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 Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2011 3:53 pm Post subject: Ronsard captured |
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Catherine loved gardens and often conducted business in them.[81] At Chenonceau, she added waterfalls, menageries, and aviaries, laid out three parks, and planted mulberry trees for silkworms.[63] Jacques Androuet du Cerceau made drawings of a grandiose scheme for Chenonceau. A trapezoidal lower court leads to a forecourt of semicircular atria joined to two halls that flank the original house.[82] These drawings may not be a reliable record of Bullant’s plans. Du Cerceau "sometimes inserted in his book designs embodying ideas which he himself would have liked to see carried out rather than those of the actual designer of the building in question".[83]
Jacques Androuet du Cerceau was a favourite architect of Catherine's. Like Bullant, he became a more fantastical designer with time.[84] Nothing he built himself, however, has survived. He is known instead for his engravings of the leading architectural schemes of the day, including Saint-Maur, the Tuileries, and Chenonceau.[82] In 1576 and 1579, he produced the two-volume Les Plus Excellents Bastiments de France, a beautiful publication dedicated to Catherine.[85] His work is an invaluable record of buildings that were never finished or were later substantially altered.[86]
[edit] End of the dynasty
Catherine spent ruinous sums of money on buildings at a time of plague, famine, and economic hardship in France. [87] As the country slipped deeper into anarchy, her plans grew ever more ambitious.[88] Yet the Valois monarchy was crippled by debt and its moral authority was in steep decline. The popular view condemned Catherine's building schemes as obscenely extravagant. This was especially true in Paris, where the parlement was often asked to contribute to her costs.
Ronsard captured the mood in a poem:
The queen must cease building,
Her lime must stop swallowing our wealth...
Painters, masons, engravers, stone-carvers
Drain the treasury with their deceits.
Of what use is her Tuileries to us?
Of none, Moreau; it is but vanity.
It will be deserted within a hundred years.[8gold price predictions
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