2l6 



RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



took place in the second and third 

 decades of the century, not merely 

 in palatial residences, but even in 

 small middle class houses. In Le 

 Muet's " Maniere de Bien Bastir pour 

 Toutes Sortes de Personnes " (Paris, 

 1623), which gives model plans of 

 town houses with frontages ranging 

 from 13 to 78 feet, the offices, stores, 

 stables, and inferior rooms are usually 

 in a front block, separated by a court 

 from a back block containing the 

 principal living rooms, with a garden 

 behind it, an eminently suitable ar- 

 rangement in view of the narrowness, 

 noise, and filth of the streets (Figs. 

 213 and 214). The two blocks are 

 connected by a narrow wing usually 

 containing the staircase. Much care 

 is devoted to the arrangement, inter- 

 communication, and aspect of the 

 rooms, and hints are given for the 

 dimensions of the various apartments 

 and other matters. 



In the larger town houses of the 

 time the service-buildings were gene- 

 rally grouped round one or more basecourts at the side of the court 

 of honour, while the reception block occupied the full width of the 

 site behind them, and thus had the greatest possible extent of garden 

 front (Fig. 215). Great ingenuity is displayed in making confined and 

 irregular sites yield the maximum of convenience and symmetry. 



The improvements introduced at this time in mansion planning 

 have been ascribed by aristocratic writers to the invention of Madame 

 de Rambouillet, who is represented as drawing her own plans. The 

 incident of the plan drawn, and the credit for its success taken by 

 the client, occurs, no doubt, in the experience of architects of all ages. 

 The layman can always teach the professional man his business. The 

 marquise, however, may have given her architect suggestions, and 

 undoubtedly helped by the meetings in her Salon Bleu to popularise 

 innovations called into being by the needs of a society which owed 

 much to her influence. Towards the end of Henry IV.'s reign she 

 began to hold those receptions which have made her name famous. 

 By opening a salon, where society and the world of art, letters, and 

 learning could meet on an equal footing, she compassed a double 



215. PARIS : HOTEL DE BOUILLON 

 OR LlANCOURT, RUE DE SEINE, 

 BY S. DE BROSSE (1614). Now 



DESTROYED. FROM MAROT. 



