6 4 



RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



kingdom, and while examples indistinguishable from the Loire type occur 

 in every province, local types also arose. Such variations are traceable 

 to the nature of local materials, to idiosyncrasies of local designers, or, 

 in the case of border provinces, to the influence of the neighbouring 

 states. 



ILE DE FRANCE. Next to the Loire valley the country round 

 Paris was most frequented by the Court, and is richest in examples of 

 the style. Where a free-working stone was available the luxuriance of 

 carving was undiminished ; but in some places, and especially where 

 stone was scarce or too hard, elaborate ornament was reduced to a 

 minimum. When stone dressings are largely replaced by brick, and 

 carving eliminated, the resulting severity contrasts so startlingly with the 

 gay aspect of Blois and Azay as to make it appear all but incredible that 

 all these buildings are contemporary. In the lie de France Francis' 

 chateaux of Villers Cotterets (1532-50) and Folembray, his villa at Moret 

 (Fig. 57), removed in the nineteenth century to the Cours la Reine in 

 Paris, where the court front has been turned outwards, and Cardinal 

 Duprat's country seat at Nantouillet (1517-25) are of the Loire type. 

 They were all surpassed in splendour by the chateau of Chantilly, an 

 old fortress of triangular plan, transformed for Guillaume de Mont- 

 morency (finished 1530, destroyed at the Revolution). 



MADRID. The picturesque exuberance of the latter was in marked 

 contrast to the ordered, but no less rich magnificence of its contemporary, 

 the chateau of Madrid, built by Francis I. in the Bois de Boulogne 

 (1528-65). The regularity and concentration of the plan and 

 design as a whole seem to point to the conclusion that of the two men 

 who collaborated upon it, Jerome della Robbia and Pierre Gadier 

 (died 1 531), the Italian was the architect, as he certainly was the decorator, 

 while the Frenchman and his successor, Gatien Francois, son of Martin 

 Frangois of Tours, superintended the execution of the structural works. 

 For Jerome (born 1480, died 1566) was not only a member of the 



CHATEAU OF MADRID JN Bois DE BOULOGNE, NEAR 

 PARIS, NOW DESTROYED. (1528-^. 1565.) PLAN : 

 FROM DU CERCEAU. 



