{"id":6781,"date":"2012-09-19T17:53:10","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T21:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/?page_id=6781"},"modified":"2012-12-21T15:39:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-21T20:39:00","slug":"a-1-the-gallery-of-francis-i","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/catalogues\/architecture\/a-1-the-gallery-of-francis-i\/","title":{"rendered":"A.1. The Gallery of Francis I"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

South facade center<\/p><\/div>\n

Ch\u00e2teau, Fontainebleau<\/p>\n

c. 1531-1534<\/p>\n

Fig.South fa\u00e7ade center<\/a> from P.22, I N<\/p>\n

The documentation for the Gallery of Francis I and an account of Rosso\u2019s possible participation in the design of its architecture are fully presented in P.22 and in Chapter VIII.<\/p>\n

According to the specifications of 28 April 1528, over two years before Rosso arrived in France, the gallery was to be approximately 62.5 meters long, and six wide.\u00a0 There were to be casement windows in its long north and south sides.\u00a0 Two small cabinets, about four meters square, with windows, were to be built across from each other and projected from the middle of the long sides.\u00a0 At the ends of the gallery there were to be, at the east, a chapel, and at the west, another cabinet.<\/p>\n

Before Primaticcio arrived in France early in 1532, Rosso began making plans for the decoration of the gallery.\u00a0 Two oval oil paintings on panel were executed for the gallery, indicating that before early 1532 a scheme had been devised for its paintings and stuccoes.\u00a0 While it is possible that the two oval pictures were intended for a shorter gallery set between the west cabinet and the chapel at the east, it seems more likely, given that these two end spaces are never mentioned again in the surviving documents after 1528, that by the time the oval pictures were executed the west cabinet and the chapel at the east had been eliminated.1<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 The elimination of the cabinet and chapel did not require major structural changes but it did lengthen the gallery and change the shape of its long walls. It is likely that the alteration of the original plan took place while Rosso was considering the decorations of the spaces that had been proposed before he arrived in France and I would suggest that the changes that were made to the architecture were the result of his decisions.\u00a0 While contemplating what decorations he would invent, it came to him to change the very space that he was to decorate.<\/p>\n

Work on the decoration of the newly proportioned gallery had already begun in August 1533, possibly preparatory to the actual execution of the stuccoes and paintings in the gallery and in the north and south cabinets.\u00a0 The stuccoes themselves were begun in April 1534.\u00a0 At this very same time, on the south side facing the Cour de la Fontaine and the lake, construction was begun on a series of arches and vaults at ground level to contain six kitchens and six larders.\u00a0 But this masonry construction would also carry a terrace in front of and along the full length of the gallery at the level of its floor.\u00a0 According to Dan, this terrace was first built of wood and then replaced in stone in 1584.2<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 Very soon, the south cabinet was eliminated from the plan of the gallery and between April and November 1534 whatever, if any, had been built of it would have been destroyed to make way for a long terrace of equal breadth its entire length, which seems to have been largely completed by the end of 1535.<\/p>\n

The decision to remove the south cabinet from the plan of the gallery may in the first instance have been due not only to the interest in having an exterior terrace, which could have gone around the south cabinet, but also in unifying the south fa\u00e7ade of the gallery, facing the Cour de la Fontaine and the lake, as it appears in the small fresco under the Venus and Minerva<\/em> in the gallery (Fig.P.22, I N h<\/a>).\u00a0 The unification was further accomplished by a new design for the central recessed space flanked by narrow pilasters where the south cabinet with its window was or would have been.\u00a0 This arrangement continued the articulation of the fa\u00e7ade, but because the central space, flanked by pilasters, was slightly narrower than the other recessed bays, the new space was closer to its adjacent windows than was the spacing between the broad piers elsewhere on the fa\u00e7ade.\u00a0 Consequently, a more compact triad of bays gave a focus to the center of the fa\u00e7ade that was reinforced by the peaked roof containing a dormer above it marking the center of the three matching dormers at the upper level of the gallery, as still visible in the small painted view in the gallery (Fig.P.22, I N h<\/a>).\u00a0 In Du Cerceau\u2019s print of 1579 (Fig.Du Cerceau Print, Gallery<\/a>) the central triad has been regularized but still clearly focused by the peaked roof above containing a dormer.3<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

From Du Cerceau\u2019s engraving of 1579, I assumed that this center bay showed a painted blind window.\u00a0 In the slightly abraded small frescoed view of the south fa\u00e7ade, I thought I saw in the center of the south fa\u00e7ade a slightly narrower painted window, that is as compared to the adjacent and better preserved flanking windows with which I thought it formed a triad.\u00a0 But recently, as stated under Summary in P.22, I noticed that in this smaller center area there appears not the painted description of a mullioned casement window but the painted image of a draped figure perhaps holding a scepter on a diagonal and seated under a light baldachin composed of tall, thin columns supporting a high dome (Fig.South fa\u00e7ade center<\/a>; Fig.P.22, I N j<\/a>).4<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 This detail gives support to the suggestion that Rosso had a hand in the architectural shaping of the Gallery of Francis I by unifying the south fa\u00e7ade with the elimination of the south cabinet and even further with the placement of a painted seated royal personnage, probably Francis I himself, occupying the exterior center bay and so relating now the south fa\u00e7ade to what became a more centralized decoration within the gallery itself.<\/p>\n

Guillaume proposed that the terrace running along the south fa\u00e7ade, at first narrower where it went past the south cabinet5<\/sup><\/a> and then, by the destruction of the south cabinet, the same width its entire length, joined another terrace running along the east front of the adjacent building.\u00a0 Facing the Cour de la Fontaine, this terrace led to the Pavillon des Po\u00eales now fully under construction.\u00a0 There are no documents on the building of this terrace, even as many survive for the building of the gallery\u2019s terrace, nor are there any views or plans of it.\u00a0 It is known only from the contract of 1558 for its destruction.6<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 Du Cerceau\u2019s engravings were done two decades after its destruction and Rosso\u2019s small painting of the Cour de la Fontaine stops just short of the west side of this space, although the very simple building at the east is fully depicted.\u00a0 Perhaps this west wing was still too incomplete and even its full design was not yet known.\u00a0 Only the Gallery of Francis I and the Porte Dor\u00e9e were intended as the subjects of this \u201cportrait\u201d of the king\u2019s most favored residence.<\/p>\n

Guillaume\u2019s interest was primarily functional in recognizing the solution to the problem of circulation at the ch\u00e2teau, that is, to get from the old building centered around the Cour Ovale to the new building under construction when the Gallery of Francis I that linked them was locked shut.\u00a0 With the south cabinet built as planned, this problem may already have been solved by the narrow space of the south terrace where it extended beyond the end of the south cabinet.\u00a0 This practical but uncomfortable and inelegant solution was majestically replaced by removing the south cabinet entirely and placing at the area it occupied a painted ceremonial image of the monarch seated under a baldachin at the center of Rosso\u2019s now formally united south fa\u00e7ade of the Gallery of Francis I.<\/p>\n

As no documents or images of the west building are yet known, it is impossible to determine the appearance of this terrace or know its full purpose and the proposed extent of its use.\u00a0 A wooden terrace with a life-span for only as long as needed to complete the west building to which it was attached may have had little relationship with the original design and modifications of the Gallery of Francis I.\u00a0 For after the destruction of this second terrace the path from the Cour Ovale to the new ch\u00e2teau when the gallery was closed was its south terrace alone with its own exits into the buildings beyond the gallery at its west and the east ends, as seen in two of Du Cerceau\u2019s prints of these sides of the Cour de la Fontaine (Fig.Gallery terrace, west exit<\/a> and Fig.Gallery terrace, east exit<\/a>).<\/p>\n

On the interior, this wall, painted on the exterior with the image of the king, now gave a new central area to be decorated on the south side within the gallery.\u00a0 For this space Rosso planned his Nymph of Fontainebleau<\/em> (Fig.E.103<\/a>) in a horizontal oval frame, the only large fresco in the gallery with this shape, although it bore a relation to the upright oval oil paintings at the ends of the gallery.\u00a0 Instead of being cut into two halves by the entrances to two cabinets, the gallery now had a center of focus and a place, at and near the doorway of the North Cabinet, from which all the decorations in the gallery could be taken in.\u00a0 Above this doorway was placed a bust of Francis I, matching in its full dimensions the painted full length image of the king on the outside visible to all who used the south terrace when the gallery was not accesible and by all who were in the Cour de la Fontaine enjoying the outdoors in a variety of ways as appears in the small view of this court within the gallery.<\/p>\n

Guillaume brings up Zerner\u2019s observation that the stucco figures flanking the oval painting in the center south bay are done in very high relief while the stucco relief in the adjacent bays with the major subjects of Cleobis and Biton<\/em> (Fig.P.22, V S a<\/a>) and the Death of Adonis<\/em> (Fig.P.22, III S b<\/a>) is low, thus emphasizing the central position of the bay for which the Nymph of Fontainebleau<\/em> was planned.\u00a0 This high relief also appears at the far west on the south side with the large satyrs flanking the Enlightenment of Francis I<\/em> (Fig.P.22, VII S a<\/a>) and the far east but on the north side with the beautiful nude young man and woman alongside the Venus and Minerva<\/em> (Fig.P.22, I N a<\/a>).\u00a0 This correspondence almost certainly indicates that the destruction of the south cabinet and the creation of the decoration for the center bay on the south side were determined very early in the scheme of the decoration of the Gallery of Francis I.<\/p>\n

As Zerner clearly demonstrated, this scheme is remarkably complex and ingenious.\u00a0 Given what was offered to Rosso to decorate when he arrived in 1530, a gallery and four cabinets, it was the spaces that he first took account of.\u00a0 At the same time, it was their decoration that he needed to foresee.\u00a0 It was very likely his idea to reduce the number of four adjunct spaces\u2014three cabinets and a chapel\u2014to one, the north cabinet.\u00a0 While the foundations of the cabinets were readily built, that for the south cabinet was also part of the series of masonry arches housing the new kitchens and larders.\u00a0 Rosso may well have stopped the construction of the south cabinet well before it was well along, knowing quite soon that he wanted a center wall in his gallery, and at the same time saw the opportunity to unify its south fa\u00e7ade.<\/p>\n

The re-designing of the south fa\u00e7ade and the concomitant changes to the scheme of the decorations of the gallery would seem to be due to Rosso.\u00a0 They gave to the original conception of the building, inside and out, a new symmetrical and centralized strength that cannot be attributed to Le Breton.7<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The architectural role that can be suggested for Rosso in the design of the Gallery of Francis I was one of modifications to a building the construction of which had been begun and perhaps largely completed by the time that he arrived in France.\u00a0 But these modifications made the building significantly different from the one that Rosso first encountered.\u00a0 The changes involved spaces and the articulation of a fa\u00e7ade and were hence the result of intrinsically architectural decisions.8<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
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<\/a>1<\/sup> It may be that the chapel was then planned to be placed above the new Chapel of Saint Saturnin in the Cour Ovale.\u00a0 This upper chapel was called the Chapelle Haute or the King\u2019s Chapel (see A.4<\/a>).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

<\/a>2<\/sup> Dan, 1642, 34, 36-37, and Pressouyre, 1974, 18, 23, ns. 36, 37.\u00a0 Dan would have meant the floor of the terrace and its parapet.\u00a0 The small exterior view of the gallery under the Venus and Minerva<\/em> in the gallery shows a continuously closed parapet, not one made of balusters supporting a ledge.\u00a0 The arches of the kitchens and larders below are walled in about halfway up the piers; they are completely open in Du Cerceau\u2019s drawn view and etched views of 1579.\u00a0 The parapet of the terrace remains completely closed but now divided into sections by piers that follow the line of the pillasters below.\u00a0 In a tapestry cartoon (Fig.Barberini Tapestry Cartoon reversed<\/a>) showing the entire Cour de la Fontaine with the west building behind the Pavillon des Po\u00eales completed and hence dating after 1560 but before 1579, the date of Du Cerceau\u2019s prints, the parapet appears continuous and undivided by piers.\u00a0 The center window of the Gallery of Francis I is already a blind window but the dormer above is set within a peaked roof as in Du Cerceau\u2019s engraving and in Rosso\u2019s small painting.\u00a0 The cartoon in the Barberini Collection in Rome was brought to my attention by Candace Adelson.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/a>3<\/sup> The fa\u00e7ade was refaced under Henry IV early in the seventeenth century (see Pressouyre, \u201cCadre architectural,\u201d 1972, 18-19, and Pressouyre, 1974, 36).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

<\/a>4<\/sup> The shape of the baldachin resembles the kind that appears as the Temple of Priapus in a woodcut illustrating The Dream of Poliphilus<\/em> published in Venice in 1499 (Fig.Temple of Priapus<\/a>), although it cannot be determined out of what materials the Fontainebleau structure is made (see Golson, 1975, 234, 235, Fig. 5).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/a>5<\/sup> Guillaume, 1985, 36, n. 71, determines the width of the narrowed terrace from the difference between the length of the North Cabinet (3.70 m) and the width of the terrace on the south side of the gallery (5 m).<\/div>\n
\n

<\/a>6<\/sup> See Guillaume, 1985, 36, and n. 73, and Roy, 1929, 277.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

<\/a>7<\/sup> Prinz and Kecks, 1985, 356, 417, stated that Pierre Paul, \u201cdit l\u2019Italien,\u201d was responsible for the plans at Fontainebleau, as shown by the Comptes<\/em> (Labordes, I, 1877, 59-60).\u00a0 But how this can be related to Le Breton\u2019s activity and the appearance of the buildings is not indicated.\u00a0 Pierre Paul died 28 December 1535.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/a>8<\/sup> Geym\u00fcller, 1898, 159, thought that Vasari\u2019s comment, following the remark that Rosso was made \u201ccapo generale\u201d of all the buildings at Fontainebleau, that he was given the gallery and made \u201cdi sopra non volta, ma un palco overro soffittato di legname, con bellissimo spartimento\u201d (Vasari-Milanesi, V, 167), indicated that he was the architect of the entire gallery.\u00a0 But the specification of 1528 for the gallery already indicates such a ceiling.\u00a0 Geym\u00fcller also thought that the present exterior appearance might be due to Rosso, but this fa\u00e7ade is certainly later (see Pressouyre, \u201cCadre Architectural,\u201d 1972, 18-19, and Babelon, 1989, 690, no. 261).\u00a0 There is no evidence to indicate that the original fa\u00e7ade, visible in the small exterior view in the gallery, was designed by Rosso, although I suggest that he had a hand in the redesigning of the fa\u00e7ade when the South Cabinet was removed, and a painted seated figure occupied the center bay.<\/p>\n

Geym\u00fcller further thought that the Grotto of the Jardin des Pins might have been designed by Rosso (as suggested by Boitte, the architect of the ch\u00e2teau at the end of the nineteenth century).\u00a0 But this certainly is not true (see Claude Lauriol, in EdF<\/em>, 1972, 482).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ch\u00e2teau, Fontainebleau c. 1531-1534 Fig.South fa\u00e7ade center from P.22, I N The documentation for the Gallery of Francis I and an account of Rosso\u2019s possible participation in the design of its architecture are fully presented in P.22 and in Chapter VIII. According to the specifications of 28 April 1528, over two years before Rosso arrived […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"parent":821,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6781","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6781"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8057,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6781\/revisions\/8057"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/rosso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}