Academic literature on the topic 'Fontainebleau palace'

In this paper I trace the emergence, development, and demise of a hitherto largely ignored but peculiarly French architectural type, the domed entry pavilion. The essential features of the Porte Dauphine at Fontainebleau are traced to the elder du Cerceau's projects for portals at Verneuil I and Charleval combined with suggestions drawn from temporary structures erected for royal entries, particularly that of Henry IV into Rouen. I then propose that the formal logic of the Porte Dauphine compels one to interpret it as an architectural proclamation of Henry's emerging claim to royal absolutism, an assertion backed contextually by a close scrutiny of the sociopolitical situation at the time of its inception and erection. This new monarchic image of power finds its aesthetic maturity in the better-known domed entry pavilion of the Luxembourg Palace. This pavilion in turn is a fusion of the Porte Dauphine with alternative formal possibilities found at Verneuil II and Montceaux, the latter already an important seat of the Luxembourg's patron and Henry's consort, Marie de'Medici. In a possible challenge-and-response series, the duchess of Longueville's château of Coulommiers, its domed entry based on the Valois mausoleum, had immediately preceded the Luxembourg. Coulommiers in turn proved a foil for the immense country seat of Richelieu, itself a foil for the project for Blois promoted by Marie's younger son. Thirty years later the architect of Blois, François Mansart, sought to revive the motif of the domed entry with all of its layers of significance in his masterful designs for the east façade of the Louvre. Formally and politically such a revival was not possible in the age of Louis XIV.

Activité prisée des rois de France depuis l'époque médiévale, la chasse était devenue pour les derniers Bourbons plus une passion dévorante qu'une simple distraction. Louis XV et Louis XVI furent critiqués par l'opinion publique naissante, qui considérait que leurs chasses onéreuses les éloignaient du gouvernement. Après la chute de la monarchie, les chasses royales disparurent. Elles furent remises au goût du jour par Napoléon Ier, soucieux de s'approprier les apparences de la légitimité monarchique. Le maréchal Berthier fut ainsi nommé Grand veneur en 1804. Grâce à lui, Napoléon put faire de ses chasses un instrument politique puissant, une distraction de Cour prisée, le tout avec une économie substantielle de moyens. La Restauration, au lieu de revenir à l'organisation d'Ancien Régime, choisit de conserver l'équipage de chasse et l'administration mise en place pour Napoléon, qui fonctionnèrent jusqu'en 1830. Naquit ainsi le paradoxe d'une Restauration affichant, à la suite de l'Empire, la volonté de renouer avec la tradition monarchique, mais cela grâce à un équipage formé pour Napoléon. C'est cette continuité, humaine, budgétaire, mais aussi politique et symbolique qu'il convient d'étudier au travers des éléments constitutifs des chasses : une implantation autour de Paris permettant une circulation de la Cour autour de différentes résidences de chasse, une pratique régulière destinée à la distraction du souverain et de ses proches, des invitations de personnages politiquement importants, qui donnent à certains jours de chasse bien précis une résonance particulière. Autant d'aspects qui se retrouvent dans les sources : archives, journaux, mémoires, œuvres d'art
Hunting had always been the privileged activity of kings since the mediaeval period, and for the later Bourbons it became a consuming passion. Indeed Louis XV and Louis XVI were to be criticized by a proto public opinion ; it was thought that hunts were expensive and that they distracted the rulers from the duties of government. The royal hunts disappeared with the fall of the monarchy. But Napoleon, with his desire to appropriate the outward show of monarchical legitimacy, brought it back. Marshal Berthier was appointed Grand veneur and given the task of organizing the imperial hunt in exactly the same way as it had been done under Louis XVI. Napoleon made the hunts a powerful political instrument and a Court indulgence whilst at the same time making considerable savings. The Restoration in fact chose not to revive Ancien Régime customs but preserved the Napoleonic hunting administration. This gave rise to the paradox of a Restoration attempting to reinvigorate monarchical traditions but using structures created by Napoleon. This is that strong continuity, human, budgetary, but also political and symbolic, inside a geographical field concentrated around Paris that made it possible for the Court to circulate around the different imperial hunting residences, to dedicate certain days to the hunts, and to invite some important political figures. All of these aspects are to be found in the sources : archives, newspapers, autobiographies, artworks

Activité prisée des rois de France depuis l'époque médiévale, la chasse était devenue pour les derniers Bourbons plus une passion dévorante qu'une simple distraction. Louis XV et Louis XVI furent critiqués par l'opinion publique naissante, qui considérait que leurs chasses onéreuses les éloignaient du gouvernement. Après la chute de la monarchie, les chasses royales disparurent. Elles furent remises au goût du jour par Napoléon Ier, soucieux de s'approprier les apparences de la légitimité monarchique. Le maréchal Berthier fut ainsi nommé Grand veneur en 1804. Grâce à lui, Napoléon put faire de ses chasses un instrument politique puissant, une distraction de Cour prisée, le tout avec une économie substantielle de moyens. La Restauration, au lieu de revenir à l'organisation d'Ancien Régime, choisit de conserver l'équipage de chasse et l'administration mise en place pour Napoléon, qui fonctionnèrent jusqu'en 1830. Naquit ainsi le paradoxe d'une Restauration affichant, à la suite de l'Empire, la volonté de renouer avec la tradition monarchique, mais cela grâce à un équipage formé pour Napoléon. C'est cette continuité, humaine, budgétaire, mais aussi politique et symbolique qu'il convient d'étudier au travers des éléments constitutifs des chasses : une implantation autour de Paris permettant une circulation de la Cour autour de différentes résidences de chasse, une pratique régulière destinée à la distraction du souverain et de ses proches, des invitations de personnages politiquement importants, qui donnent à certains jours de chasse bien précis une résonance particulière. Autant d'aspects qui se retrouvent dans les sources : archives, journaux, mémoires, œuvres d'art
Hunting had always been the privileged activity of kings since the mediaeval period, and for the later Bourbons it became a consuming passion. Indeed Louis XV and Louis XVI were to be criticized by a proto public opinion ; it was thought that hunts were expensive and that they distracted the rulers from the duties of government. The royal hunts disappeared with the fall of the monarchy. But Napoleon, with his desire to appropriate the outward show of monarchical legitimacy, brought it back. Marshal Berthier was appointed Grand veneur and given the task of organizing the imperial hunt in exactly the same way as it had been done under Louis XVI. Napoleon made the hunts a powerful political instrument and a Court indulgence whilst at the same time making considerable savings. The Restoration in fact chose not to revive Ancien Régime customs but preserved the Napoleonic hunting administration. This gave rise to the paradox of a Restoration attempting to reinvigorate monarchical traditions but using structures created by Napoleon. This is that strong continuity, human, budgetary, but also political and symbolic, inside a geographical field concentrated around Paris that made it possible for the Court to circulate around the different imperial hunting residences, to dedicate certain days to the hunts, and to invite some important political figures. All of these aspects are to be found in the sources : archives, newspapers, autobiographies, artworks

This article focuses on the last century and a half of the Ancien Régime. However, for art historians, one of the first and most important events in the history of the attempt to transfer the cultural sophistication of the Italian Renaissance courts to France, and in doing so to create a powerful sense of France as culture-state, occurred at an earlier moment with the policy of Francis I, first in the Loire valley and then, most intensely, at the hunting lodge/palace of Fontainebleau (1528 and after). At Fontainebleau, Francis enticed significant artists away from Italy and created the kind of complex architectural, decorative, and iconographic ensembles that he and his entourage knew from the grand courts of Renaissance Florence, thus setting a pattern for complex cultural–political intervention.

In the early 1540s, King Francis I commissioned Benvenuto Cellini to design a bronze portal for the Porte Dorée at Fontainebleau. It consisted of a tympanum depicting the ‘Nymph of Fontainebleau’ in a forest setting. The imagery revived the foundation myth of Fontainebleau as a bountiful hunting ground and water source. Although it was never completed, Cellini’s design presented the forest beyond the doors as a recreational space for the varied motions of the hunting ritual and the palace behind the doors as a space for the more choreographed ambulatory motion of guided diplomatic tours. This essay explores the complementarity in the staging of interior and exterior as zones of visual and somatic pleasure.

Abstract There is not a lot of snow in Florence, but in the winter of 1406 there was enough to build snowmen. One of the figures made on this occasion was a gigantic Hercules almost twenty feet high, armed with a stout shield and a heavy club, and accompanied by a fierce lion. The Florentines knew who Hercules was because he had been on a seal of the city since 1281. And if they looked carefully they would have seen his exploits carved in the right jamb of the Porta della Mandorla of the cathedral, completed the previous year. Some of the masons from the cathedral may have helped. It was not just children who made snowmen. In 1494, Michelangelo was commissioned to build a snowman in the courtyard of the Medici palace. Perhaps this was a Hercules too, for the artist’s biographers both mention it in connection with a marble Hercules he had made a couple of years earlier. Then, grieving at the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Michelangelo had spontaneously started work on a spare block of marble and carved a stone giant to take the place of his dead patron. It has since disappeared, lost at Fontainebleau. Like the snowmen, it seems to have been made without thought of the future, just for the sake of making something out of materials that were ready to hand. In the fifteenth century, Hercules often appears like this – unexpectedly, made out of whatever material was locally available. Yet spontaneous actions are often the most heavily determined. The Florentines usually made snow lions rather than snowmen (in 1406 there had been a whole pride of them roaming the streets), but that was not an accident either, for the lion, the marzocco, was also a symbol of the Republic. Even so, it is hard to tell if the snowHercules of 1406 was, strictly speaking, a civic sculpture. That same year the Chancellor of Florence, Coluccio Salutati, died, leaving behind the manuscript of De laboribus Herculis. He had been prompted to write not by local concerns but by a friend who had asked how Hercules could kill his own family in one of Seneca’s plays and then go to Olympus as a god in the next.