6 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



the piquancy of an unfamiliar style, the charm of novelty. At a time, 

 too, when all the world was beginning to study the classical authors, and 

 to trace the source of all great and good things to the Golden Age of 

 Greece and Rome, there was a vague sense abroad that Italy had 

 rediscovered the true secret of architecture. 



It may be doubted, however, whether French laymen had a correct 

 appreciation of the difference between the Gothic and Renaissance 

 manners, or definitely preferred round arches to pointed, pediments to 

 gables, or the acanthus and egg and dart to the cabbage leaf and the 

 thistle; and yet, as has been well said of them, "what they wanted was 

 not greater luxury but luxury conceived on other lines." In fact it is 

 difficult to escape the feeling that the new style was brought, as it were, 

 by accident, so far as its earliest patrons were concerned. Charles and 

 his courtiers fell in love with Italy, and when they brought her home 

 with them the Renaissance was found in her train. 



The French Court turned their stay at Naples to account by taking 

 measures to introduce the delights of Italy to their homes. Their own 

 home-keeping masons and carvers, however skilful, could no longer 

 satisfy them, and Italian artificers must be imported to carry out the 

 works contemplated, and to instruct their French confreres. The king 

 first despatched by sea a varied consignment of works of art (1495), an< ^ 

 shortly afterwards "certain workmen, craftsmen, and other persons, 

 to work at their craft," . . . "designers to build and make works 

 to his bidding and pleasure in the fashion of Italy," twenty-two 

 persons in all. This colony, to which the name " School of Amboise " 

 has been given, from its first settlement, and which was supplemented 

 in the following reign by further groups of Italian artists at Tours and 

 Blois, was the first important nucleus of Italian influence in France, the 

 seed-plot of a brilliant architectural development, whose crop of graceful 

 and fantastic buildings still adorns the banks of the Loire and many 

 a country-side throughout France. Thus in the last years of the 

 fifteenth century the two forces, from whose fusion the new style of 

 France was to be evolved, were brought face to face. 



THE BUILDING PROFESSION. In order to understand the character 

 which this new architecture assumed, an attempt must be made to 

 picture the conditions under which it came into being. In spite of 

 the meagre building records of this period, this may be done to some 

 extent. The kings, lords, and gentry were fired with enthusiasm for 

 Italy, and eager to reproduce the things they had seen or heard of there. 

 But how was this to be effected? They had to rely on a handful of Italian 

 designers, few of whom were architects in the strict sense of the word 

 which indeed was little used till a later time but who were masters of 

 some art or craft sculpture, painting, horticulture, or cabinetmaking, 



