448 



RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE. 



occurs for instance at the Ecole Militaire and on a smaller scale in 

 the court of the Mint. 



OTHER PUBLIC BUILDINGS. At the old Ecole de Medecine (1769-86) 

 by Jacques Gondouin (1737-1818) the most effective portion is the screen 

 across the front of the court (Fig. 427), which consists of colonnades 

 of the Ionic order forming an open portico and carrying an attic storey. 

 The columns are equally spaced, but arranged two deep both at back 

 and front. In the three central bays the attic is filled by a long bas- 

 relief panel. 



Soufflot's Ecole de Droit (1771) with its quadrant front, is ingenious 

 in plan and an effective piece of street architecture, curiously enough 

 more nearly akin to Gabriel's manner than to that of the Pantheon 

 opposite to which it stands. The interest of the Corn Exchange (Halle 

 aux Bles), built by Legrand and Molinos (finished 1783) on the site of 

 Bullant's Hotel de la Reine, is structural rather than architectonic. Its 

 circular hall, about 125 feet in diameter, was covered by a timber dome 

 of semicircular section, in the construction of which De 1'Orme's system 

 was successfully applied. This dome was shortly afterwards burnt down, 

 and the present one designed by Belanger, which replaced it in 1802, 

 is one of the earliest examples of iron construction, its trusses being 

 built up of wrought-iron bars of flat section. 



CITY GATES. Several ornamental city gates illustrate the Louis XVI, 

 style, such as Gabriel's Porte de Bourgogne at Bordeaux (1751-55); 

 Mique's Fortes St Stanislas and Ste Catherine (1762), and Desilles (1785) 

 at Nancy ; the Porte St Pierre and St Guillaume at Dijon, a triumphal 

 arch at Chalons-sur-Marne. Of the octroi gates in the new fortifica- 

 tions of Paris (1782), fantastic and costly products of Ledoux' ill-regulated 



imagination, only three now remain, the 

 Barrieres du Trone, de St Martin, and 

 de Fontainebleau. 



FOUNTAINS. The Fontaine de 

 Grenelle (Fig. 393), erected in 1739 from 

 the designs of Edme Bouchardon, and 

 embellished by admirable sculpture from 

 his chisel, was one of the earliest works to 

 herald in the classical reaction by its pure 

 detail and quiet lines. It is over 100 feet 

 long and 43 feet high, and consists of a 

 soberly rusticated podium on which stands 

 an order on a pedestal with a low attic. 

 The water flows from an advancing block 



of the podium on which rests the principal 

 428. VERSAILLES : ROYAL , . . r . 



OPERA, BY J. A. GAB- g rou P of figures. Behind them rises an 

 KIEL (1753-70). PLAN. Ionic portico. The concave wing walls 



