The Shape of France Gardens, Fortifications, and Modern Urban1sm

10 THE SHAPE OF FRANCE GARDENS, FORTIFICATIONS, AND MODERN URBAN1SM N THE LAST CHAPTER, I discussed the than one occasion that he would be glad word pourtraiture as it was employed in to receive it from him, but that gift was > the garden treatises of the seventeenth never made. Perhaps Louis wanted it so century and suggested that, through the much precisely because it embodied what methodical adjustment of geometry to he, despite his gloire, had never really ex scale that it was intended to describe, gar perienced firsthand: direct military vic den architects did draw, in fact, a "por tory, its special release and incomparable trait" of the.order of the world upon its satisfactions. As a field commander, Louis surface. At the same time, the word pour was never quite able to close with the traiture may be thought to enemy. The one chance he have a double meaning, had to do so he let slip since each of the gardens through his fingers. Unlike was intended to portray the the Due d'Enghien, who character of its client and to won his victory at Rocroi embody his own intentions. through reckless personal At Vaux, it was clearly the daring, Louis, despite his will of Fouquet as an indi often-demonstrated physi vidual that was portrayed cal courage, was never quite and embodied in landscape. able to let himself go in that At Versailles, it was the 416. Mont-Louis, France. Fortifications. way. So all his victories realm of Louis XIV, his Vauban. Air view. were in a sense secondhand. gloire, which was the new France. And at And before we despise victory as a theme, Chantilly, it was surely Victory itself in we should remember that the Periclean the person of Le Grand Conde, especially Acropolis was about exactly that, the vic his decisive victory, as the Due d'Enghien, tory of Athens over everything. The Par at Rocroi, in 1643. thenon is hubris embodied, and so is Chantilly is the garden everyone Chantilly, but the fierce joy and the gran loved. It is trie one even Louis most ad deur are no less for that. mired and, indeed, wanted for himself. These concepts may also be associated We know that he hinted to Conde on more with the intention to "forcer la nature" 401. Lucca. Fortifications. Curtain wall from flank of bastion. 215 276 Architecture: The Natural and the M a n m a d e France : Gardens, Fort ifi cations, and Modern Urban ism 211 which surely played a part in the creation bert de l'Orme to Blondel there is some is fascinating to watch the great new forms of the French Classic garden. Yet it was suggestion that the idea of a continuing take shape step by step, logically and with Louis and his advisers who employed the order, embracing the Gothic, may well obsessive passion.* term, never the landscape architects. It is have been present. How did it all come about? Again, we a political phrase. So the English, as they It is, in fact, their mixture of Neopla- can begin at Chantilly (fig. 396). If we developed their Romantic gardens in the tonism with rationalism, even with scien- look at the courtyard in front of the cha decades to come, tried to make them look tism, that links the cathedrals and the teau, we see that it looks like a citadel with natural in part for political reasons, as a gardens. They are both very French, and bastions at the four corners, and we can widely recognized criticism of French ab it is, therefore, no wonder that their most compare it for a start with a fort at Net- --^j solutism—though the gardens themselves important forms bear family resem tuno (fig. 397), built by Giuliano and An are no less works of human artifice and blances. Moreover, we must not assume tonio da Sangallo in 1502. This is a citadel the manipulation of growing things than that because the landscape architects did with a bastion at each corner. Each bastion the French gardens are. not write about symbolism they were any has a face (the outward face) and a flank. On the other hand, the French land less concerned with it than were the In the flank is at least one gun that was scape architects, though they were serving Gothic architects—who did not write meant to fire across the curtain wall of the the concept of "forcer la nature" to a certain about it either. But they were Cartesians 3%. Chantilly. Chateau and gardens. Air view from west. citadel and the opposite face of the bastion extent, clearly did not think of their work after all; they wanted to show us, make Engraving by Perelle. across the way. That face takes its angle in those overbearing terms. Their view us see, not merely allude. So they threw from the siting of the gun, or rather, the was better stated by Boyceau de la Bar- out almost all the old iconography and not noble enough to enjoy his approval. two are coordinated so that the shot can auderie when he named his treatise La came down to how things look. In a sense, We are told, too, that Vauban and Le rake the bastion's face. Then, in order to Traite du jardinage selon les raisons de la na the word pourtraiturc says it all, and in the Notre were collaborators at Chantilly. protect the gun, to shield its flank, the ture et de Vart. Both are reasonable and they hands of Le Notre it becomes one of the Vauban was supposed to have designed bastion is "eared," so becoming a bastion work together. We noted earlier that pour- great vehicles for the expression of human balancing bridges to span the great moat oreillonne. In this way, all the forms take traiture itself involved a similar conjunc meaning. It is, in fact, one of the greatest and connect the island of the chateau with shape according to the intersection of lines tion—in its case, a cooperation between to be created by any age. Through it, and the mainland. We do not know whether of sight and the trajectory of missile weap the ideal, in geometry, and the real, in through the program it serves, the Classic or not they were ever built. We do know, ons. The form, therefore, is beginning to scale. We have found a similar union of garden, all Cartesian optics, becomes the however, that Vauban's work was closely open out in a series of intersecting diag the Real and the Ideal before, most par cathedral of the seventeenth century, cel connected with the gardens in contem onals, moving out across the countryside ' ticularly in Gothic architecture, and the ebrating the Virgin's garden of France, the porary thought. A letter recently found in as the gardens, too, eventually would do. integral relationship between cathedrals cosmic order, and the rationality of the a Venetian archive by Mirka Benes de and gardens has constantly made itself felt. human mind. scribes a certain parterre as laid out "in the These shapes were invented because of . manner of Vauban." the development of cannon during the fif Here we encounter one of the many Another thing that the landscape ar teenth century, which necessitated a total reasons why art historians have to study chitects and theoreticians did not talk The idea that the arts of fortification reassessment of the way fortifications had works of art directly, and afresh in each about much, but which they knew per and of landscape architecture were almost to be made. It is worthwhile to look back generation, and cannot depend upon what fectly well, was the art of fortification. the same was quite a logical one in the at that development for a moment.+ The others, even when they are contempo They were contemporaries of the greatest seventeenth century. Together, they beautiful walls of Montagnana (fig. 398), raries of those works, have written about military engineer of all time, and one of shaped a new architecture, an earth-mov which is in the Veneto and has a couple of them. The deepest, most persistent visual the most admirable of human beings: Se- ing art in which, at the scale of the land villas by Palladio nearby, can show us what images often remain nonverbal, precisely bastien le Prestre de Vauban, who became scape itself, the human will reached out to the walls of medieval Italian cities gener- because they are deep and persistent. They marshal of France. We know that Vauban control the environment farther than deal with experiences that are in part out was a special friend of Le Notre. He and human beings had ever been able to reach 'Especially in Blaise Francois de Pagan, Comtc de side verbal discourse. Not one of the land Le Notre were almost the only people at before. So the treatises written about for McrvcilJcs, Traite des fortifications, Paris. 1645: and scape architects of the seventeenth century tifications are much like those about gar L'Abbe de Fay, Veritable manierc de bien fortifier de M. Versailles about whom the poisonous dc Vauban, Paris, 1694. would have said that he was working in Saint-Simon had little but good to say, dens. They begin with geometry and go a Gothic order, even though from Phili- on to scale, because they are expanding fit is briefly traced in Horst de la Croix, Military Con despite the fact that their pedigrees were siderations in City Planning: Fortifications, New York, their conceptions to landscape size, and it 1972.

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