220 



RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



219. CHATEAU OF OYROX : GARDEN FROM. 



BRICK AND 

 STONE ARCHITEC- 

 TURE. The style 

 of Henry IV. de- 

 pends little, as a 

 rule, on the orders, 

 which are treated 

 without much dis- 

 tinction, and re- 

 served for works of 

 peculiar impressive- 

 ness, or to accen- 

 tuate important 

 features. It is 

 above all a brick 

 style relying for its 



decoration on the combination of brick and rustication. Both had an 

 utilitarian object. Brick was an economical material : coigns, bands 

 and piers of stone served to stiffen and knit together the brick walling 

 (Fig. 210). As so often happens, a treatment which was the outcome 

 of circumstances and appropriate to one set of materials was soon re- 

 produced in another. Thus side by side with a brick and stone 

 architecture there arose a stone architecture depending for effect on 

 the same devices as the brick. The character of the whole period in 

 its desire for stability and usefulness is reflected in the massive char- 

 acter of the buildings and their features, their piers, their arcades, and 

 their chimneys, while the mouldings lose the sharp crispness of Henry 

 II. 's time and assume a heavier, more rounded type. 



RUSTICATION, " CHAINES." Rustication under Henry IV. was used 

 in a characteristic manner. Not only was it applied continuously to 

 entire basements and plinths, and to the coigns of external angles and 

 openings, in courses either of equal length or more frequently alternately 

 long and short, but lengths of wall were broken up by vertical strips of 

 rustication, similar to the coigns, and known in French as chatnes, while 

 the dressings of openings were carried continuously from top to bottom 

 of the elevations, 



Generally, too, the spaces of walling left between the chaines and 

 strings, or between the upper and lower openings, were decorated in 

 some manner. If in brick, they were often patterned with brick of 

 another colour, and, whether brick, ashlar or plaster, treated, as in the 

 Francis I. style, as a panel with a central motive, which took the form 

 of a niche or raised tablet (Figs. 211 and 212). These niches were 

 often round or oval and contained busts, and the tablets of various 

 shapes, especially oblong with curved ends. 



