348 RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



form arrangement and reduce the angle chapels to a complete sub- 

 ordination, or a quasi-cubical treatment, in which the chapels should 

 be equally important with the rest. The design, as built, rather falls 

 between the two, for the cubical treatment, once adopted, demanded 

 that the angles should be vigorously emphasised as might have been 

 done, for instance, by placing cupolas over the chapels, or at least that 

 the fagades should be of uniform height throughout. Instead of this 

 the treatment becomes balder and weaker as it approaches the angles, 

 while in front the centre is emphasised by a commonplace portico sug- 

 gesting a non-existent nave and aisles, and gratuitously raised above 

 the rest of the fagade. This high portico, so far from removing 

 difficulties, actually creates them. A side view shows its summit to be 

 a meaningless sham ; its upper storey necessitates an order higher than, 

 and without relation to, the rest of the building, and a great niche 

 awkwardly combined with a window fills its central bay. It should, 

 however, be said in justice to Mansart that he had in view the forma- 

 tion of a large forecourt by means of quadrant wings, which would have 

 mitigated the defects of this front. 



In considering the dome it becomes obvious that both plan and 

 elevation have features which militate against their complete success. 

 The drum has twelve windows so arranged that they occur in the 

 diagonal, but not in the main, axes, and its eight buttresses carrying 

 consoles are placed in pairs over the piers which carry the dome. This 

 arrangement, however desirable from a structural point of view, has 

 more than one disagreeable effect. One is that a pier comes where an 

 opening is appropriate, in the centre of each fagade. Others are that 

 the sweep of the curve is interrupted at irregular intervals and its effect 

 thus partly destroyed, and that the silhouette of the dome seen from 

 certain points of view is unsymmetrical. Again the vertical proportions 

 of the storeys of the dome are not quite satisfactory. The heights of 

 the attic and of the drum are too nearly equal. A previous design for 

 the dome actually shows a much lower and unpierced attic, the light 

 for the intermediate dome being obtained by a row of dormers round 

 the base of the outer dome. Diminution in the height of the attic 

 would have been all the more desirable since it tends to merge in the 

 curve of the dome, and to give it an unduly upright line. Finally 

 the lantern, being surrounded by a balcony, appears to rest on an 

 insufficient base. There is little doubt that, with the same advantages 

 of size and position, and with the same restraint of decoration, the 

 dome of the Val-de-Grace would, owing to its avoidance of these defects, 

 be even more greatly admired than that of the Invalides. 



Interior.- In the interior it may reasonably be objected that the 

 piers supporting the dome, pierced as they are only by relatively low 

 and narrow openings, appear too wide in relation to the intervening 



