Royal Palaces and Parks of France Part 6

No sooner had the cavalcade entered the gates of the Louvre than it came out again to partic.i.p.ate in the day and night festival, which had the bosom of the Seine for its stage and its bridges and banks for the act drop and the wings.

The receptions of Amba.s.sadors, the baptisms of royalties, royal marriages and celebrations of victories, or treaties, were all feted in the same manner.

Napoleon glorified the Peace of Amiens under similar conditions, and there is scarce a chronicler of any reign but that recounts the part played by the Seine in the ceremonies of the court of the New and Old Louvre.

It was amid a setting which lent itself so readily to all this that the Old Louvre, which was rebuilt by Francis I, first came to its glory.

The origin of the name Louvre has still other interpretation from that previously given. It seems to be a question of grave doubt among the savants, but because the note is an interesting one it is here reproduced. The name may have been derived as well from the word _oeuvre_, from the Latin _opus_; it may have been evolved from _lupara_, or _louverie_ (place of wolves), which seems improbable. It may have had its evolution from either one of these origins, or it may not.

Anglo-Saxons may be proud of the fact that certain French savants have acknowledged that the name of the most celebrated of all Paris palaces is a derivation from a word belonging to their tongue and meaning habitation. This, then, is another version and one may choose that which is most to his liking, or may go back and show his preference for _lower_, meaning a fortified place.

A palace--something more elaborate than a mere habitation--stood on the same site in the twelfth century, a work which, under the energies of Philippe Auguste, in 1204 began to grow to still more splendid proportions, though infinitesimal one may well conclude as compared with the ma.s.s which all Paris knows to-day under the inclusive appellation of "The Louvre."

The Paris of Philippe Auguste was already a city of a hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants, with mean houses on every side and little pretense at even primitive comforts or conveniences. This far-seeing monarch laid hand first on the great citadel tower of the fortified _lower_, added to its flanking walls and built a circling rampart around the capital itself. It is recounted that the rumbling carts, sinking deep in mud and plowing through foot-deep dust beneath the palace windows, annoyed the monarch so much that he inst.i.tuted what must have been the first city paving work on record, and commanded that all the chief thoroughfares pa.s.sing near the Louvre should be paved with cobbles. This was real munic.i.p.al improvement. He was a Solon among his kind for, since that day, it has been a _sine qua non_ that for the well-keeping of city streets they must be paved, and, though cobblestones have since gone out of fashion, it was this monarch who first showed us how to do it.

The Louvre of Philippe Auguste was the most imposing edifice of the Paris of its time. To no little extent was this imposing outline due to its great central tower, the _maitresse_, which was surrounded by twenty-three _dames d'honneur_, without counting numberless _tourelles_.

This hydra-towered giant palace was the real guardian of the Paris of mediaevalism, as its successor is indeed the real centre of the Paris of to-day.

The city was but an immense ma.s.s of low-lying gable-roofed houses, whose crowning apex was the sky-line of the Louvre, with that of Tournelles only less prominent to the north, and that of La Cite hard by on the island where the Palais de Justice and Notre Dame now stand.

Before the hand of Francis fell upon the Louvre it was but an isolated stronghold--a combined castle, prison and palace, gloomy, foreboding and surrounded by moats and ramparts almost impa.s.sable. Philippe Auguste built well and made of it an admirable and imposing castle and a place of defence, and a defence it was, and not much more.

For its time it was of great proportions and of an ideal situation from a strategic point of view; far more so than the isolated Palais de la Cite in the middle of the Seine.

Four gates led out from the inner courtyard of the Old Louvre: one to the Seine; one to the south, facing Saint Germain l'Auxerrois; another towards the site of the later Tuileries; and the other to about where the Rue Marengo cuts the Rue de Rivoli of to-day.

With the endors.e.m.e.nt given it by Philippe Auguste the Louvre now became the official residence of the kings of the Capetian race, whereas previously they had dwelt but intermittently at Paris, chiefly in the Palais de la Cite.

The monarch, as if to test the efficiency of his new residence as a stronghold, made a dungeon tower, his greatest constructive achievement until he built the castle of Gisors, and in the tower imprisoned the Comte de Flandre, whom he had taken prisoner at Bouvines. Louis IX (Saint Louis), in his turn, built a s.p.a.cious annex to Philippe Auguste's Louvre, to which he attached his name.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE XIV CENTURY LOUVRE]

Charles V totally changed the aspect of the palace from what it had formerly been--half-fortress, half-residence--and made of it a veritable palace in truth as well as in name, by the addition of numerous dependencies.

Within a tower which was built during the reign of this monarch, called the Tour de la Librairie, he a.s.sembled his royal bibelots and founded what was afterwards known as the Bibliotheque du Louvre, the egg from which was hatched the present magnificently endowed _Bibliotheque Nationale_ in the Rue Richelieu.

It is related that in 1373 the valet-de-chambre of Charles V made a catalogue of the nine hundred and ten volumes which formed this collection, an immense number for the time when it is known that his predecessor, Jean-le-Bon, possessed but seven volumes of history and four devotional books as his entire literary treasure.

This seems to be a bibliographical note of interest which has. .h.i.therto been overlooked. Charles V was evidently a man of taste, or he would not have built so well, though all is hearsay, as not a fragment remains of the work upon which he spent his talents and energies.

From the death of Charles V, in 1364, until 1557 the Louvre by some caprice ceased to be a permanent royal residence. At the latter epoch the ambitious, art-loving Francis I conceived the idea that here was a wealth of scaffolding upon which to graft some of his Renaissance luxuries and, by a process of "restoration" (perhaps an unfortunate word for him to have employed, since it meant the razing of the fine tower built by Charles V), added somewhat to the splendours thereof, though in a fickle moment, as was his wont, allowed a gap of a dozen years to intervene between the outlining of his project and the terrifically earnest work which finally resulted in the magnificent structure accredited to him, though indeed it meant the demolition of the original edifice.

It was at this period that Charles V entered into the ambitious part which Francis was to henceforth play in the Louvre, so perhaps the interruption was pardonable.

CHAPTER VI

THE LOUVRE OF FRANCIS I AND ITS SUCCESSORS

One can attribute the demise of the Old Louvre to the coming of Charles V to Paris in 1539. This royal residence, hastily put in order to receive his august presence, seemed so coldly inconvenient and inhospitable to his host, Francis I, that that monarch decided forthwith upon its complete reconstruction and enlargement. Owing to various combinations of circ.u.mstances the actual work of reconstruction was put off until 1546, thus the New Louvre as properly belongs to the reign of Henri II as to that of his father.

Francis I, more than any other European monarch of his time, or, indeed, before or since, left his mark as an architect of supreme tastes over every edifice with which he came into personal contact. His mania was for building--when it was not for affairs of the heart--and so daring was he that when he could not get an old fabric to remodel he would brave all, as did Louis XIV at Versailles, and erect a dream palace in the midst of a desert. This he did at Chambord in the Sologne. At Paris his difficulties were perhaps no less, but he had his materials and his workmen ready at hand.

Francis's repairs and embellishments to the Old Louvre were by no means perfunctory, but he saw possibilities greater than he was able to perform with the means at hand. He first razed the central tower, or _donjon_, and scarce before the departure of his royal guest, was already dreaming of replacing the entire fabric with another which should bear the same name. One has read of the monarch's thoughts when he was awaiting the coming to Paris of his old enemy in the peninsula; how he regretted the moment when he should sally out to meet him and leave his new-found friend, the d.u.c.h.esse d'etampes, in spite of her pleadings for him to remain by her. All this is mere historic incident, and has little to do with Francis's art instincts and ambitions. He probably thought this very thing himself when he replied to the importunate lady: "d.u.c.h.esse, I must tear myself away without more ado; I go to meet my brother monarch at Amboise on the Loire."

It was Francis I, the pa.s.sionate lover of art, who collected the first pictures which formed the foundation of the present collections of the Musee National du Louvre. He bought many in foreign parts, and many others were brought from Italy by Italian artists, whom he had commanded to the capital: Primaticcio brought with him, upon his arrival, more than a hundred antique statues. These art objects were first a.s.sembled at Fontainebleau and ornamented the apartments of the king. Among them were Da Vinci's "La Joconde" and Raphael's "Holy Family and Saint Michael."

Henri II, Henri IV, and Louis XIII did little to enrich the art collections of the palace, but Louis XIV charged his minister, Colbert, with numerous purchases. In 1661 he bought the fine collection left by Cardinal Mazarin, and ten years later purchased the contents of the celebrated gallery belonging to the banker Jacob of Cologne. The state expended for these acquisitions nearly six hundred thousand _livres_, and received for this sum six hundred paintings and six thousand drawings.

It was at this period that the royal collections were transferred to Paris, a little before the death of Colbert, when they were placed in the galleries of the Louvre; though it was a hundred years later that a national museum was actually created. This was virtually brought about from the fact that the royal collections were transported in a great part to Versailles, only to be returned to Paris in 1750, transferred again to Versailles, and ultimately to be returned to Paris under the sheltering wing of the grand old Louvre.

The Museum of the Louvre, the Museum National et Central des Arts, is the outgrowth of a Decree of the Convention, dated July 27, 1793. It was aided and enriched considerably under Napoleon I, that pa.s.sionate lover of the beautiful, who, none too scrupulously, would even seek to "make a campaign" in order to acquire art works for the museum of his capital.

Many of these abducted art treasures (like the horses of Saint Marc, for instance) were afterwards returned to their original owners, but the nucleus of this unrivaled art museum was chiefly due to the consul and emperor.

As soon as Charles V had left the Louvre demolition was at once begun by Francis, and in 1541 an Italian, Serlio, was bidden prepare a set of plans for the Renaissance glory that was to be. Serlio, refusing, or debating the price, was cast aside for the Frenchman, Lescot, whose plan was adopted.

The work can in no way be said to have suffered by the change of plans, for though Pierre Lescot was as yet a name unknown in the world of architecture his talents were sufficiently great, magistrate and parliamentary counsellor though he was, to give to Paris what has ever been accounted its chief Renaissance glory.

Work was begun at once, a work which was not interrupted by intrigues of court, of love, of war, nor by the deaths of Francis I nor his successor, Henri II.

Although the work was begun in an energetic manner it was 1555 before the western wing was ready for the hand of the sculptors, but from this time on, judging from the interpolated monograms of Charles IX and Henri IV on the south wing, work progressed less hurriedly. The two other constructions, which were to enclose the quadrangle to the north and east, were completed under such circ.u.mstances that there has never been a question as to their period.

For fifteen years the work went on, when suddenly it was abandoned as were the plans of Lescot. A sole wing, that following the Seine and ab.u.t.ting at right angles against the Pavilion de l'Horloge, had resulted.

The sculptures of its south facade, as well as certain of its interior decorations, were entrusted to Jean Goujon (1520-1572), who became a victim of the horrible night of Saint Bartholomew, planned in the same Louvre by the wily Medici.

Henri II often dwelt over Lescot's plans and devices, and, on one occasion, when the poet Ronsard was present, demanded of the architect the meaning of the decorations surrounding a great _oeil-de-boeuf_ window, two kneeling figures, one blowing a trumpet, and the other extending a palm branch. "Victory and Fame," replied Lescot. And, in honour of the architect and his sentiment, Ronsard composed his "Franciade." The detail was actually by Goujon, whose design it was, under the oversight of the master architect. One may see this _chef d'oeuvre_ to-day just above the courtyard portal to the west.

At the death of Henri II, Catherine de Medici came here to live alone, and built the great extension, which stands to-day and joins the Old Louvre with that portion along the banks of the Seine by the double arch, through which swing the autobusses coming from the Rive Gauche with such a Juggernaut grind that fears for the foundation of the palace are ever uppermost in the minds of those responsible for its preservation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Louvre_]

It is in this Catherine de Medici portion of the Louvre (1578) that the present Galerie des Antiques is installed, and which is usually thronged, in season and out, with globe-trotting sight-seers who give seldom a thought to its constructive elegance and its a.s.sociation with the Medici.

With the first years of the reign of Charles IX, there is to be remarked a notable slowness of procedure with regard to the construction of the New Louvre. This was brought about chiefly by the conception of the Tuileries and the work which was actually begun thereon. Soon a gigantic idea radiated from the ambitious mind of Catherine de Medici. In this connection it must be remembered, however, that Catherine, so commonly reviled as "the Italian," was not all Italian; French blood flowed through her veins through that of her mother, Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne. She came first to France, landing at Ma.r.s.eilles, whence she arrived from Leghorn, and forthwith commenced her journey Parisward, arriving finally at the Louvre as the bride of Prince Henri in the guise of a simple, clever girl, though indeed she was twenty years the elder.

Now she dreamed of uniting her chateau of the Tuileries with that of the king by a long, connecting gallery. She put action to the thought and under Pierre (II) Chambiges, a relative of the Chambiges of Fontainebleau and Saint Germain, the Pet.i.te Galerie, a mere means of communication between the two chateaux, and not the least to be likened to a defensive structure, was begun and work thereon carried out between 1564 and 1571, though it remained for Thibaut Metezeau, in 1595-1596, to carry it on a stage further under Henri IV.

This architect introduced the notorious mezzanine, which has so intrigued historians of the Louvre because of the unequal elevations of the various floors, a procedure which was unavoidable save by recourse to a subst.i.tution less to be objected to than the existing fault.

Actually the connection with the Tuileries was made by the prolongation of this gallery by the Ducerceau brothers in 1595. The work existing to-day, but only in its reconstructed form, is the same as that completed by Napoleon III (1863-1868).

Charles IX and Henri III, though making the Louvre their residence, practically had no hand in its embellishment. The former gave his energies and ideals full play in the Saint Bartholomew ma.s.sacres and shot at poor unfortunates who fled beneath the windows of his apartments on the quay-side of the Louvre. This, if not the chief incident of his a.s.sociation with the fabric, is at least the best remembered one. Henri III, too, led a scandalous life within the walls of the Louvre and fled on horseback, smuggled out a back door, as it were, on a certain May evening in 1588, never more to return, for the Dominican monk Jacques Clement killed him with a knife-thrust before he had got beyond Saint Cloud.