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Antiquity and Modernity: Sixteenth- to Eighteenth- Century French Architecture

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Antiquity and Modernity: Sixteenth- to Eighteenth- Century French Architecture chapter 8 Antiquity and Modernity: Sixteenth- to Eighteenth- Century French Architecture Frédérique Lemerle With the exception of Italy, France is only rivalled by Spain for the number of Roman ruins it boasts. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, remnants of classical edifices were an integral part of the urban landscape. Many owed their survival to economic considerations, since it was often more profitable to pre- serve or transform than to destroy them. It was thus that city walls, even those which reductions in the urban population had rendered disproportionately large, were conserved; city gates and triumphal arches were often transformed into fortresses; sometimes triumphal arches were incorporated into new city walls or new buildings. Theatres and amphitheatres, generally invaded by houses, were integrated into fortifications or transformed into citadels or bas- tions. Temples were frequently converted into churches (Temple of Augustus and Livia in Vienne, Temple of Diana in Nîmes) and only demolished when they became too small to accommodate growing congregations. Aqueducts were often repaired and extended and sometimes served as toll gates (Pont du Gard). Thermal waters continued to be exploited and baths were rebuilt when they had been destroyed by cataclysms and restored when damaged by either Christians or barbarians; thermal complexes, like those in Paris (hôtel de Cluny), were often divided into lots and taken over by shopkeepers and craftsmen; in the Cimiez neighbourhood of Nice, the western baths became the site of the cathedral and its baptistery. Transformed as they were, these edifices nevertheless continued to provide a rich formal and decorative reper- tory that local artists naturally drew inspiration from. During the Romanesque period, the approach to this repertory was typically piecemeal: rather than seeking global models, the artists of the time tended to single out classical el- ements which furthered their own original aims.1 The obviously intentional citations made by Provencal artists of the period offer a particularly eloquent example, but other regions, including those of Narbonne, Poitiers, Angoulême 1 Crozet R., “Survivances antiques dans le décor roman du Poitou, de l’Angoumois et de la Saintonge”, Bulletin monumental, 114 (1956) 7–33; Lassalle V., L’influence antique dans l’art roman provençal (2nd edition, Paris: 1983). © Frédérique Lemerle, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004378216_010 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the prevailing CC-BY-NC-ND License at the time of publication. Frédérique Lemerle - 9789004378216 Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 06:47:25AM via free access 188 Lemerle and Saintes, as well as Burgundy were also concerned. In the 16th century, archaeologia, in the etymological sense of the study of Antiquity, made a con- siderable leap forward in France quite as much as in Italy.2 1 Architecture and Gallo-Roman Antiquities in the 16th Century Henry II’s architects, whose ideas about both modern architecture and the monumental architecture of the classical period were largely informed by the first two tomes of Sebastiano Serlio’s to be published – the Quarto libro (1537) and the Terzo libro (1540) –, accorded little interest to the antiquities of Gaul. No mention of even the most famous amongst them, the size and splen- dour of which were comparable to those of Rome and Verona, is made by ei- ther Jean Bullant (Reigle generalle d’architecture des cinq manières de colonnes, 1564) or Philibert De l’Orme (Premier tome de l’architecture, 1567). Both seem to have been aware of them however. It is almost certain that De l’Orme travelled to the south of France sometimes between 1536 and 1541, either accompanying Francis I to Nîmes at the end of 1536 or following the court to Aigues-Mortes for the meeting between the French king and Charles V in July 1539. In the con- tract for the Château of Lésigny, dated 1543, he specifies that all the stone blocks will be artfully cut, care taken to ensure that the size, masonry, lines and shapes of all the elements on the left side correspond perfectly with those on the right, and all these stone elements will be so perfectly cut, assembled and joined that none of the joints will be un- even, nor appear in any way different than those of the Arena of Nîmes or other similar ancient edifices.3 As a specialist of stereotomy (art of cutting stones), De l’Orme could hardly have failed to appreciate the quality of the stonework of the Arena of Nîmes. In 1549, the four months he spent participating in the siege of Boulogne prob- ably allowed him to also admire the Tour d’Ordre, an ancient Roman light- post, remarkable for its octagonal form. As for the seven or eight hundred 2 Lemerle F., La Renaissance et les antiquités de la Gaule: l’architecture gallo-romaine vue par les architectes, antiquaires et voyageurs des guerres d’Italie à la Fronde (Turnhout: 2005) 17–21, 58–60. 3 Grodecki C. (ed.), Documents du Minutier central des notaires de Paris. Histoire de l’art au XVIe siècle (1540–1600), vol. I (Paris: 1985), n° 116. De l’Orme was also exacting about the fineness of joints in other works (Pérouse de Montclos J.-M., Philibert De l’Orme Architecte du roi,1514– 1570 (Paris: 2000) 111). Frédérique Lemerle - 9789004378216 Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 06:47:25AM via free access Antiquity and Modernity 189 drawings – now lost – that De l’Orme made during his lifetime and which Peiresc acquired from his heirs after his death,4 it is probable that these repre- sented the principal classical monuments of France as well as those of Rome, in particular, those of De l’Orme’s home town, Lyon, and its surroundings, in- cluding the Pyramid of Vienne and the famous mausoleum and triumphal arch of the ruined Roman oppidum of Glanum. Jean Bullant’s treatise, published in 1564 (and, in extended form, in 1568), contains exclusively Roman examples: the Theatre of Marcellus, Arch of Titus, Pantheon, Temple of the Castor and Pollux, and the Temple of Portunus. That Bullant considered this city as the sole source of worthy classical models is also attested by his practice: the avant-corps of the Château of Écouen is directly inspired by the orders of the Temple of Castor and Pollux and the Basilica Aemilia; the entablature of the Château of Chantilly is taken from the Temple of Serapis.5 It is possible that Bullant, unlike De l’Orme, was not familiar with the prestigious ruins of the Provence, but it is difficult to imagine him being entirely unaware of the antiquities of Nîmes, which Poldo d’Albenas’ well-dif- fused Discours historial de l’antique et illustre cité de Nismes (1559–1560) had made generally known. Both Bullant’s and De l’Orme’s persistence in writing of Gallo-Roman an- tiquities as inferior to those of Italy appears in fact to be a perfectly conscious and curiously paradoxical choice. Though these edifices were appreciated and praised by a number of their most brilliant Italian colleagues (Giuliano da Sangallo, Fra Giocondo, Sebastiano Serlio and Andrea Palladio), to say noth- ing of a great many other educated foreigners (diplomats, doctors, students, etc.), these two royal architects, intent on creating a specifically French mode of modern classical architecture, waived their own country’s rich classical heritage in favour of Serlian – in other words Italian – models. References to French ruins are similarly absent from the work of Pierre Lescot. Jacques Androuet du Cerceau is a case apart: he was the only one to make a major contribution in the area of national antiquities and, besides, to have an overall view of Roman antiquity. But as a non-building architect, he could only have influenced his colleagues by way of his engraved or designed series, which can be dated 1545–1549, and where, next to Italian antiquities he reproduced for instance the pyramid at Vienne, the mausoleum at Glanum, the Piliers de 4 See the letter to Aleandro, June 5, 1618 (Correspondance de Peiresc et Aleandro, vol. I, (1616– 1618), ed. and comm. J.-F. Lhote – D. Joyal (Clermont-Ferrand: 1995) 188–189 and note 110. 5 Pauwels Y., “Les antiques romains dans les traités de Philibert De L’Orme et Jean Bullant”, MEFRIM, 106 (1994–2) 531–547. Frédérique Lemerle - 9789004378216 Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 06:47:25AM via free access 190 Lemerle Tutelle in Bordeaux, the Maison Carrée in Nîmes or the arches of Langres.6 For Italian and French architects ancient edifices provided stereotypes to be developed and amplified, as Serlio demonstrates perfectly in the Quarto libro in which he proposes a model derived from the arch of Ancona.7 It is the very same Serlian model that Pierre Lescot, the architect of the Louvre, went back to, for the Fontaine des Innocents in Paris, adapting it naturally to the monument’s function and to its location in the make-up of the city. Other, less famous 16th-century architects also developed an interest in Gallo-Roman antiquities – sometimes through the demolition of ancient edifices. Such was the case with Nicolas Bachelier (1549–1555) who, in 1549, was charged by the king with the destruction of the Château Narbonnais of Toulouse; this essen- tially medieval edifice had been grafted onto a Gallo-Roman fortification, the structure and the materials of which Bachelier was able to study, as well as a magnificent triumphal arch, unearthed at the same time. At once architect, sculpture and scholar, Bachelier’s high degree of cultural knowledge owed something to his chosen place of activity, since Toulouse was at the time one of France’s first intellectual and artistic centres.
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