Books Sara Galletti penetrates the restrictive and often-secretive building reports. Here, Galletti traces the Le palais du Luxembourg de Marie social life of the court, to show us how alterations made to the building as the de Médicis 1611–1631 many rooms there were, how they were property changed hands, from Maria’s Trans. Julien Noblet; Paris: Éditions Picard, used, and who was admitted to them. The death in 1642 through the mid-eighteenth 2012, 294 pp., 6 color and 165 b/w illus. second advance in our understanding of the century. As few of the original plans survive, €53.00, ISBN 9782708409354 building is contained in the final chapter, historians have often relied on later draw- which undertakes a careful architectural ings and depictions, made for different The Luxembourg Palace is one of those and iconographic reading of the palace. purposes. Some of these, as Galletti shows, rare early modern buildings that remains Inspired very self-consciously by the Pitti are more reliable than others. Casual read- central to the day-to-day life of a capital city. Palace in Florence, the Luxembourg reveals ers may find this chapter hard going. The This national landmark today houses the much about the perception and reception discussion is largely descriptive and, to Sénat, the upper chamber of the French of Italian architecture in France, during a the extent that it leaves behind the figure parliament, while from the garden, it is crucial period in the evolution of French of Maria, detaches itself somewhat from familiar to countless Parisians and tourists. classicism. the argument of the book as a whole. Its origins as a royal palace, however, lie in The first three chapters are concerned It is, however, admirably comprehensive. a radically different context. The palace to fix the chronology of the building. They Researchers interested in the later occu- was begun in 1615 for Maria de’Medici, cover the conception of the project, the pants of the palace will find this chapter a widow of Henri IV and regent to the young available visual sources, and the campaigns crucial resource. Louis XIII. Despite substantial changes in of construction. Some of this material has Chapter 3 returns to take up the thread both appearance and function, the palace been known for many years. Arthur Hustin, of the story, focusing on the fifteen-year still reflects something of the queen’s polit- in a fundamental study of 1910–11, pub- period from 1615 to 1631, during which ical position at that time, particularly as a lished much of the early documentation, the palace and its dependencies were foreigner and a female regent. This exem- in particular the contracts for the acquisi- largely completed. The subsections follow plary monograph by Sara Galletti recon- tion of the neighboring properties. Rosalys the principal actors involved in the work structs the early history of the building, Coope’s book on Salomon de Brosse treated at different stages. Here, too, several pre- offering new details and arguments to sev- the architecture in depth, and Alexandre viously unpublished sources serve to drive eral historiographical problems in which Gady’s more recent study on Jacques Le the discussion. A building survey under- the palace plays a leading role. Among the Mercier has done the same for the service taken in 1623 (Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal book’s many contributions, two stand out. and garden buildings.1 Galletti, however, 5995) provides a detailed description of The first is a new proposal for the sequence has cast a wider net for sources, and her the state of construction after eight years of rooms in the royal apartment. The ques- approach is more methodical than previ- of building work. Drawn up as part of tion has received considerable attention ous authors. She is not the first historian, Cardinal Richelieu’s litigation against from historians, due to the fame of Peter for example, to look for references to de Brosse, it relates to the architect’s early Paul Rubens’s large-scale series, the Life of Maria’s art patronage in the Medici diplo- and still-unexplained departure from Maria de’Medici, conceived expressly for matic correspondence in the Archivio di the project. As Galletti shows, the osten- the long gallery in the western wing. Galletti Stato in Florence, but she has exploited sible reason for the cardinal’s antipathy— this archive for references to the building de Brosse’s alleged mismanagement or Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 73, no. 2 to an unmatched extent. The result is an misdealing—is complicated by the fact that (June 2014), 277–297. ISSN 0037-9808, electronic ISSN 2150-5926. © 2014 by the Society of Architectural Histori- exhaustive, up-to-date, and eye-opening the architect left the site only to receive ans. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for study on a building we thought we knew. a commission for Richelieu’s château at permission to photocopy or reproduce article content Chapter 2 showcases the author’s sys- Limours. Whatever the explanation, Marin through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/ tematic method, meticulously correlating de la Vallée would take over as principal reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/jsah.2014.73.2.277. all the known visual evidence with written mason and contractor from 1624, entrusted 277 to complete the palace according to de containing each linked by the terrace that literature on the palace. Galletti redirects Brosse’s original designs. The chapter also runs across the entry pavilion. our attention instead to French prece- accounts for the palace’s interior decoration, The other distinguishing features of dents of the sixteenth century, particularly as well as its dependencies. A long section the Luxembourg were the large, salient to the architecture of Jacques Androuet on Marie’s agents Claude Maugis and pavilions that originally flanked the corps du Cerceau. In the hierarchical composi- Claude-Nicolas Fabri de Pieresc illustrates de logis, two on each of its extremities. The tion of volumes, the central pavilion hous- their responsibility for liaising with artists, resultant layout is anomalous and for ing a grand staircase, and the articulation Rubens in particular. There are new details historians of interior planning creates a of the entry pavilion, the Luxembourg about the famous garden—Galletti redates problem of interpretation, for the paired draws on several models presented in Tommaso Francini’s project to 1625—and pavilions seem to provide routes to two sepa- Du Cerceau’s Les plus excellents bastiments about the orangery, the aviary, and kitchens, rate apartments, each branching off from de France (1576–79), a source that relates which bordered the lower courts on either a common antechamber at the end of the more closely to de Brosse’s background side of the palace. The picture that emerges corps de logis. Was one apartment ceremonial (Du Cerceau was his grandfather) and from this chapter is that of a competent and the other private? Were they differen- to royal traditions of architectural repre- team of intermediaries who were able to tiated as winter and summer apartments? sentation. Where the Luxembourg does bring this complicated project to fruition, Scholars have offered several alternative clearly refer to the Pitti Palace are the despite frequent political and financial explanations for this state of affairs, and elevations, namely, the expressive use of setbacks. One paradoxical effect of their Galletti usefully reviews each, before put- the Tuscan order and its associated rusti- activity, however, is to shield our view of ting forward her own hypothesis. The pre- cation. Both of these elements might be the queen herself. Indeed, Maria’s absence cedent lies in Maria’s alterations in 1613 understood as emblems of the Florentine from the discussion is conspicuous. Galletti to her new apartment on the ground floor grand dukes, but Galletti is careful to point gives her credit for a sophisticated taste of the Louvre, which created two indepen- out the personal way that de Brosse has and an advanced policy of art patronage, dent spatial sequences within the same treated them. The articulation is subtler but her level of input in particular design wing, both following the antechamber. and the masonry more smoothly dressed. or budgetary choices remains obscure. One led, per tradition, to the bedchamber, The use of pilasters as opposed to half- The heart of the book is concerned whereas the other bypassed the bedchamber columns further deemphasizes the tectonic with the layout of the royal apartment, to offer a more intimate access to the queen expression of order in favor of a conti- and here Maria figures prominently.2 Like via a grand and petit cabinet. Rather than nuous ornamental skin. At the same time, the Tuileries palace and the château at multiplying rooms in the same sequence, the façades are littered with knowing Charleval, the Luxembourg was intended Maria appears to have distinguished the two references to royal palaces and châteaus, to house twin apartments: the king’s in the sets of rooms for different uses, allowing most notably Pierre Lescot’s wing at the eastern wing and the queen’s in the western. courtiers left behind in the antechamber to Louvre: the coupled orders, a frontispiece From the beginning, however, Henri’s apart- feel that they remained close to the royal crowned with a segmental arch, the narrow ment was intended to remain empty, both person. At the Luxembourg, this courtly windows set within an arcade. The Luxem- as a monument to the man and a constant practice is no longer cramped within the bourg, Galletti argues, adapts the archi- reminder of Maria’s claim to rule.