308 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



that it has anything to rest on. The end blocks with their pilaster 

 treatment and great round-headed windows in a deep recess are finely 

 conceived, but the central bay (Fig. 295) is a less successful feature. 

 Not only has Perrault fallen into another defect in trying to avoid the 

 insignificance of Bernini's entrance by springing the arch from the 

 main string, and thus breaking uncomfortably into the principal storey, 

 but the superstructure is not sufficiently clearly defined, being flush 

 with the colonnade and having merely a single order of detached 

 columns ; and further the excessively wide central intercolumniation is 

 not justified by the occurrence in it of any important feature. When, 

 however, full allowance is made for all faults that can be found with 

 the Louvre facade and after all, such criticisms are mainly academic 

 it remains one of the noblest pieces of architecture in the world. 

 For combined repose and majesty it is not surpassed by any building 

 in France, and by very few in other countries. At the same time its 

 influence on French design can hardly be exaggerated. It brought into 

 fashion the practice of using the ground storey as a podium for a giant 

 order embracing the two upper storeys, which became the accepted 

 formula for all buildings of a public or palatial nature, and was generally 

 used with the same spacing of two wide and three narrow divisions. 



CONSEQUENCES OF PERRAULT'S SCHEME. The acceptance of 

 Perrault's design involved certain modifications of the existing fabric. 

 It projected some 45 feet beyond the southern front, and some 40 feet 

 beyond the northern. On the north this was not of great importance, 

 since it was not then expected that this side would ever be much seen, 

 and by the adoption of a simple but effective treatment, with rusticated 

 coigns instead of an order, the new was adjusted to the old with slight 

 modifications of the latter. On the south a more radical treatment was 

 needed, and a new fagade was built in front of the old, obliterating both 

 Le Vau's work, just completed, and the older portion by Lescot, 

 including the Pavilion du Roi. Le Vau's dome long survived, and was 

 visible over the new front. Traces of the outer front of his south 

 entrance are still visible in the archways of the present Pavilion des 

 Arts. The treatment of the new south front (Fig. 287) is a rather tame 

 prolongation of the pilaster treatment of the eastern angle-blocks, not 

 indeed without dignity, but lacking in the play of light and shade, 

 which might so easily have been obtained with a southern exposure 

 by a columnar treatment. 



The great height of the eastern outer front made it visible from the 

 court, so that it was necessary to heighten the inner elevation behind 

 it, which had recently been completed with two orders and an attic to 

 match Lescot's building. The proposed substitution of a third order 

 for the attic created an unexpected difficulty, for the second order being 

 Composite no order was known which could legitimately be placed 





