Gardens of the French Renaissance
Encyclopedia
Italian Renaissance garden
The Italian Renaissance garden was a new style of garden which emerged in the late 15th century at villas in Rome and Florence, inspired by classical ideals of order and beauty, and intended for the pleasure of the view of the garden and the landscape beyond, for contemplation, and for the...
, particularly the gardens of Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
and Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. King Charles VIII
Charles VIII of France
Charles VIII, called the Affable, , was King of France from 1483 to his death in 1498. Charles was a member of the House of Valois...
and his nobles brought the style back to France after their campaign in Italy in 1495. They reached their peak in the gardens of the royal chateau at Fontainebleau
Fontainebleau
Fontainebleau is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the arrondissement of Fontainebleau...
, the Château de Blois
Château de Blois
The Royal Château de Blois is located in the Loir-et-Cher département in the Loire Valley, in France, in the center of the city of Blois. The residence of several French kings, it is also the place where Joan of Arc went in 1429 to be blessed by the Archbishop of Reims before departing with her...
, the Château d'Amboise
Château d'Amboise
The royal Château at Amboise is a château located in Amboise, in the Indre-et-Loire département of the Loire Valley in France.-Origins and royal residence:...
, and the Château de Chenonceau
Château de Chenonceau
The Château de Chenonceau is a manor house near the small village of Chenonceaux, in the Indre-et-Loire département of the Loire Valley in France. It was built on the site of an old mill on the River Cher, sometime before its first mention in writing in the 11th century...
. . These gardens were characterized by symmetrical and geometric planting beds or parterre
Parterre
A parterre is a formal garden construction on a level surface consisting of planting beds, edged in stone or tightly clipped hedging, and gravel paths arranged to form a pleasing, usually symmetrical pattern. Parterres need not have any flowers at all...
s; plants in pots; paths of gravel and sand; terraces; stairways and ramps; moving water in the form of canals, cascades
Waterfall
A waterfall is a place where flowing water rapidly drops in elevation as it flows over a steep region or a cliff.-Formation:Waterfalls are commonly formed when a river is young. At these times the channel is often narrow and deep. When the river courses over resistant bedrock, erosion happens...
and monumental fountains, and extensive use of 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...
es, labyrinth
Labyrinth
In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos...
s and statues of mythological figures. They became an extension of the chateaux that they surrounded, and were designed to illustrate the Renaissance ideals of measure and proportion, and to remind viewers of the virtues of Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
. By the middle of the 17th century, during the reign of Louis XIV, the style evolved into the grander and more formal Garden à la française
Garden à la française
The French formal garden, also called jardin à la française, is a style of garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order over nature. It reached its apogee in the 17th century with the creation of the Gardens of Versailles, designed for Louis XIV by the landscape architect André Le...
.
Italian influence
Charles V of France
Charles V , called the Wise, was King of France from 1364 to his death in 1380 and a member of the House of Valois...
of France ordered a French translation in 1373, and the new Italian style began to appear in France.
Another influential writer was Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), who in 1450 wrote a tract, De re aedificatoria for Lorenzo de Medici, he used the geometric principles of Vitruvius
Vitruvius
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. He is best known as the author of the multi-volume work De Architectura ....
to design building facades and gardens. He suggested that the house should look over the garden, and that the garden should have "porticos for giving shade, cradles where vines grow on columns of marble, and there should be vases and even amusing statues, provided that they are not obscene."
In his design of the gardens of the Belvedere
Cortile del Belvedere
The Cortile del Belvedere, the Belvedere courtyard, designed by Donato Bramante from 1506 onwards, was a major architectural work of the High Renaissance at the Vatican Palace in Rome; its concept and details reverberating in courtyard design, formalized piazzas and garden plans throughout Western...
in Rome, the architect Bramante (1444–1544) introduced the idea of perspective, using a long axis perpendicular to the palace, along which he placed parterres and fountains. This became a central feature of Renaissance gardens.
A popular novel by the monk Francesco Colonna
Francesco Colonna
Francesco Colonna was an Italian Dominican priest and monk who was credited with the authorship of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by an acrostic in the text.He lived in Venice, and preached at St. Mark's Cathedral...
, published in Venice in 1499, called The Dream of Poliphile, an allegorical journey by a traveler, Poliphile, to fantastic lands in search of his love, Polia, had an enormous influence upon gardens of the time. The ideas of a "garden-island" in a lake, such as the one in the Boboli Gardens in Florence, of statues of giants coming out of earth in the Park of the villa de Pratolino, and the theme of labyrinth
Labyrinth
In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos...
were all taken from the imaginary voyages of Poliphile. All these elements were to appear in French Renaissance gardens.
The Gardens of the Chateau d'Amboise, Blois, Gaillon and Bury
Charles VIII of France
Charles VIII, called the Affable, , was King of France from 1483 to his death in 1498. Charles was a member of the House of Valois...
invaded the kingdom of Naples, and he and his court saw the luxury of the palaces and gardens in Italy. When he returned to France, he brought back with him a number of Italian artists, including priest and garden designer from Naples named Pacello da Mercogliano
Pacello da Mercogliano
Pacello da Mercogliano was a designer of gardens and hydraulic engineer, who is documented under Charles VIII at Amboise with the responsibility of bringing water from the Loire up to the garden parterres laid out to one side of the château...
. Charles ordered the addition of Renaissance features to his royal residence of the chateau d'Amboise on the banks of the Loire. Mercogliano extended the terrace of the chateau, surrounded it by galleries, and laid out four parterres around a central pavilion.
At the beginning of the 16th century, King Francois I, who had also visited Italy and had met Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
, built gardens in the new style on three terraces of different levels bordered by the old walls of his Château de Blois
Château de Blois
The Royal Château de Blois is located in the Loir-et-Cher département in the Loire Valley, in France, in the center of the city of Blois. The residence of several French kings, it is also the place where Joan of Arc went in 1429 to be blessed by the Archbishop of Reims before departing with her...
. Besides the parterres of flowers, the gardens produced a wide variety of vegetables and fruits, including orange and lemon trees in boxes, which were taken indoors in winter. The building that sheltered them, still standing, was the first orangerie in France. The gardens were on the site of the present-day Place Victor Hugo and the site of the railways station. The last vestiges of the garden were destroyed in 1890 by the construction of the Avenue Victor Hugo.
At about the same time, Mercogliano designed gardens for the Chateau de Gaillon
Château de Gaillon
The Château de Gaillon is a renaissance castle located in Gaillon, Haute-Normandie region of France.-History:The somewhat battered and denuded Château de Gaillon, begun in 1502 on ancient foundationswas the summer archiepiscopal residence of Georges d'Amboise, Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen; he ...
, owned by Cardinal Georges d'Amboise
Georges d'Amboise
Georges d'Amboise was a French Roman Catholic cardinal and minister of state. He belonged to the house of Amboise, a noble family possessed of considerable influence: of his nine brothers, four were bishops. His father, Pierre d'Amboise, seigneur de Chaumont, was chamberlain to Charles VII and...
, a Minister of King Henry IV, who had also spent time in Italy. The gardens, built on different levels below the old medieval chateau, were planted in parterres of flowers and fruit trees. The parterre at the entrance of the garden featured the coat of arms of France in flowers. Bushes were trimmed into the shapes of men on horseback, ships, and birds. It was also decorated with imposing fountains of marble.
Francis I of France
Francis I was King of France from 1515 until his death. During his reign, huge cultural changes took place in France and he has been called France's original Renaissance monarch...
. Robertet had visited the villa Medici in at Fiesole, and waned to reproduce the terraced gardens he saw there. The chateau, departing from the traditional design of castles, was integrated closely with its gardens. Visitors passed through a square garden inside the castle and out into two geometric gardens behind the chateau, decorated with fountains and surrounded by a wooden gallery. The axis went from the entrance to the chapel, at the far end of the garden. Like Italian Renaissance gardens, the gardens of Bury were elocated on the edge of a hill, with a fine view of the forest of Blois. In the center of the court of the chateau, Robertet placed a bronze copy of Michelangelo's David, which had been given to him by the Republic of Florence
Republic of Florence
The Republic of Florence , or the Florentine Republic, was a city-state that was centered on the city of Florence, located in modern Tuscany, Italy. The republic was founded in 1115, when the Florentine people rebelled against the Margraviate of Tuscany upon Margravine Matilda's death. The...
.
Gardens of Fontainebleau
Château de Fontainebleau
The Palace of Fontainebleau, located 55 kilometres from the centre of Paris, is one of the largest French royal châteaux. The palace as it is today is the work of many French monarchs, building on an early 16th century structure of Francis I. The building is arranged around a series of courtyards...
, located in forest which had been the hunting preserve of the Capetian
Capetian
Capetian is an adjective, used to describe either:* The House of Capet, also called the Direct Capetians – the ruling family of France between 987 and 1328* The Capetian dynasty, a term applied to all direct descendants of Hugh Capet...
Kings of France, were created by Franci I beginning in 1528. The garden featured fountains, parterres, a forest of pine trees brought from Provence
Provence
Provence ; Provençal: Provença in classical norm or Prouvènço in Mistralian norm) is a region of south eastern France on the Mediterranean adjacent to Italy. It is part of the administrative région of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur...
and the first 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...
in France in 1541. Catherine de Medici ordered copies in bronze of the statues which decorated the Belvedere
Cortile del Belvedere
The Cortile del Belvedere, the Belvedere courtyard, designed by Donato Bramante from 1506 onwards, was a major architectural work of the High Renaissance at the Vatican Palace in Rome; its concept and details reverberating in courtyard design, formalized piazzas and garden plans throughout Western...
in Rome. A statue of Hercules
Hercules
Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...
in repose by Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
decorated the garden of the lake. In 1594 Henry IV
Henry IV of France
Henry IV , Henri-Quatre, was King of France from 1589 to 1610 and King of Navarre from 1572 to 1610. He was the first monarch of the Bourbon branch of the Capetian dynasty in France....
added a small island in the lake connected to the court of fountains by a bridge.
The Gardens of Chenonceau
The Chateau de ChenonceauChâteau de Chenonceau
The Château de Chenonceau is a manor house near the small village of Chenonceaux, in the Indre-et-Loire département of the Loire Valley in France. It was built on the site of an old mill on the River Cher, sometime before its first mention in writing in the 11th century...
had two separate gardens, the first created in 1551 for Diane de Poitiers
Diane de Poitiers
Diane de Poitiers was a French noblewoman and a prominent courtier at the courts of kings Francis I and his son, Henry II of France. She became notorious as the latter's favourite mistress...
, the favorite of King Henry II, with a large parterre and a jet of water, and a second, smaller garden created for Catherine de Medici in 1560, on a terrace raised above the river Cher, divided into compartments, with a basin in the center.
Gardens of Saint-Germaine-en-Laye
Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye
The Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a royal palace in the commune of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in the département of Yvelines, about 19 km west of Paris, France. Today, it houses the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale ....
marked the beginning of the transition to a new style, which would be called the Garden a la francaise
Garden à la française
The French formal garden, also called jardin à la française, is a style of garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order over nature. It reached its apogee in the 17th century with the creation of the Gardens of Versailles, designed for Louis XIV by the landscape architect André Le...
. The garden was laid out in 1595 by royal gardener Charles Mollet for Henry IV.
Chronology of the French Renaissance Garden
- Château d'AmboiseChâteau d'AmboiseThe royal Château at Amboise is a château located in Amboise, in the Indre-et-Loire département of the Loire Valley in France.-Origins and royal residence:...
(1495) - Château de BloisChâteau de BloisThe Royal Château de Blois is located in the Loir-et-Cher département in the Loire Valley, in France, in the center of the city of Blois. The residence of several French kings, it is also the place where Joan of Arc went in 1429 to be blessed by the Archbishop of Reims before departing with her...
(1499) - (gardens were destroyed in the 19th century.) - Château de GaillonChâteau de GaillonThe Château de Gaillon is a renaissance castle located in Gaillon, Haute-Normandie region of France.-History:The somewhat battered and denuded Château de Gaillon, begun in 1502 on ancient foundationswas the summer archiepiscopal residence of Georges d'Amboise, Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen; he ...
(1502 to 1550) - Château de Bury-en-Blesois (1511–1520)
- Château de ChenonceauChâteau de ChenonceauThe Château de Chenonceau is a manor house near the small village of Chenonceaux, in the Indre-et-Loire département of the Loire Valley in France. It was built on the site of an old mill on the River Cher, sometime before its first mention in writing in the 11th century...
, (1515–1589) gardens of Diane De Poitiers (1551) and Catherine de Medici (1560) - Château de ChantillyChâteau de ChantillyThe Château de Chantilly is a historic château located in the town of Chantilly, France. It comprises two attached buildings; the Grand Château, destroyed during the French Revolution and rebuilt in the 1870s, and the Petit Château which was built around 1560 for Anne de Montmorency...
(1524) - Château de FontainebleauChâteau de FontainebleauThe Palace of Fontainebleau, located 55 kilometres from the centre of Paris, is one of the largest French royal châteaux. The palace as it is today is the work of many French monarchs, building on an early 16th century structure of Francis I. The building is arranged around a series of courtyards...
(1528-1447) - Château de Saint-Maur (1536)
- Château d'AnetChâteau d'AnetThe Château d'Anet is a château near Dreux, France, built by Philibert de l'Orme from 1547 to 1552 for Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of Henry II of France...
(1536) - Château de Saint-Germain-en-LayeChâteau de Saint-Germain-en-LayeThe Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a royal palace in the commune of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in the département of Yvelines, about 19 km west of Paris, France. Today, it houses the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale ....
(1539–1547) -old Chateau and gardens - Château de VillandryChâteau de VillandryThe Château de Villandry is a castle-palace located in Villandry, in the département of Indre-et-Loire, France.The lands where an ancient fortress once stood were known as Colombier until the 17th century...
(1536) turned into an English landscape garden in 19th century and recreated beginning in 1906 - Chateau d'AnetChâteau d'AnetThe Château d'Anet is a château near Dreux, France, built by Philibert de l'Orme from 1547 to 1552 for Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of Henry II of France...
(1546–1559) - Montceaux-les-Maux (1549–1560)
- Château de ValleryChâteau de ValleryThe Early Renaissance French Château de Vallery, in Vallery, in the département of Yonne in the Burgundy region of France, was built in 1548 for Jacques d'Albon de Saint-André, marquis de Fronsac, a court favorite of Henri II and maréchal de France. It was never completed, and what remains of it...
(1550) - La Bastie d'Urfe (1551)
- DampierreDampierreDampierre is the name of several communes in France:*Dampierre, Aube, in the Aube département*Dampierre, Calvados, in the Calvados département*Dampierre, Haute-Marne, in the Haute-Marne département*Dampierre, Jura, in the Jura département...
(1552–1600) - Château de Saint-Germain-en-LayeChâteau de Saint-Germain-en-LayeThe Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a royal palace in the commune of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in the département of Yvelines, about 19 km west of Paris, France. Today, it houses the Musée d'Archéologie Nationale ....
(1539–1547) -new Chateau and terraces - Château de Charleval (1560)
- Tuileries PalaceTuileries PalaceThe Tuileries Palace was a royal palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the River Seine until 1871, when it was destroyed in the upheaval during the suppression of the Paris Commune...
and Gardens (1564–1593) - Château de Verneuil (1565)
- Château d'AnetChâteau d'AnetThe Château d'Anet is a château near Dreux, France, built by Philibert de l'Orme from 1547 to 1552 for Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of Henry II of France...
(1582) New Gardens. - Château de FontainebleauChâteau de FontainebleauThe Palace of Fontainebleau, located 55 kilometres from the centre of Paris, is one of the largest French royal châteaux. The palace as it is today is the work of many French monarchs, building on an early 16th century structure of Francis I. The building is arranged around a series of courtyards...
(1594–1609) New gardens by Claude Mollet - Tuileries Gardens in Paris (1599) by Claude Mollet, Delorme, Duperac
- Luxembourg Gardens in Paris (1612–1630)
Modern Versions of the French Renaissance Garden
- Garden of the Château d'AmblevilleChâteau d'AmblevilleThe Château d'Ambleville is a French Renaissance style château located within the regional park of Vexin, in the Val d'Oise Department of France...