302 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



Marot, and Pierre Cottart. Another competitor was Claude Perrault, 

 one of the most eminent savants of his time, distinguished for his works 

 on mathematics and natural history, who had made a study of archi- 

 tecture, and was introduced to Colbert's notice by his own brother 

 Charles, a confidential clerk in the minister's offices. The reasons 

 which led to the rejection of Mansart's otherwise acceptable scheme 

 have been mentioned (see p. 226). The criticisms on the remainder 

 proved inconclusive, and intrigues in favour of this or that competitor 

 were rife. The King was too much taken up with Versailles to bestow 

 much interest on the matter. Colbert in this dilemma sent the draw- 

 ings to Poussin to obtain the opinion of the Roman Academy. They 

 thus came under the eye of Bernini, who condemned them all. 



ARRIVAL OF BERNINI. The Cavaliere Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini 

 (1598-1680), then at the zenith of his fame, was the chief exponent of 

 the barocco school, and was considered the first architectural authority 

 in the world. It was decided to invite him to Paris to give his advice 

 on the spot. Received in France with almost royal honours, such as 

 never fell to the lot of an artist before or since, he soon produced a new 

 scheme which he attributed to divine inspiration (1665). The founda- 

 tion-stone was laid by the King with great pomp, but the design was 

 not really approved by anyone in France, and it soon became evident 

 that it would not be carried out. Bernini returned home the same 

 year in high dudgeon, but royally paid, leaving the field clear for the 

 Frenchmen. The King was induced to believe that he preferred a fresh 

 design prepared by Claude Perrault ; and this with minor alterations 

 was carried out (1667-80), though the work remained under the charge 

 of Le Vau, and later of d'Orbay. 



Such, briefly, was the course of events which led to the erection of 

 the world-famed Colonnade of the Louvre. On the surface it is a series 

 of personal rivalries and petty intrigues ; and as so often happens in the 

 world's history, a momentous decision, the outcome of deep underlying 

 causes, is apparently the result of accident. Perrault's design repre- 

 sents French thought of that age with a fidelity which both those of 

 his French rivals, so far as we know them, and that of Bernini, were 

 equally far from attaining. It combines the grandiose spirit of the 

 times, which in Bernini's design was clothed in a barocco dress, with 

 the pure classical forms in which the Frenchmen had embodied their 

 semi-mediaeval conceptions. 



EARLIER DESIGNS FOR EAST FRONT. Le Mercier and Marot in 

 their designs (Figs. 288, 289) adopted the arrangement, usual in French 

 chateaux, of a front wing lower by a storey than the rest. Thus lowered, 

 the galleries between the central and angle pavilions were felt to be too 

 long. This was obviated by Le Mercier, as at Richelieu, by the intro- 

 duction of subsidiary pavilions flanking the main ones, making seven 



