Château de Menars
Encyclopedia
Château
A château is a manor house or residence of the lord of the manor or a country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally—and still most frequently—in French-speaking regions...
associated with Madame de Pompadour
Madame de Pompadour
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour was a member of the French court, and was the official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 to her death.-Biography:...
situated on the bank of the Loire at Menars
Menars
Menars is a commune in the Loir-et-Cher department of central France. The Château de Menars, formerly owned by Madame de Pompadour is located here....
(Loir-et-Cher
Loir-et-Cher
Loir-et-Cher is a département in north-central France named after the rivers Loir and Cher.-History:Loir-et-Cher is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790. It was created from parts of the former provinces of Orléanais and...
) in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
History
Towards 1646, Guillaume Charron, adviser of the King and general treasurer of extraordinary levies supplying French forces in the Thirty Years War built his chateau on a superb site overlooking the Loire river at Menars. The original construction consisted of a main building and two pavillons. His son, Jean-Jacques Charron, président à mortierPrésident à mortier
The office of président à mortier was one of the most important legal posts of the French ancien régime. The présidents were principal magistrates of the highest juridical institutions, the parlements, which were the appeal courts....
of the Parlement de Paris
Parlement
Parlements were regional legislative bodies in Ancien Régime France.The political institutions of the Parlement in Ancien Régime France developed out of the previous council of the king, the Conseil du roi or curia regis, and consequently had ancient and customary rights of consultation and...
and brother-in-law of Jean-Baptiste Colbert
Jean-Baptiste Colbert
Jean-Baptiste Colbert was a French politician who served as the Minister of Finances of France from 1665 to 1683 under the rule of King Louis XIV. His relentless hard work and thrift made him an esteemed minister. He achieved a reputation for his work of improving the state of French manufacturing...
, inherited the estate in 1669. He added two unequal wings to the château and enlarged the demesne, which Louis XIV
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...
made a marquis
Marquis
Marquis is a French and Scottish title of nobility. The English equivalent is Marquess, while in German, it is Markgraf.It may also refer to:Persons:...
at in 1676.
In 1760, Menars was acquired by Mme de Pompadour
Madame de Pompadour
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour was a member of the French court, and was the official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 to her death.-Biography:...
, who paid almost 1,000,000 livre
French livre
The livre was the currency of France until 1795. Several different livres existed, some concurrently. The livre was the name of both units of account and coins.-Etymology:...
s in installments and "sold some pearl bracelets to meet the first payment". The king's mistress charged the architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel
Ange-Jacques Gabriel
Ange-Jacques Gabriel was the most prominent French architect of his generation.Born to a Parisian family of architects and initially trained by the royal architect Robert de Cotte and his father , whom he assisted in the creation of the Place Royale at Bordeaux , the younger Gabriel...
with constructing two new wings on both sides of the two pavilions, which replace those built in the seventeenth century. To break the uniformity of the façade, Gabriel covered these two wings with flat roofs "à l'italienne". On each side of the main courtyard, he built two more pavilions: the Pavilion of the Clock on the right, which contains the kitchens and is connected to the château by a subterranean passageway, and the Pavillon of the Meridian on the left, where the caretaker's lodge is found. He also directed important alteration work on the interior of the building.
Bâtiments du Roi
The Bâtiments du Roi was a division of Department of the household of the Kings of France in France under the Ancien Régime. It was responsible for building works at the King's residences in and around Paris.-History:...
. Some new work was then realized under the direction of architect Jacques-Germain Soufflot
Jacques-Germain Soufflot
Jacques Germain Soufflot was a French architect in the international circle that introduced Neoclassicism. His most famous work is the Panthéon, Paris, built from 1755 onwards, originally as a church dedicated to Sainte Genevieve.- Biography :Soufflot was born in Irancy, near Auxerre.In the 1730s...
: the side court, and the main building were doubled and the ground floor covered à l'italienne, while the wings built by Gabriel were equipped with pitched slate roofs à la française.
After 1830, Joseph, prince de Caraman-Chimay
François-Joseph-Philippe de Riquet
François-Joseph-Philippe de Riquet , comte de Caraman was the 16th Prince de Chimay from 24 July 1804 to 1843....
established at the Château de Menars an establishment he called the "prytanée" which aims to bring together young people of different conditions and nationalities to give them a common education. To this effect, he built a vast establishment to the east of the forecourt, which partly survives, as well as a small gas works to provide coal and gas to the college.
Architecture
In spite of the successive additions, the Château de Menars preserves a simplicity of planning and of construction, with a certain austerity reflecting the original spirit of the châteaux of the seventeenth century. The later additions are still perfectly readable, with the central body and its two pavilions between which the parts added by Marigny fit and beyond which the two wings created by Gabriel extend.The corps de logis
Corps de logis
Corps de logis is the architectural term which refers to the principal block of a large, usually classical, mansion or palace. It contains the principal rooms, state apartments and an entry. The grandest and finest rooms are often on the first floor above the ground level: this floor is the...
on the ground floor presents a large gallery nowadays, created in 1912 by combining three spaces. The main building still presents three large parts - the old hall in the center, room with a dais
Dais
Dais is any raised platform located either in or outside of a room or enclosure, often for dignified occupancy, as at the front of a lecture hall or sanctuary....
on the left and salon for company on the right - ornate woodwork designed by Gabriel as well as chimneypieces surmounted with mirrors. The staircase of stone, as well as the unusual dado of mahogany in the library on the first floor, date from the transformations effected by the Marquis de Marigny.
Gardens
Toise
A toise is a unit of measure for length, area and volume originating in pre-revolutionary France. In North America, it was used in colonial French establishments in early New France, French Louisiana , and Quebec...
s and the others of four hundred" whence the view contains the Loire and the surrounding countryside.
During Marigny's tenure an English garden
English garden
The English garden, also called English landscape park , is a style of Landscape garden which emerged in England in the early 18th century, and spread across Europe, replacing the more formal, symmetrical Garden à la française of the 17th century as the principal gardening style of Europe. The...
was created in the Bois-Bas, with a small ravine located to the west, in which Marigny planted thickets of various diverse trees, sheltering cabinets of trellis-work. One of them contained a famous hydraulic machine, conceived by the mechanic Loriot. At the edge of the Loire, a Désert was arranged in an old sand pit and was decorated as an artificial grotto
Grotto
A grotto is any type of natural or artificial cave that is associated with modern, historic or prehistoric use by humans. When it is not an artificial garden feature, a grotto is often a small cave near water and often flooded or liable to flood at high tide...
.
Marigny devoted all his care to the installation of the park for the presentation of its prestigious collection of sculpture. In front of the château, in place of the former parterres, he created a broad terrace. He remade the gardens in the style of his day while commissioning many garden follies
Folly
In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but either suggesting by its appearance some other purpose, or merely so extravagant that it transcends the normal range of garden ornaments or other class of building to which it belongs...
.
At the foot of the château, the "Rotunda of Abundance", built by Soufflot, permits passage from the basement of the château to the interior of the orangery
Orangery
An orangery was a building in the grounds of fashionable residences from the 17th to the 19th centuries and given a classicising architectural form. The orangery was similar to a greenhouse or conservatory...
. It originally housed a statue of Abundance by Lambert-Sigisbert Adam
Lambert-Sigisbert Adam
Lambert-Sigisbert Adam , French sculptor, known as Adam l’aîné to distinguish him from his two sculptor brothers, was born in Nancy, the eldest son of sculptor Jacob-Sigisbert Adam.-Biography:...
the elder, which was replaced with a Louis XV by Nicolas Coustou
Nicolas Coustou
Nicolas Coustou was a French sculptor and academic.Born in Lyon, Coustou was the son of a woodcarver, who gave him his first instruction in art. At eighteen he moved to Paris, to study under C.A...
, which has now been replaced by a copy of Medici Venus by Jean-Jacques Clérion
Jean-Jacques Clérion
Jean-Jacques Clérion was a French sculptor who worked mainly for King Louis XIV.Clérion was born in either Aix-en-Provence or Trets. For much of his career he worked on the Chateau de Versailles, including many of the famous garden sculptures, such as the "Apollo Fountain"...
.
Towards the east, the terrace ends in a roundabout where Marigny built a kiosk in the Chinese manner designed by Charles De Wailly
Charles De Wailly
Charles De Wailly was a French architect and urbanist, and furniture designer, one of the principals in the Neoclassical revival of the Antique. His major work was the Théâtre de l'Odéon for the Comédie-Française...
. Between the terrace and the road, are ordered a series of hedges, trellises, outdoor rooms of greenery as well as a kitchen garden. Below, around a small fountain, Soufflot created a magnificent nymphaeum
Nymphaeum
A nymphaeum or nymphaion , in ancient Greece and Rome, was a monument consecrated to the nymphs, especially those of springs....
with Serlian windows on the façade and, inside, the use of the Doric order
Doric order
The Doric order was one of the three orders or organizational systems of ancient Greek or classical architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian.-History:...
reveals an Italianate inspiration.