilaster

A pilaster is a slightly-projecting column built into or applied to the face of a wall. Most commonly flattened or rectangular in form, pilasters can also take a half-round form or the shape of any type of column, including tortile....

s, columns, and epitaphs in coloured marble. The building would contain six other chapels circling the tomb of Henry and Catherine. Primaticcio's circular design solved the problems faced by the Giusti brothers and Philibert de l'Orme

Philibert de l'Orme

, who had built previous royal tombs. Whereas de l'Orme had designed the tomb of Francis I to be viewed only from the front or the side, Primaticcio's design allowed the tomb to be viewed from all angles. Art historian Henri Zerner has called the plan "a grand ritualistic drama which would have filled the rotunda's celestial space”.

Work on the chapel began in 1563 and continued over the next two decades. Primaticcio died in 1570, and the architect Jean Bullant

Jean Bullant

took over the project two years later. After Bullant’s death in 1578, Baptiste du Cerceau

Androuet du Cerceau

Androuet du Cerceau was a family of French architects and designers active in the 16th and early 17th century.*Jacques I Androuet du Cerceau *Jean Baptiste Androuet du Cerceau...

led the work. The building was abandoned in 1585. Over two hundred years later, in 1793, a mob tossed Catherine and Henry's bones into a pit with the rest of the French kings and queens.

Tomb

Several of the monuments built for the Valois chapel have survived. These include the tomb of Catherine and Henry—in Zerner's view, "the last and most brilliant of the royal tombs of the Renaissance". Primaticcio himself designed its structure, which eliminated the traditional bas-reliefs and kept ornamentation to a minimum. The sculptor Germain Pilon

Germain Pilon

, who had provided statues for the tomb of Francis I, carved the tomb’s two sets of effigies, which represented death below and eternal life above. The king and queen, cast in bronze, kneel in prayer (priants) on a marble canopy supported by twelve marble columns. Their poses echo those on the nearby tombs of Louis XII

Louis XII of France

Louis proved to be a popular king. At the end of his reign the crown deficit was no greater than it had been when he succeeded Charles VIII in 1498, despite several expensive military campaigns in Italy. His fiscal reforms of 1504 and 1508 tightened and improved procedures for the collection of taxes...

and Francis I

Francis I of France

Francis I was King of France from 1515 until his death. During his reign, huge cultural changes took place in France and he has been called France's original Renaissance monarch...

. Pilon’s feel for the material, however, invests his statues with a greater sense of movement.

The cadavers (gisants) of the king and queen lie in the mortuary chamber below. Catherine's corpse suggests sleep rather than death, while Henry is posed strikingly, with his head thrown back. From 1583, Pilon also sculpted two later gisants of Catherine and Henry wearing their crowns and coronation robes. In this case, he portrays Catherine realistically, with a double chin. These two statues were intended to flank the altar of the chapel. Pilon's four bronze statues of the cardinal virtues

Cardinal virtues

In Christian traditionthere are 4 cardinal virtues:*Prudence - able to judge between actions with regard to appropriate actions at a given time*Justice - proper moderation between self-interest and the rights and needs of others...

stand at the corners of the tomb. Pilon also carved the reliefs round the base that recall Bontemps'

Pierre Bontemps

Pierre Bontemps was a French sculptor known for his funeral monuments, was, with Germain Pilon, one of the pre-eminent sculptors of the French Renaissance....

work on the monument for the heart of Francis I.

Statuary

In the 1580s, Pilon began work on statues for the chapels that were to circle the tomb. Among these, the fragmentary Resurrection, now in the Louvre, was designed to face the tomb of Catherine and Henry from a side chapel. This work owes a clear debt to Michelangelo

Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...

, who had designed the tomb and funerary statues for Catherine's father at the Medici chapels in Florence. Pilon’s statue of St Francis in Ecstasy now stands in the church of St Jean and St François. In art historian Anthony Blunt’s view, it marks a departure from the tension of Mannerism

Mannerism

and "almost foreshadows" the Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

.

Pilon had by this time developed a freer style of sculpture than previously seen in France. Earlier French sculpture seems to have influenced him less than Primaticcio's decorations at Fontainebleau: the work of his predecessor Jean Goujon

Jean Goujon

Jean Goujon was a French Renaissance sculptor and architect.-Biography:His early life is little known; he was likely born in Normandy and may have traveled in Italy...

, for example, is more linear and classical. Pilon openly depicts extreme emotion in his work, sometimes to the point of the grotesque. His style has been interpreted as a reflection of a society torn by the conflict of the French wars of religion

French Wars of Religion

The French Wars of Religion is the name given to a period of civil infighting and military operations, primarily fought between French Catholics and Protestants . The conflict involved the factional disputes between the aristocratic houses of France, such as the House of Bourbon and House of Guise...

Montceaux

Catherine’s earliest building project was the château of Montceaux-en-Brie, near Paris, which Henry II gave her in 1556, three years before his death. The building consisted of a central pavilion housing a straight staircase, and two wings with a pavilion at each end. Catherine wanted to cover the alley in the garden where Henry played pall mall

Pall mall (game)

Paille-maille is a lawn game that was mostly played in the 16th and 17th centuries, a precursor to croquet.-History:...

, an early form of croquet

Croquet

Croquet is a lawn game, played both as a recreational pastime and as a competitive sport. It involves hitting plastic or wooden balls with a mallet through hoops embedded into the grass playing court.-History:...

. For this commission, Philibert de l'Orme built her a grotto

Grotto

A grotto is any type of natural or artificial cave that is associated with modern, historic or prehistoric use by humans. When it is not an artificial garden feature, a grotto is often a small cave near water and often flooded or liable to flood at high tide...

. He set it on a base made to look like natural rock, from which guests could watch the games while taking refreshments. The work was completed in 1558 but has not survived. The château ceased to be used as a royal residence after 1640, and had fallen into ruin by the time it was demolished by revolutionary decree in 1798.

Tuileries

After the death of Henry II, Catherine abandoned the palace of the Tournelles, where Henry had lain after a lance fatally pierced his eye and brain in a joust

Jousting

. To replace the Tournelles, she decided in 1563 to build herself a new Paris residence on the site of some old tile kilns or tuileries. The site was close to the congested Louvre, where she kept her household. The grounds extended along the banks of the Seine

Seine

The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...

and afforded a view of the countryside to the south and west. The Tuileries

Tuileries Palace

The Tuileries Palace was a royal palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the River Seine until 1871, when it was destroyed in the upheaval during the suppression of the Paris Commune...

was the first palace that Catherine had planned from the ground up. It was to grow into the largest royal building project of the last quarter of the sixteenth century in western Europe. Her massive building schemes would have transformed western Paris, as seen from the river, into a monumental complex.

To design the new palace, Catherine brought back Philibert de l'Orme

Philibert de l'Orme

from disgrace. This arrogant genius had been sacked as superintendent of royal buildings at the end of Henry II's

Henry II of France

reign, after making too many enemies. De l'Orme mentioned the project in his treatises on architecture, but his ideas are not fully known. It appears from the small amount of work carried out that his plans for the Tuileries departed from his known principles. De l'Orme is said to have "taught France the classical style—lucid, rational and regular". He notes, however, that in this case he added rich materials and ornaments to please the queen. The plans therefore include a decorative element that looks forward to Bullant's

Jean Bullant

later work and to a less classical style of architecture.

For the pilaster

Pilaster

s of Catherine's palace, de l’Orme chose the Ionic order

Ionic order

The Ionic order forms one of the three orders or organizational systems of classical architecture, the other two canonic orders being the Doric and the Corinthian...

, which he considered a feminine form:

I will not go on to other matters without pointing out to you that I chose the present Ionic order, from amongst all others, in order to ornament and to give lustre to the palace, which Her Majesty the Queen, mother of the most Christian King Charles IX, today is having built at Paris . . .The other reason why I wanted to use and to show the Ionic order properly, on the palace of Her Majesty the Queen, is because it is feminine and was devised according to the proportions and beauties of women and goddesses, as was the Doric to those of men, which is what the ancients have told me: for, when they decided to build a temple to a god, they used the Doric, and to a goddess, the Ionic. Yet all architects have not followed that [principle], shown in Vitruvius's text . . . accordingly I have made use, at the palace of Her Majesty the Queen, of the Ionic order, on the view that it is delicate and of greater beauty than the Doric, and more ornamented and enriched with distinctive features.

Catherine de’ Medici was closely involved in planning and supervising the building. De l'Orme records, for example, that she told him to take down some Ionic columns that struck her as too plain. She also insisted on large panels between the dormer

Dormer

A dormer is a structural element of a building that protrudes from the plane of a sloping roof surface. Dormers are used, either in original construction or as later additions, to create usable space in the roof of a building by adding headroom and usually also by enabling addition of windows.Often...

s to make room for inscriptions. Only a part of de l’Orme’s scheme was ever built: the lower section of a central pavilion, containing an oval staircase, and a wing on either side. Though work on de l'Orme's design was abandoned in 1572, two years after his death, it is nonetheless held in high regard. According to Thomson, "The surviving portions of the palace scattered between the Tuileries gardens, the courtyards of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts [Paris] and the Château de la Punta in Corsica

Corsica

Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....

show that the columns, pilasters, dormers and tabernacles of the Tuileries were the outstanding masterpieces of non-figurative French Renaissance architectural sculpture".

De l'Orme's original plans have not survived. Jacques Androuet du Cerceau

Androuet du Cerceau

Androuet du Cerceau was a family of French architects and designers active in the 16th and early 17th century.*Jacques I Androuet du Cerceau *Jean Baptiste Androuet du Cerceau...

, however, has left us a set of plans for the Tuileries. One engraving shows a grandiose palace, with three courts and two oval halls. This design is atypical of de l’Orme’s style and so is likely to have been du Cerceau's own proposal or his son Baptiste's. It recalls the houses with tall pavilions and multiple courtyards that du Cerceau often drew in the 1560s and 1570s. Architectural historian David Thomson suggests that the oval halls within du Cerceau's courtyards were Catherine de' Medici's idea. She may have planned to use them for her famously lavish balls and entertainments. Du Cerceau's drawings reveal that, before he published them in 1576, Catherine decided to join the Louvre to the Tuileries by a gallery running west along the north bank of the Seine. Only the ground floor of the first section, the Petite Galerie, was completed in her lifetime. It was left to Henry IV

Henry IV of France

Henry IV , Henri-Quatre, was King of France from 1589 to 1610 and King of Navarre from 1572 to 1610. He was the first monarch of the Bourbon branch of the Capetian dynasty in France....

, who ruled from 1589 to 1610, to add the second floor and the Grande Galerie that finally linked the two palaces.

After de l’Orme died in 1570, Catherine abandoned his design for a freestanding house with courtyards. To his unfinished wing she added a pavilion that extended the building towards the river. This was built in a less experimental style by Jean Bullant

Jean Bullant

. Bullant attached columns to his pavilion, as advocated in his 1564 book on the classical order

Classical order

A classical order is one of the ancient styles of classical architecture, each distinguished by its proportions and characteristic profiles and details, and most readily recognizable by the type of column employed. Three ancient orders of architecture—the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian—originated in...

s, to mark proportion. Some commentators have interpreted his different approach as a criticism of de l’Orme’s departures from the style of Roman monuments.

Despite its unfinished state, Catherine often visited the palace. She held banquets and festivities there and loved to walk in the gardens. According to the French military leader Marshal Tavannes

Gaspard de Saulx

Gaspard de Saulx, sieur de Tavannes was a French military leader during the Italian Wars and the French Wars of Religion.-Biography:He was born in Dijon....

, it was in the Tuileries gardens that she planned the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre

St. Bartholomew's Day massacre

The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations, followed by a wave of Roman Catholic mob violence, both directed against the Huguenots , during the French Wars of Religion...

, in which thousands of Huguenots were butchered in Paris. The gardens had been laid out before work on the palace halted. They included canals, fountains, and a grotto decorated with glazed animals by the potter Bernard Palissy

Bernard Palissy

Bernard Palissy was a French Huguenot potter, hydraulics engineer and craftsman, famous for having struggled for sixteen years to imitate Chinese porcelain...

. In 1573, Catherine hosted the famous entertainment at the Tuileries that is depicted on the Valois tapestries

Valois Tapestries

The Valois Tapestries are a series of eight tapestries depicting festivities or "magnificences" at the Court of France in the second half of the 16th century. The tapestries were worked in the Spanish Netherlands, probably in Brussels or Antwerp, shortly after 1580.Scholars have not firmly...

. This was a grand ball for the Polish envoys who had come to offer the crown of Poland

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a dualistic state of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch. It was the largest and one of the most populous countries of 16th- and 17th‑century Europe with some and a multi-ethnic population of 11 million at its peak in the early 17th century...

to her son, the duke of Anjou, later Henry III of France

Henry III of France

Henry III was King of France from 1574 to 1589. As Henry of Valois, he was the first elected monarch of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with the dual titles of King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1573 to 1575.-Childhood:Henry was born at the Royal Château de Fontainebleau,...

. Henry IV

Henry IV of France

Henry IV , Henri-Quatre, was King of France from 1589 to 1610 and King of Navarre from 1572 to 1610. He was the first monarch of the Bourbon branch of the Capetian dynasty in France....

later added to the Tuileries; but Louis XVI

Louis XVI of France

Louis XVI was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793....

was to dismantle sections of the palace. The communards

Communards

The Communards were members and supporters of the short-lived 1871 Paris Commune formed in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War and France's defeat....

set fire to the remainder in 1871. Twelve years later, the ruins were demolished and then sold off.

Saint-Maur

The palace of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés

Saint-Maur-des-Fossés

Saint-Maur-des-Fossés is a commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 11.7 km. from the center of Paris.-The abbey:...

, south east of Paris, was another of Catherine's unfinished projects. She bought this building, on which Philibert de l'Orme had worked, from the heirs of Cardinal Jean du Bellay

Jean du Bellay

Jean du Bellay was a French cardinal and diplomat, younger brother of Guillaume du Bellay, and bishop of Bayonne in 1526, member of the privy council in 1530, and bishop of Paris in 1532.-Biography:...

, after the latter's death in 1560. She then commissioned de l'Orme to finish the work he had begun there. Drawings by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau

Androuet du Cerceau

Androuet du Cerceau was a family of French architects and designers active in the 16th and early 17th century.*Jacques I Androuet du Cerceau *Jean Baptiste Androuet du Cerceau...

in the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

may shed light on Catherine's intentions for Saint-Maur. They show a plan to enlarge each wing by doubling the size of the pavilions next to the main block of the house. The house was to stay as one storey, with a flat roof and rusticated

Rustication (architecture)

thumb|upright|Two different styles of rustication in the [[Palazzo Medici-Riccardi]] in [[Florence]].In classical architecture rustication is an architectural feature that contrasts in texture with the smoothly finished, squared block masonry surfaces called ashlar...

pilaster

Pilaster

s. That meant the extensions would not unbalance the masses of the building as seen from the side.

De l’Orme died in 1570; in 1575 an unknown architect took over at Saint-Maur. The new man proposed to heighten the pavilions on the garden side and top them with pitched roofs. He also planned two more arches over de l’Orme’s terrace, which joined the pavilions on the garden side. In historian R. J. Knecht's view, the scheme would have given this part of the house, a "colossal, even grotesque" pediment

Pediment

A pediment is a classical architectural element consisting of the triangular section found above the horizontal structure , typically supported by columns. The gable end of the pediment is surrounded by the cornice moulding...

. The work was only partly carried out, and the house was never fit for Catherine to live in.

Hôtel de la Reine

After de l'Orme's death, Jean Bullant replaced him as Catherine's chief architect. In 1572, Catherine commissioned Bullant to build a new home for her within the Paris city walls. She had outgrown her apartments at the Louvre and needed more room for her swelling household. To make space for the new scheme and its gardens, she had an entire area of Paris demolished.

The new palace was known in Catherine's time as the Hôtel de la Reine and later as the Hôtel de Soissons. The original design was based on the Uffizi palace

Uffizi

The Uffizi Gallery , is a museum in Florence, Italy. It is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world.-History:...

in Florence, but Catherine dropped that idea for a less costly plan after 1576. Engravings made by Israël Silvestre

Israel Silvestre

Israel Silvestre , called the Younger to distinguish him from his father, was a prolific French draftsman, etcher and print dealer who specialized in topographical views and perspectives of famous buildings...

in about 1650 and a plan from about 1700 show that the Hôtel de la Reine possessed a central wing, a courtyard, and gardens. The central wing consisted of three large pavilions with tall, pitched roofs. In the middle, two tall projections decorated with pilaster

Pilaster

s flanked an arch. The walled gardens of the hôtel included an aviary

Aviary

An aviary is a large enclosure for confining birds. Unlike cages, aviaries allow birds a larger living space where they can fly; hence, aviaries are also sometimes known as flight cages...

, a lake with a water jet, and long avenues of trees. Catherine also installed an orangery

Orangery

An orangery was a building in the grounds of fashionable residences from the 17th to the 19th centuries and given a classicising architectural form. The orangery was similar to a greenhouse or conservatory...

that could be dismantled in winter. The actual construction work was carried out after Bullant’s death in 1582. The building was demolished in the 1760s.

All that remains of the Hôtel de la Reine today is a single Doric

Doric order

The Doric order was one of the three orders or organizational systems of ancient Greek or classical architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian.-History:...

column, known as the Colonne de l’Horoscope, which stood in the courtyard. It can be seen next to the domed Bourse de Commerce. Catherine's biographer Leonie Frieda has called it "a poignant reminder of the fleeting nature of power". The staircase inside leads to a platform that can hold three persons and is topped by an iron cage. A balcony is thought to have once encircled the top. The purpose of the column is not clear, but it would have served as a useful observation post. Catherine’s astrologers may have used it to look at the stars. The column also seems to have had a memorial significance. Carvings of shattered mirrors, torn love-knots, and the intertwined letters "C" and "H"—all symbols of Catherine's grief at the loss of her husband—are embedded in the fluting

Fluting (architecture)

Fluting in architecture refers to the shallow grooves running vertically along a surface.It typically refers to the grooves running on a column shaft or a pilaster, but need not necessarily be restricted to those two applications...

Chenonceau

In 1576, Catherine decided to enlarge her château of Chenonceau

Château de Chenonceau

, near Blois. On Henry II’s death, she had demanded this property from Henry’s mistress Diane de Poitiers

Diane de Poitiers

Diane de Poitiers was a French noblewoman and a prominent courtier at the courts of kings Francis I and his son, Henry II of France. She became notorious as the latter's favourite mistress...

. She had not forgotten that Henry had given this crown property to Diane instead of to her. In return, she gave Diane the less prized Chaumont

Château de Chaumont

The Château de Chaumont is a French castle at Chaumont-sur-Loire, Loir-et-Cher, France.The first château-fort on this site between Blois and Amboise was a primitive fortress built by Eudes II, Count of Blois, in the 10th century with the purpose of protecting Blois from attacks from his feudal...

. When Diane arrived at Chaumont, she found signs of the occult, such as pentangles

Pentagram

A pentagram is the shape of a five-pointed star drawn with five straight strokes...

drawn on the floor. She quickly withdrew to her château of Anet

Château d'Anet

The Château d'Anet is a château near Dreux, France, built by Philibert de l'Orme from 1547 to 1552 for Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of Henry II of France...

and never set foot in Chaumont again.

Diane had carried out major works at Chenonceau, such as de l'Orme's bridge over the Cher River

Cher River

The Cher is a river in central France, left tributary to the river Loire. Its source is in the Creuse département, north-east of Crocq. It joins the river Loire in Villandry, west of Tours....

. Now Catherine set out to efface or outdo her former rival’s work. She lavished vast sums on the house and built two galleries on the extension over the bridge. The architect was almost certainly Bullant. The decorations show the fantasy of his late style.

Catherine loved gardens and often conducted business in them. At Chenonceau, she added waterfalls, menagerie

Menagerie

A menagerie is/was a form of keeping common and exotic animals in captivity that preceded the modern zoological garden. The term was first used in seventeenth century France in reference to the management of household or domestic stock. Later, it came to be used primarily in reference to...

s, and aviaries

Aviary

An aviary is a large enclosure for confining birds. Unlike cages, aviaries allow birds a larger living space where they can fly; hence, aviaries are also sometimes known as flight cages...

, laid out three parks, and planted mulberry

Mulberry

Morus is a genus of flowering plants in the family Moraceae. The 10–16 species of deciduous trees it contains are commonly known as Mulberries....

trees for silkworms

Bombyx mori

The silkworm is the larva or caterpillar of the domesticated silkmoth, Bombyx mori . It is an economically important insect, being a primary producer of silk...

. Jacques Androuet du Cerceau

Androuet du Cerceau

Androuet du Cerceau was a family of French architects and designers active in the 16th and early 17th century.*Jacques I Androuet du Cerceau *Jean Baptiste Androuet du Cerceau...

made drawings of a grandiose scheme for Chenonceau. A trapezoid

Trapezoid

In Euclidean geometry, a convex quadrilateral with one pair of parallel sides is referred to as a trapezoid in American English and as a trapezium in English outside North America. A trapezoid with vertices ABCD is denoted...

al lower court leads to a forecourt of semicircular atria

Atrium (architecture)

In modern architecture, an atrium is a large open space, often several stories high and having a glazed roof and/or large windows, often situated within a larger multistory building and often located immediately beyond the main entrance doors...

joined to two halls that flank the original house. These drawings may not be a reliable record of Bullant’s plans. Du Cerceau "sometimes inserted in his book designs embodying ideas which he himself would have liked to see carried out rather than those of the actual designer of the building in question".

Jacques Androuet du Cerceau was a favourite architect of Catherine's. Like Bullant, he became a more fantastical designer with time. Nothing he built himself, however, has survived. He is known instead for his engravings of the leading architectural schemes of the day, including Saint-Maur, the Tuileries, and Chenonceau. In 1576 and 1579, he produced the two-volume Les Plus Excellents Bastiments de France, a beautiful publication dedicated to Catherine. His work is an invaluable record of buildings that were never finished or were later substantially altered.

End of the dynasty

Catherine spent ruinous sums of money on buildings at a time of plague, famine, and economic hardship in France. As the country slipped deeper into anarchy, her plans grew ever more ambitious. Yet the Valois monarchy was crippled by debt and its moral authority was in steep decline. The popular view condemned Catherine's building schemes as obscenely extravagant. This was especially true in Paris, where the parlement
Parlement
Parlements were regional legislative bodies in Ancien Régime France.The political institutions of the Parlement in Ancien Régime France developed out of the previous council of the king, the Conseil du roi or curia regis, and consequently had ancient and customary rights of consultation and...

was often asked to contribute to her costs.

Ronsard

Pierre de Ronsard

Pierre de Ronsard was a French poet and "prince of poets" .-Early life:...

captured the mood in a poem:

The queen must cease building,
Her lime must stop swallowing our wealth...
Painters, masons, engravers, stone-carvers
Drain the treasury with their deceits.
Of what use is her Tuileries to us?
Of none, Moreau; it is but vanity.
It will be deserted within a hundred years.

Ronsard was in many ways proved correct. The death of Catherine's beloved son Henry III

Henry III of France

in 1589, a few months after her own, brought the Valois dynasty to an end. Precious little of Catherine's grand building work has survived.

External links

Architectura: Les Livres d'Architecture. Architecture, Textes et Images, XVI–XVII siècles. Academic website containing texts, drawings, and bibliographical material about sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French architects, including Philibert de l'Orme, Jacques Androuet du Cerceau, and Jean Bullant. A large-scale project in development.

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Influences

Valois Chapel

Architecture

Tomb

Statuary

Montceaux

Tuileries

Saint-Maur

Hôtel de la Reine

Chenonceau

End of the dynasty

See also

External links