264 



RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



258. PARIS : CHURCH 

 OF THE VISITATION 

 (STE MARIE), RUE 

 ST ANTOINE (1632- 

 34), BY F. MANSART. 

 PLAN. FROM MAROT. 



the plan is an early work of Frangois Mansart, 

 built by him for the nuns of the Visitation of St 

 Mary (1632-4) in the Rue St Antoine, and known 

 as St Mary of the Angels, now a Protestant church 

 (Fig. 258). The plan ingeniously covers an irregu- 

 lar site, the design consisting in principle of a 

 circular dome rising out of a quadrangular space. 

 A projecting vestibule on the north leads into the 

 circular nave, which opens by wide arches into 

 chapels on the east and west, and into a choir on 

 the south, all three of quasi-elliptical plan and 

 raised several steps above the nave. Narrow door- 

 ways open into other chapels or sacristies in the 

 angles of the site. The interior has remarkable 

 charm of lighting and proportion, and is decorated 

 with effective, if coarse, sculpture. The treatment 



of the elevations affords an instance of the rationalistic tendency. An 

 order is used for the entrance doorway, but nowhere else. The portal 

 is crowned by a semicircular pediment formed by bending the entire 

 entablature of the porch over a circular window, a feature often subse- 

 quently used (cf. Fig. 370). The square dome and lantern over the 

 vestibule are squeezed rather confusingly against the drum of the main 

 dome, which is divided into bays by bold buttresses, the cornice break- 

 ing round them ; yet the whole group, culminating in the slate-covered 

 dome, is not devoid of picturesqueness. 



CHURCH FITTINGS. Many of the churches mentioned contain 

 fittings and decoration of the period, notably the two chapels of 

 Fontainebleau and the church of Richelieu. The rood-screen and 

 pulpit of St Etienne-du-Mont, a screen in Bordeaux Cathedral, the 

 stalls in St Pierre at Toulouse, and the Hotel-Dieu at Compiegne may 

 also be mentioned as good work of the period. The reconstruction of 

 the screens round the shrine of St Remy at Rheims, destroyed during 

 the civil wars, was carried out under Louis XIII. in a sumptuous 

 manner in white and coloured marbles with much carved ornament. 

 Many designs for altars of a typically Louis XIII. type are to be found 

 in the works of Barbet and Francini. 



TOMBS IN SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. After the 

 sixteenth century tumular architecture tends to become of minor 

 interest. It was of value to study every manifestation of the style during 

 the period when the Renaissance was being established in France, and 

 such a series of monuments as those provided by the royal tombs and 

 others of equal splendour could not have been passed over in silence. 

 So far as royal sepulture is concerned the seventeenth and eighteenth 

 centuries have little to offer. Under the Bourbon dynasty members of 





