THE STYLE OF HENRY II. I2p 



less complete mastery of the principles of classic design, and secondly 

 that they had a firmer grasp of construction and attached greater import- 

 ance to it and to its influence on design. In these differences lies the 

 secret both of their weakness and their strength. Their constructive 

 dexterity led them to emphasise structural forms merely because they 

 were clever. Their incomplete knowledge of the grammar of classical 

 architecture and its limitations sometimes led them into grotesque 

 eccentricities when they attempted to use it for expressing French ideas. 

 At the best they fell short of the complete harmony and perfect rhythm 

 of the best Italian work. On the other hand their very failure to bend 

 the stubborn orders to their will was beginning, towards the end of the 

 period under review, to teach them how they might work out for them- 

 selves a type of building in which the orders should hold at most but a 

 subsidiary place and the design, while disciplined into classical orderli- 

 ness and Latinised in detail, should remain characteristically national. 



Another aspect of architectural development at this period is the 

 commencement of some definition of the architect's functions, and the 

 gradual emergence of the architect in the modern sense. It is often 

 possible henceforward to class a building on examination not merely 

 in a style but as the work of a certain man. This individual character 

 was, it is true, somewhat obscured in the following century under the 

 reign of uniformity imposed by the tendency of the age, but under 

 Henry II. absolutism and centralisation were but in embryo and the 

 individualistic spirit of the Renaissance yet unexhausted. 



SECOND SUB-PERIODHISTORY AND ARCHITECTURAL 



CHARACTER. 



The preparatory period may be said to end with the reign of Francis, 

 and the culminating one to begin with that of Henry, or a year or two 

 earlier. In the year 1545 the work of the Italian colony was in full 

 swing with Primaticcio at its head at Fontainebleau. De 1'Orme was 

 becoming known in Court circles, Lescot and Goujon collaborating in 

 Paris, du Cerceau at work at Orleans, and Bullant at Ecouen : the two 

 great classical mansions of St Maur and Ancy-le-Franc finished or 

 nearly so. Francis I., though already ailing, was about to put the 

 coping stone on his architectural operations by the rebuilding of the 

 Louvre, of which he was only to see the beginning, and which was to 

 be the crowning glory of his son's reign. In this year appeared Serlio's 

 volumes on Perspective and Geometry, Philander's translation of 

 Vitruvius, and perhaps du Cerceau's " Petites Habitations." 



HENRY II. AND HIS COURT. Shortly after superintending the 

 commencement of the works on the new Louvre, that great builder 

 Francis I. died (1547), and was succeeded by his son Henry, a prince 

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