152 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



case, it was as natural for the young Italian queen to employ her own 

 countryman, as for Diana to employ the French de 1'Orme, and for 

 Henry to set him in a position of authority over the Italians at Fon- 

 tainebleau, and to dismiss Serlio. Moreover, if Primaticcio was the 

 architect of Monceaux, Catharine's action is explained, when, at her 

 husband's death, she put Primaticcio at the head of all the royal 

 buildings, and introduced into the patent of appointment the words, 

 " His great experience in the art of architecture, of which he has several 

 times made great proof in diverse buildings," words only explicable 

 otherwise by gratuitously assuming that they were untrue, and put 

 in to give plausible explanation for entrusting an architect's work to a 

 mere painter. 



At Monceaux and Anet the queen de jure and the de facto 

 mistress of France, and at the same time Italian and French architectural 

 ideas, are seen in open rivalry. It is unquestionable that Monceaux is 

 a much maturer work than Anet. In one important point it was abreast 

 with the latest developments of the advanced Renaissance, for the first 

 appearance of the giant order was simultaneous in France and in Italy : 

 Michael Angelo's Palace on the Capitol at Rome and Monceaux were 

 both begun in 1547. Monceaux also shows a greater grasp of true 

 architectonic effects than Anet, and avoids the ineffective complications 

 of the latter. While avoiding obsolete mediaevalisms it is an esentially 

 French design, with its pavilions, steep roofs, dormers and chimney- 

 stacks, its court-yard plan, and vertical emphasis, yet classic in the best 

 sense, not merely in details, but in its spacious and symmetrical setting 

 out and impressive dignity. Surrounded on three sides by a moat, and 

 approached by three bridges and bridge houses, stood the chateau 

 proper, consisting of three wings and five pavilions, and an isolated 

 entrance pavilion in the open side (later joined up to the wings by a low 

 gallery). Its scale may be judged from the fact that the side wings were 

 of thirteen bays as against nine at the Louvre. The order stood on a 

 battering rusticated basement and was rusticated itself at important 

 points. It embraced two complete storeys, and its entablature ran 

 unbroken round the entire building, bold dormers rising above it in 

 alternate bays, against high slated roofs, which in the central pavilion 

 took the form of a square dome, and in the entrance pavilion of an 

 octagonal one. An immense forecourt, which was never completed, was 

 added in the seventeenth century. As the completest expression of 

 French ideas in mature Renaissance forms, it put the finishing touch to 

 the work of the last half century, and set a standard which, for over a 

 hundred years that is until the arrival of Bernini, remained practically 

 without rival in France. It produced an immediate result in the great 

 chateaux which were the final outcome of du Cerceau's career, and its 

 tradition, as perpetuated by his sons and grandsons, is traceable in the 



