290 



KKNAISSANCK ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCK. 



of the design, occupying as it does the whole central pavilion, which is 

 decorated with a giant order, sculpture, and vases, and has a columnar 

 portico towards the court, and a semi-octagonal end towards the terrace, 

 while all the rest is kept sobe* and subordinate. 



DECORATION AND GARDEN DESIGN. 



The artistic aims of the age of Louis XIV. and the men who gave 

 them concrete form being what they were, it will readily be understood 

 that buildings alone are merely one element, if the most important, in 



their scheme of things, and cannot be 

 considered apart from their setting and 

 their contents. Some account, there- 

 fore, of the growth of the arts of decora- 

 tion and garden design in the first period 

 of the reign, which played so important 

 a part in the second, is necessary at this 

 stage. 



PAINTERS. Decoration was de- 

 veloped under the same conditions as 

 architecture. The Flemish barocco 

 tendency gradually died out under the 

 influence of artists bringing from Italy 

 pure classic or Roman barocco ideas. 

 There was, however, an admixture of 

 Flemings with a tendency to naturalism. 

 There thus grew up a decorative style 

 in which a modified classicism pre- 

 dominated over a variety of other 

 elements. Simon Vouet (1590-1649), 

 who returned from Italy (1627) to be 

 First Painter to the King, was long 

 supreme over the decoration of the 



palaces. He also worked for Richelieu (1632-4), and in the Hotels 

 Seguier (1634-40) and Bretonvillers. His manner, which is a sort 

 of summary of the various Italian schools, is surpassed in purity by 

 that of Eugene Le Sueur (1616-55), wno executed decorations for 

 President Lambert and Anne of Austria. The small proportion of 

 all this work which has survived consists rather of the figure subjects 

 than of the setting to them which formed an integral part of the schemes. 

 But some of the strictly decorative portions, e.g., of Vouet's work, have 

 been engraved, and in the Cabinet de Sully at the Paris Arsenal and 

 in the Hotel Sully early examples may be seen of a style which retains 

 little trace of the coarseness of the Louis XIII. manner, and reduces 



277. CHATEAU OF TURNY, BY 

 J. MAROT(NOW DESTROYED): 

 PLAN. FROM MAROT. 



