Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 - France and the Netherlands, Part 2 by Various
page 27 of 185 (14%)
page 27 of 185 (14%)
|
cavaliers moved and plotted.
The great château of the Counts of Blois is built upon an inclined rock which rises above the roof-tops of the lower town quite in fairy-book fashion. Commonly referred to as the Château de Blois, it is really composed of four separate and distinct foundations; the original château of the counts; the later addition of Louis XII.; the palace of Francis I., and the most unsympathetically and dismally disposed pavilion of Gaston of Orleans. The artistic qualities of the greater part of the distinct edifice which go to make up the château as it stands to-day are superb, with the exception of that great wing of Gaston's, before mentioned, which is as cold and unfeeling as the overrated palace at Versailles. The Comtes de Chatillon built that portion just to the right of the present entrance; Louis XII., the edifice through which one enters the inner court and which extends far to the left, including also the chapel immediately to the rear; while François I., who here as elsewhere let his unbounded Italian proclivities have full sway, built the extended wing to the left of the inner court and fronting on the present Place du Château, formerly the Place Royale.... As an architectural monument the château is a picturesque assemblage of edifices belonging to many different epochs, and, as such, shows, as well as any other document of contemporary times, the varying ambitions and emotions of its builders, from the rude and rough manners of the earliest of feudal times through the highly refined Renaissance details of the imaginative brain of François, down to the base concoction of the elder Mansart, produced at the commands of |
|