278 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



plished artists of all kinds. The one fatal bar to employment under 

 him was, as in the case of the great sculptor Puget, a too independent 

 spirit. 



PALLADIAN BAROCCO COMPROMISE. The general character of the 

 style of Louis XIV. as we find it in the works of these men may be 

 summed up as Palladian Classic widened by barocco influence. Le 

 Brun himself, more of a decorator than an architect, was obliged to 

 employ architects generally trained in the strict classic school, so 

 that in general terms his works show a free decoration within a severe 

 architecture ; yet even in decoration Le Brun, with his serious cast of 

 mind influenced by the sober Poussin, was so far in agreement with 

 the purer national traditions that he always used a well-defined 

 geometrical pattern or architectural framework as a foil for the riot 

 of swirling lines and the movement of painting and alto-relievo. In 

 architecture the compromise was sometimes even more complete, for 

 while the treatment of the orders under Louis XIV. has a certain 

 fulness, roundness, and warmth, which distinguishes it from the 

 clear-cut refinement of Henry II., the clumsiness of Henry IV., and 

 the chilly correction of the Empire, yet there is a general conformity 

 to Palladian rules. Even when, as in the case of Perrault, architects 

 showed a disposition to emancipate themselves, the revolt turned on 

 rather abstract points. If they adopted something of the rhetorical 

 manner of Bernini, they expressed it in correct terms, while the 

 extravagances of Guarini, who was in Paris in 1662 designing the 

 church of the Theatine Fathers, had no following, and his canted 

 piers, amorphous windows, spiral turrets, and curved walls, met with 

 universal reprobation. 



EARLIER DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE. 



CAUSES OF ITS BRILLIANCE. The first achievement of the period 

 1630-65 is a great development in private domestic architecture. 

 Perhaps at no other time were mansions of greater splendour or in 

 greater numbers built in and around Paris than during these years. 

 At the beginning of this period the aristocracy, both feudal and legal, 

 enriched by a long spell of peace and progress, were striving to assume 

 the foremost place in the State. It was one of the most brilliant 

 periods of Parisian society, when as yet the Court was not divorced from 

 the capital, and the nobility, whether siding with or against it, could 

 lay claim with some justification to be the leaders in arms, manners, 

 and thought. On the victory of the monarchy they were deprived of 

 active participation in civil affairs, and either subjected to the discipline 

 of the camp, or reserved for purely decorative functions, as satellites 

 encouraged to contribute by lavish expenditure to the royal lustre, and 



