Chap. II.

FRENCH. 153
for the quicker working of good taste, was tlie c-ulcbrated Vignola, who resided in France
many years; a circumstance which may, with some prob:\l)ilit_v, account for tlie liigh esteem
in which that great master's profiles have always been held, and indeed in which they are
still held there, though, generally K])eaking, the French have invariably been more attached
in their practice to tlie Venetian than to the Roman school. Serlio, another Italian archi-
tect of note, was employed in the country by Francis, and actually died at Fontainebleau.
At the period whereof we are now treating there a])pears to have been a number of able
artists ;
for to Delorme and RuUant must be added Lescot, who, with Jean Gougeon as his
sculptor, was many years emjjloyed upon the building usually called the yien.v Loui-re,
to distinguish it from the subse(iuent aclditions wliich have (]nadru])led the original project
of Lescot. To judge of the works of the French architects of this period, a relative, and
not an abstract view, nuist be taken of them ;
relative, we mean, to the general cultivation of
the arts when any individual artist ajipears. In this respect Lescot's works at the Louvre are
entitled to tlie greatest praise; and from the examples he as well as BuUant and Gougeon
afforded, it might have been exjjccted that \nire architecture would have proceeded witli-
out check until it reached a point as high as that to which it had been carried in Italy.
Such was not, however, to be the case. IMary de jNIedicis, during her regency, having de-
termined on building the Luxembourg palace, was anxious to have it designed in the style
of the palaces of Florence, her native city. Jactjues de Brosse, her architect, was therefore
compelled to adopt the character required : his jirototype seems to have been the Pitti
jialace, and his version of it is a failure. The gigantic palaces of Florence well enough bear
out against the rustic and embossed work employed upon them
;
but when their scale is re-
duced, the employment of massive parts requires great caution. The palace, however, of the
Luxembourg became a model for the fasliion of tlie day, and produced an intermediate style,
which lasted many years in France, and arrested the arrival at perfection whereof the above
work of Bullant and others had opened a fair prosjiect. De Brosse was an able artist, and
his desi'rn for the fa(;ade of St. Gervais of three orders is, under the circumstances, entitled
to our praise. This architect acquired much honour by the aqueduct of Arcueil, the com-
pletion whereof, in 1624, it is supposed he did not long survive.
359. Under Louis XIV. the art remained for the most part in the intcrinediate state
just noticed ;
and yet that monarch and his minister Colbert lost, no opjiortunity of em-
bellishing the kingdom with its productions. He emiiloyed Bernini to make designs for
the ])alace of the Louvre; and for that purpose induced the artist to visit France, where he
was received with the highest respect. lie left a design for a facade of the building in
question, which, though in a corrupt style, exhibits nevertheless marks of grandeur and
magnificence which would have been worthy of the monarch. Bernini, disgusted, as he
alleged, with the workmen of Paris, departed from the country without leaving any ex-
ample of his architectural powers. That he did so France has no reason to lament, since it
gave Perrault the opportunity of ornamenting the capital with one of the most splendid menu
-
nients of the art which Europe can boast. To Perrault is the credit due of having given
an impulse to French architecture it has never lost, and of having changed the heavy style
of his time into the light and agreeable forms of the Venetian school. The beauties of the
fa9ade of the Louvre
(Jig. 176.) are so many and great that its defects are forgotten, 'llie