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Joined: 13 Mar 2011
Posts: 198
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 Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2011 3:49 pm Post subject: Christian King |
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After the death of Henry II, Catherine abandoned the palace of the Tournelles, where Henry had lain after a lance fatally pierced his eye and brain in a joust.[46] To replace the Tournelles, she decided in 1563 to build herself a new Paris residence on the site of some old tile kilns or tuileries. The site was close to the congested Louvre, where she kept her household. The grounds extended along the banks of the Seine and afforded a view of the countryside to the south and west.[47] The Tuileries was the first palace that Catherine had planned from the ground up. It was to grow into the largest royal building project of the last quarter of the sixteenth century in western Europe. Her massive building schemes would have transformed western Paris, as seen from the river, into a monumental complex.[48]
Detail of the court side of the Tuileries, designed by Philibert de l'Orme, drawn by Jacques Androuet du Cerceau
To design the new palace, Catherine brought back Philibert de l'Orme from disgrace. This arrogant genius had been sacked as superintendent of royal buildings at the end of Henry II's reign, after making too many enemies.[49] De l'Orme mentioned the project in his treatises on architecture, but his ideas are not fully known. It appears from the small amount of work carried out that his plans for the Tuileries departed from his known principles. De l'Orme is said to have "taught France the classical style—lucid, rational and regular".[50] He notes, however, that in this case he added rich materials and ornaments to please the queen.[51] The plans therefore include a decorative element that looks forward to Bullant's later work and to a less classical style of architecture.[52]
For the pilasters of Catherine's palace, de l’Orme chose the Ionic order, which he considered a feminine form:
I will not go on to other matters without pointing out to you that I chose the present Ionic order, from amongst all others, in order to ornament and to give lustre to the palace, which Her Majesty the Queen, mother of the most Christian King Charles IX, today is having built at Paris . . .The other reason why I wanted to use and to show the Ionic order properly, on the palace of Her Majesty the Queen, is because it is feminine and was devised according to the proportions and beauties of women and goddesses, as was the Doric to those of men, which is what the ancients have told me: for, when they decided to build a temple to a god, they used the Doric, and to a goddess, the Ionic. Yet all architects have not followed that [principle], shown in Vitruvius's text . . . accordingly I have made use, at the palace of Her Majesty the Queen, of the Ionic order, on the view that it is delicate and of greater beauty than the Doric, and more ornamented and enriched with distinctive featuresadidas klokker
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