Royal Palaces and Parks of France

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 circumstances 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 Duchesse 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: "Duchesse, 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 passionate 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 assembled 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 passionate 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 circumstances 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 abutting 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.

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 association 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 Marseilles, 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 Petite 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.