Around 1533-1534?<\/p>\n
Frescoes and stuccoes, Ch\u00e2teau, Fontainebleau.<\/p>\n
The possibility that Rosso designed a scheme of decoration for the destroyed Small Gallery was suggested by Dimier, 1900, 160-161, 284-289, when discussing the Salle de Bal at Fontainebleau.\u00a0 Dimier\u2019s argument depended upon the following passage in Vasari\u2019s \u201cLife\u201d of Rosso (1568, II, 211; Vasari-Milanesi, V, 170): \u201cMa una gran parte delle stanze, che il Rosso fece al detto luogo di Fontanableo sono state disfatte dopo la sua morte dal detto Francesco Primaticcio, che in quel luogo ha fatto nuova, e maggior fabrica.\u201d\u00a0 Documentary evidence does not indicate any such extensive demolition.\u00a0 The only building that this passage could refer to (other than the destruction of the staircase in the Cour Ovale [A.2<\/a>], which is not a \u201cstanza\u201d) is the one that contained the Small Gallery and that was destroyed in the 1540s to build the Salle de Bal (see also Dimier, 1904, 83-84, and 1925, 10, 36; Roy, 1929, 240-244; Kusenberg, 1931, 104, 203, ns. 253-256; B\u00e9guin, 1960, 42-43, and RdA<\/i>, 1969, 172, n. 127; Pressouyre, 1974, 31, and n. 31; Carroll, 1987, 30).\u00a0 Claude Lauriol, in EdF<\/i>, 1972, 482, and in Fontainebleau<\/i>, 1973, II, 155, questioned that the building containing the Small Gallery was ever constructed.\u00a0 But the surviving evidence clearly indicates that it was.\u00a0 However, there is no documentary evidence indicating that the Small Gallery was decorated by Rosso, or by anyone else for that matter.\u00a0 Only Vasari\u2019s passage about the destruction of some work by Rosso and its replacement by something larger by Primaticcio leads one to suspect that the information he had was related to the Small Gallery and the larger Salle de Bal.<\/p>\n In 1528 (Laborde, I, 1877, 41-43) there was planned for construction to the right of the entrance to the ch\u00e2teau (the Porte Dor\u00e9e) \u201cun corps d\u2019hostel de 15 toises de long ou environ, et de 18 pieds de largeur ou environ, par le rees de chauss\u00e9e et par dedans oeuvre, dont l\u2019estage du rees de chaus\u00e9e sera appliqu\u00e9 \u00e0 quatres offices, deux cuisines et un revesti\u00e8re pour servir \u00e0 ladite chapelle [of the \u201ccour du Donjon\u201d to the east], et l\u2019estage d\u2019au dessus sera appliqu\u00e9 \u00e0 gallerie,…\u201d (B.N., ms. fr. 11.179, fol. 75v<\/sup>, Laborde, I, 1877, 71).\u00a0 The \u201ccorps d\u2019hostel des offices\u201d and the \u201cgallerie dessus les dits offices\u201d are mentioned as points of reference in a document of 12 May 1535 concerning carpentry work certified as done 2 April 1533, indicating that they had been built by that time.1<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 In the small view of the ch\u00e2teau that is under the Venus and Minerva<\/i> in the Gallery of Francis I (Fig.P.22, I N h<\/a>) the exterior of the south wall of the Small Gallery appears at the far right.\u00a0 It shows four gabled windows with pilasters at the sides set upon the ledge of a horizontal wall that is carried upon the high wall of the ground floor.\u00a0 The four windows must be those of the Small Gallery (now so-called to distinguish it from the Gallery of Francis I and the destroyed \u201cgrande gallerie\u201d or Gallery of Ulysses).2<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n The dimensions of the \u201ccorps d\u2019hostel\u201d as planned were a little more than 29 meters long by almost 6 meters wide.\u00a0 The length is exactly that of the interior of the Salle de Bal that replaced the Small Gallery (but the Salle de Bal is almost ten meters wide).\u00a0 In the frescoed view of the ch\u00e2teau in the Gallery of Francis I, the south fa\u00e7ade of the Small Gallery is seen on the first floor of the \u201ccorps d\u2019hostel\u201d to the right of the Porte Dor\u00e9e and the vertical block at its right containing a staircase.\u00a0 Four windows are shown with pediments and pilasters placed upon a ledge that runs the entire length of the building and even continues across the vertical block to the left.\u00a0 Dimier\u2019s reconstruction of the plan of the ch\u00e2teau under Francis I shows the plan of the Small Gallery with five windows (Fig.Dimier, Plan under Francis I<\/a>).\u00a0 The Salle de Bal also has five.\u00a0 As in all other respects the painted view of the ch\u00e2teau seems to be very accurate, it is possible that the Small Gallery had only four windows.\u00a0 The four windows of the Small Gallery in the fresco look slightly wider than those of the Gallery of Francis I seen at the left, even taking into account the effect of perspective upon the appearance of these two galleries, which are not on the same plane.\u00a0 The slightly different axis of the Small Gallery does not seem indicated in the fresco but it is still possible that the projection of the Porte Dor\u00e9e hides a fifth window.\u00a0 Their proportions are also different.\u00a0 The windows of the Small Gallery with only four rows of panes are decidedly shorter than those of the Gallery of Francis I with their five rows of panes and as can be judged by relating the two rows of windows to the higher and lower moldings that follow around the walls of the ch\u00e2teau to the left.\u00a0 One interesting detail of the exterior appearance of the Small Gallery in the small fresco is the blue color of the areas around and above the windows, indicating that these areas belong to the roof system of the ch\u00e2teau.\u00a0 This means that the windows are actually dormers like those of the story above the Gallery of Francis I.\u00a0 Whatever their actual size, they were spaced evenly along the length of the gallery of slightly more than 23 meters.\u00a0 What is difficult to appreciate in the small fresco is that they occupied the same length of wall as the five large windows of the Salle de Bal.\u00a0 But this would seem to have been the case.\u00a0 As to the interior of the Small Gallery, the window sills were probably about a meter from the floor.\u00a0 The ceiling was almost certainly flat (with beams, and with coffering?) as in the larger gallery.\u00a0 But the height of the Small Gallery would seem to have been less with the ceiling probably at a level just above the tops of the shorter window casements.<\/p>\n Like the Gallery of Francis I, the Small Gallery joined two parts of the ch\u00e2teau; it also had kitchens beneath it.\u00a0 Its function, therefore, must have been in some respects similar to that of the larger gallery.\u00a0 Decoration was almost certainly intended for it similar to, although less grand probably than, that of the undoubtedly more important and larger Gallery of Francis I.\u00a0 It is not possible to calculate what precisely were the wall\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 areas that would receive the decoration.\u00a0 There would have been those alongside the four dormer windows as well as the areas of the short east and west walls.\u00a0 It is probable that the Small Gallery had wood wainscoting on the lower part of the walls at least up to the level of the window sills, and possibly higher elsewhere.\u00a0 The doors in the end walls may have been set within this paneling.\u00a0 Above it Rosso\u2019s decoration would have been placed, and it probably would have been composed of stucco work and painting.\u00a0 Almost certainly it would have been different from the decoration in the Gallery of Francis I, not only for the sake of variety but also because of the room\u2019s smaller size and its dormer windows.<\/p>\n Unfortunately it is not possible to know the shape of the wall areas along the north and south sides of the gallery, nor of the ends.\u00a0 If they were vertical, and the view of the exterior of the gallery suggests that they might have been if the wood paneling was not higher than the sills of the dormers, which is very possible, then it can be proposed that one etching by Fantuzzi may be related to the decoration of the Small Gallery.\u00a0 This cartouche (Fig.E.82<\/a>) deserves special attention because it shows at the top two salamanders with their necks entwined and at the bottom the Royal F encircled with a crown.\u00a0 Its style can be associated with Rosso\u2019s design of 1532 or 1533 for the stucco frames planned for the lost Pavilion of Pomona (Fig.E.63<\/a>, and L.39<\/a>), with his Petrarch drawing at Christ Church of around 1534 (Fig.D.47a<\/a>), and with those parts of the Gallery of Francis I designed before April 1534, such as the Loss of Perpetual Youth<\/i> and its flanking frescoes and stuccoes (Fig.P.22, II S a<\/a>).<\/p>\n It is just within the period in which these works were invented that the decoration of the Small Gallery would most probably have been done.\u00a0 The building of which it was a part (on which, see below) may have been constructed at the same time as the staircase and portico that Rosso seems to have designed for the Cour Ovale (A.2<\/a>; Fig.Bray Elevation<\/a>) and onto which the north windows of the Small Gallery looked.\u00a0 The staircase and portico were commissioned 5 August 1531 and may have been completed by the end of the following year.\u00a0 The decoration of the Pavilion of Pomona was probably done in 1532 but almost surely before mid-1533.\u00a0 In the spring of 1534 the execution of the decoration of the Gallery of Francis I was started after a period of preparatory work.\u00a0 It is, therefore, very possible that the Small Gallery was decorated in 1533-1534, at the same time that Primaticcio was at work in the Chambre du Roi.\u00a0 It may have been in the Pavilion of Pomona and in the Small Gallery, for both of which no documents of payment exist, that Rosso trained his assistants to execute his designs in stucco and fresco before they were faced with the much more elaborate and extensive decoration of the Gallery of Francis I.\u00a0 Later, when the decoration of that gallery was on its way to being completed, Rosso\u2019s activity seems to have been centered on the decoration of several parts of the Pavillon des Po\u00eales.<\/p>\n The etching by Fantuzzi would have been made from a drawing by Rosso, the design of which probably was meant to be executed in stucco in the Small Gallery, although the winged figures at the top and their garlands could have been painted.\u00a0 This composition could have been repeated throughout the Small Gallery, at least on the long walls; the end walls might have received panels of another design.\u00a0 The blank oval and two small rectangles would have been filled with frescoes, differing from one wall area to another but thematically related.\u00a0 On a much smaller scale this presumably was the arrangement in the Pavilion of Pomona, where the two narrative frescoes had the same frames.\u00a0 Otherwise, of course, one has to suppose some other arrangement of a variety of frames, probably with related forms and compositions.<\/p>\n With this in mind, there are three other vertical cartouches by Fantuzzi that should be mentioned as just possibly related to the decoration of the Small Gallery.\u00a0 One, showing two sleeping putti at the top (Fig.E.83<\/a>), frames an empty circle that is set slightly above the center of the composition.\u00a0 This cartouche may well go back, at least in good part, to a drawing by Rosso. \u00a0The other cartouches (Fig.E.84<\/a> and Fig.E.85<\/a>), showing a child playing two horns and with circular centers, are variants of each other and are less surely relatable to Rosso, although they could reflect some lost model or models by him.\u00a0 What all of these cartouches share is a vertical format with a small central area.\u00a0 They also have somewhat small forms, suggesting that they may go back to designs made by Rosso about the same time, around 1533 or 1534.\u00a0 Therefore, they could be related to a single project, and hence perhaps to the decoration of the Small Gallery, if Rosso did actually decorate it.<\/p>\n Chastel, 1967, 76-78, thought that the building of the block containing the Small Gallery may have been part of a larger plan involving other structures around and within the Cour Ovale.\u00a0 The portico and now destroyed staircase in this courtyard were commissioned 5 August 1531 (A.2<\/a>) from Gilles Le Breton.\u00a0 However, Chastel attributed their design to Rosso, very probably correctly.\u00a0 The chapel (A.4<\/a>), next to the Small Gallery and with its fa\u00e7ade facing the Cour Ovale, was commissioned at the same time, also from Le Breton.\u00a0 The exterior of its apse (Fig.St. Saturnin Apse, Exterior<\/a>) is articulated like that of the staircase and portico and therefore it is possible that Rosso was responsible for its design, or part of it.\u00a0 The exterior of the block containing the Small Gallery as it appears in the small view of the ch\u00e2teau in the Gallery of Francis I shows no architectural features that can be related to those parts of the other structures with which Rosso\u2019s name has been associated.\u00a0 Its simple windows look very much like those by Le Breton in the Cour Ovale.\u00a0 Hence, Rosso\u2019s supposed work on this block would have to have been inside, in the Small Gallery, and perhaps in the sacristy of the ground floor that is mentioned in the specifications of 1528.\u00a0 (The four offices would probably not have had any special architectural character or decoration, nor the two kitchens, and there is no indication that there were \u201capartements\u201d as Chastel thought.)\u00a0 Nothing is known of the sacristy.\u00a0 Given the plan of the Small Gallery with its dormer windows, it is unlikely that its interior was richly articulated architecturally (as was the Galerie Basse, for example; see L.44<\/a>).\u00a0 It is more probable that if Rosso had something to do with this block between the Porte Dor\u00e9e and the chapel he was not concerned with its architecture but with the decoration only of the Small Gallery.<\/p>\n The whole block was torn down to build the Salle de Bal between 1541 and 1550 (Dimier, 1900, 284-285).\u00a0 This change may be related to the demolition of the staircase in the Cour Ovale in 1541 and the building of the colonnade in that courtyard (see A.2<\/a>).3<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n