THE STYLE OF LOUIS XIV. 





314. CHATEAU OK CHOISY, BY J. H. GABRIEL AND J. H. MANSART (1680). 



From an Old Print. 



of the long sides, of engaged columns carrying pediments. Though 

 there is nothing specially original in the design of these " places," they 

 afford instructive examples of the breadth and monumentality which 

 may be obtained in city architecture by well-considered combined 

 schemes. 



LATER DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE AND DECORATION. 



RELATIVE UNIMPORTANCE OF DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE IN SECOND 

 PERIOD. It is perhaps not altogether accidental that the private resi- 

 dences which can be certainly set down as built during the middle period 

 of Louis' reign are fewer than in the earlier and later ones. The 

 vastness and splendour of the royal works seems to have exhausted 

 the building activity of a whole generation. With Louis' assumption of 

 power ended the heroic period of the nobility, and Court life exercised 

 an irresistible attraction over them. Overjoyed to be lodged in a 

 garret or entresol at Versailles, if only they could bask in the rays of 

 the Sun-king, they lavished their wealth in display and dissipation, and 

 had perhaps little left to sink in stately houses in which they could not 

 live. The principal exceptions are more or less official residences built 

 by members of the royal family and ministers, rather for the purpose of 

 entertaining the Court than for themselves. Thus St Cloud was rebuilt 

 for Louis' brother, Philip of Orleans, by Antoine Le Pautre and added 

 to by Girard (1680); Choisy was built for Mademoiselle de Mont- 

 pensier, Louis' first cousin (1680), by Jacques II. Gabriel in collabora- 

 tion with Mansart (Fig. 314); St Maur was completed and enlarged 

 for his more distant cousin the Prince of Conde by Gittard ; Sceaux 

 was built or transformed for Colbert (c. 1675) ; Meudon and Dampierre 

 were remodelled chiefly by Mansart for Louvois, whose hotel in Paris 

 by Chamois was remarkable for little but its vast extent. 



