274 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



influence acted usually as a moderating force, but allied itself now with 

 the one school in encouraging simplicity, now with the other in giving 

 rise to bizarre forms. 



ARCHITECTURAL LITERATURE: MAUCLERC, FREART, BOSSE. The 

 relative predominance of pure classicism was greatly due to the literary 

 and educational influences throughout the century. It opened with 

 J. Mauclerc's "Premier Livre d'Architecture " (La Rochelle, 1600), 

 followed by the re-issue of works by du Cerceau and Bullant. Later on 

 came one of the most thorough treatises on the orders yet published in 

 Freart's " Parallele de 1' Architecture Antique et de la Moderne" (Paris, 

 1650), with drawings by Charles Errard. Freart, like all his con- 

 temporaries, found his ideal in ancient architecture, but he uses it with 

 great discrimination. Alive to the deficiencies of Vitruvius he bases his 

 conclusions on the very best examples extant, and rejects all the inferior 

 ones. Among the architectural works by the engraver and teacher of 

 drawing, Abraham Bosse (1602-76), are several on the Orders, based 

 chiefly on Palladio, and while his earlier designs show the coarse 

 extravagances familiar in Barbet and Francini, the later are so puristic 

 that they might be mistaken for Louis XVI. work. 



F. BLONDEL. The Academy of Architecture contributed not a little 

 to perpetuate classical traditions by the instruction in its school based 

 on the study of the antique and of the works of Vitruvius, Alberti, Serlio, 

 Palladio, Vignola, Scamozzi, and de l'Orme. Its chief spokesman was 

 Francois Blondel, an architect and civil and military engineer, who had 

 travelled extensively and was an accomplished classical scholar. The 

 view expressed in his "Cours d'Architecture" (Paris, 1675 and 1698) was 

 more rigid than Freart's. In his eyes Vitruvius and the Italians gave 

 an exhaustive presentment of Greek, as well as Roman, architecture. 

 They had deduced the laws of beauty from the measurements of ancient 

 buildings. This beauty depended on a harmony consisting in the 

 right numerical ratio between the whole and its part and of the parts 

 to each other, as measured by a unit or modulus. The slightest deviation 

 introduced a discord like a false note in music. His aim was to purify 

 architecture from barocco perversions due to ignorance, or ignoring, of 

 these laws. 



PERRAULT. But compromise was in the air and soon found 

 expression in Academic circles. Claude Perrault, though equally 

 desirous of keeping alive the spirit, as well as the forms, of classical 

 architecture, differed from Blondel in teaching in his " Ordonnance des 

 Cinq Especes de Colonnes" (Paris, 1683) that though general principles 

 of proportion can be derived from antiquity, the ancients had no 

 absolute authority, that no rules of universal application can be deduced 

 from monuments which differ amongst themselves, as well as from 

 Vitruvius, and that in the last resort the architect must be guided by 



