1/8 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



forms, curiously broken pediments, vigorous but over-profuse carved 

 ornament. Among them are 38 Rue des Forges (1561), a wing of the 

 Hotel Chambellan (Fig. 174), 39 Rue de la Vannerie (<r. 1570), with 

 a charming echauguette or oriel (Fig. 157), a favourite feature in the 

 eastern provinces, and a timber house, 28 Rue des Chaudronniers, known 

 from its decoration as " Maison des Caryatides." A large number of 

 town houses of this period in the duchy of Lorraine at Nancy, Toul, 

 St Mihiel, Bar-le-Duc (Fig. 173) show a more distinctively architectural 

 treatment than is the case in Burgundy. Bar is peculiarly rich in 

 examples, where the entire front is treated as a classical composition 

 with several orders, a low upper storey being often treated as a frieze. 



HOUSES IN TOULOUSE AND ORLEANS. The most pretentious 

 piece of contemporary domestic architecture at Toulouse is the street 

 front of the Maison de Pierre, so called from the use of stone for a 

 whole fagade being unusual in the district. It shows all the worst 

 features of the age, a giant order with windows breaking into its 

 entablature, a restless row of pediments above the cornice, numerous 

 and disconnected ressauts, polygonal arches and ornament distributed 

 everywhere. Yet the monumental scale, the bold cornirione, and the 

 excellence of much of the ornament raise the composition above the 

 contemptible. At Orleans is the so-called Maison des Oves (n Rue 

 Ste Anne), a possible work of one of the du Cerceau family, effective in 

 its main lines, but curiously disfigured by a decoration of eggs or olives 

 in allusion, it is said, to the owner being an oil merchant in lieu of 

 rustication. 



PUBLIC BUILDINGS. In each of the few public buildings built 

 during the period of the Wars of Religion some of the characteristics of 

 the age are exemplified : in the additions to the Hotel de Ville of Arras 

 by Mathieu Tesson (1572), a profusion of rather ineffective ornament 

 and meaningless rustication ; in the fagade of the Palais de Justice at 

 Dijon by Etienne Bruhee (1570^, a rich but incoherent composition ; in 

 the Hotel de Ville of La Rochelle (1587-1607), a combination of incom- 

 patible ideas, an arcade with pendents reminiscent of the early 

 Renaissance, a piano twbile, worthy of the best classic period, and a 

 restless, overloaded upper portion. All, however, present points of 

 interest in the design either of individual features or of the composition 

 as a whole. Seldom at this period are both of equal merit. At the 

 Palais de Justice of Besangon, for instance (Fig. 175), which presents a 

 really fine scheme of ample fenestration, many of the features are 

 crude and clumsy. 



TOWN PLANNING. Apart from isolated public buildings, such as 

 the above, the germ may be traced at this period of that interest in 

 town planning and combined schemes of architecture which came so 

 much to the fore in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The 



