THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 



147 



142. CHANTILLY: THE "CHATELET," BY JEAN BULLANT. ENTRANCE FRONT. 



Du CERCEAU. Du Cerceau seems to have been principally 

 occupied during Henry's reign with some of his minor publica- 

 tions. He also designed the decorations for the King's state 

 entry into Orleans (1551), and may then have been presented to 

 Henry and received the royal command to make drawings of the 

 principal mansions of the kingdom, a work on which he seems soon 

 after to have embarked. It is not certain that the so-called du Cerceau 

 house at Orleans (Fig. 129) (c. 1555-60) is by him, and of his work at 

 the old castle of Montargis which he was commissioned in 1559 to 

 restore for Renee of France, daughter of Louis XII., there is no 

 record except his own illustration of the trellis arbours in the garden. 



BULLANT AT CHANTILLY. After 1547 Jean Bullant seems to have 

 been in charge of all the Constable's buildings. It was probably about 

 this time that he designed a court at Chantilly known as the Chatelet 

 (Fig. 142), divided by the moat from the older chateau, which it has 

 survived. Bullant shows here the traits which are characteristic of his 

 work as a whole ; a truly monumental conception combined both with 

 admirable detail and with extraordinary ignorance of, or contempt for, 

 the proprieties of classical composition. One cannot but be impressed 

 by the nobility of the massing and grouping, or shocked by the 

 grotesque misapplication of the orders. This is especially the case 

 inside the court. The end wings are treated with an order of Corinthian 

 pilasters whose pedestal and entablature run round the entire building. 



