Francis I: Patron of the Arts
Francis I (1494–1547) was King of France from 1515 until his death. During his reign, huge cultural changes took place in France. He has been called France's original Renaissance monarch. By the time he ascended the throne in 1515, the Renaissance had arrived in France, and Francis became a major patron of the arts. At the time of his accession, the royal palaces were ornamented with only a scattering of great paintings and no sculptures. During Francis's reign, the magnificent art collection of the French kings, which can still be seen at the Louvre, was begun.
Francis I by Jean Clouet (circa 1530)
Francis I of France was one of the great patrons of the arts in early modern Europe.
Francis poured vast amounts of money into new structures. He continued the work of his predecessors on the Château d'Amboise and also started renovations on the Château de Blois. Early in his reign, he began construction of the magnificent Château de Chambord, inspired by the styles of the Italian Renaissance and perhaps even designed by Leonardo da Vinci. Francis rebuilt the Château du Louvre, transforming it from a medieval fortress into a building of Renaissance splendor. He financed the building of a new City Hall (Hôtel de Ville) for Paris in order to have control over the building's design. He constructed the Château de Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne and rebuilt the Château de St-Germain-en-Laye.
Châteaux in the 16th century departed from castle architecture. While they were offshoots of castles, with features commonly associated with them, they did not have serious defenses. Extensive gardens and water features, such as a moat, were common amongst châteaux from this period.
The Francis I wing of the Chateau de Blois
The Château de Blois's spiral staircase is one of the great artistic achievements of the French Renaissance under Francis I.
Château de Chambord
Château de Chambord, northwest façade
The Château de Chambord is an example of Renaissance architecture and is the largest castle of the Loire valley, measuring 156 meters long and topping 56 meters high.
Chambord is the largest château in the Loire Valley. It was built primarily as the king's hunting lodge. The layout is reminiscent of a typical castle with a keep, corner towers, and defended by a moat. Built in Renaissance style, the internal layout is an early example of the French and Italian style of grouping rooms into self-contained suites, a departure from the medieval style of corridor rooms. The massive château is composed of a central keep with four immense bastion towers at the corners. The keep also forms part of the front wall of a larger compound with two more large towers. Bases for a possible further two towers are found at the rear, but these were never developed, and remain the same height as the wall. The château features 440 rooms, 282 fireplaces, and 84 staircases. Four rectangular vaulted hallways on each floor form a cross shape.
Château de Chambord, plan
Plan of the château as engraved by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau (1576).
Like the Château de Blois, one of Chambord's architectural highlights is the spectacular open double spiral staircase. The two spirals ascend the three floors without ever meeting, illuminated from above by a sort of lighthouse at the highest point of the château.
Château de Chambord, double spiral staircase
The staircase extends upward through three stories.
Château of Fontainebleau
The largest of Francis's building projects was the reconstruction and expansion of the royal Château of Fontainebleau, which quickly became his favorite place of residence, as well as the residence of his official mistress (Anne, Duchess of Étampes). He commissioned the architect Gilles le Breton to build a château in the new Renaissance style. Le Breton preserved the old medieval donjon, where the king's apartments were located, but incorporated it into the new Renaissance style Cour Ovale (Oval Courtyard), built on the foundations of the old castle. It included monumental Porte Dorée (Golden Door), the main entrance, as its southern entrance, as well as a monumental Renaissance stairway, the portique de Serlio, to give access the royal apartments on the north side.
Gilles Le Breton. Cour Ovale. Château of Fontainebleau.
The Oval Courtyard, with the Medieval donjon, a vestige of the original castle where the king's apartments were located, in the center.
Beginning in approximately 1528, Francis constructed the Gallery Francis I, which allowed him to pass directly from his apartments to the chapel of the Trinitaires. He brought the architect Sebastiano Serlio from Italy, and the Florentine painter Giovanni Battista di Jacopo, known as Rosso Fiorentino, to decorate the new gallery. Between 1533 and 1539 Rosso Fiorentino filled the gallery with murals glorifying the king, framed in stucco ornament in high relief, and lambris sculpted by the furniture maker Francesco Scibec da Carpi. Another Italian painter, Francesco Primaticcio from Bologna, joined later in the decoration of the château. Together their style of decoration became known as the first School of Fontainebleau. This was the first great decorated gallery built in France. Broadly speaking, at Fontainebleau the Renaissance was introduced to France.
Sebastiano Serlio and Rosso Fiorentino. Gallery of Francis I
The Gallery of Francis I, connecting the king's apartments with the chapel, decorated between 1533 and 1539. It introduced the Italian Renaissance style to France.
Each of Francis's projects was luxuriously decorated, both inside and out. Fontainebleau, for instance, had a gushing fountain in its courtyard where quantities of wine were mixed with the water. The fountain was linked to a legend related to one of the best known projects for the château.
Among the most striking works of art within Fontainebleau was the Nymphe de Fontainebleau (1542) by the Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. Francis commissioned this large-scale bronze bas relief, cast in the lost wax process, as the tympanum to sit atop the Porte Dorée. In the sculpture, a Mannerist nude nymph reclines among woodland animals, such as deer and boars. The central buck, wearing a garland of fruit, symbolizes Francis's power. As a whole the sculpture is based on a legend in which a hunting dog discovered a spring personified by a nymph learning against an urn. It was this spring that gave the château and surrounding environs the name Fontainebleau. The tympanum was to be flanked on either side by bronze sculptures of nude satyrs, posed as mirror images of one another, also cast by Cellini. Eventually, the project was abandoned, and the nymph was integrated into the design of an aristocrat's palace 10 years later.
Benvenuto Cellini, Nymphe de Fontainebleau
Bronze. 1542. Musée du Louvre, Paris.