Why He Should
Have Built A Palace In Those Sandy Plains Will Ever
Remain An Unanswered Question, For Kings Have Never
Been Obliged To Give Reasons.
In addition to the fact
that the country was rich in game and that Francis
was a passionate hunter,
It is suggested by M. de la
Saussaye, the author of the very complete little history
of Chambord which you may buy at the bookseller's
at Blois, that he was govemed in his choice of the
site by the accident of a charming woman having
formerly lived there. The Comtesse de Thoury had
a manor in the neighborhood, and the Comtesse de
Thoury had been the object of a youthful passion on
the part of the most susceptible of princes before his
accession to the throne. This great pile was reared,
therefore, according to M. de la Saussaye, as a _souvenir
de premieres amours!_ It is certainly a very massive
memento; and if these tender passages were propor-
tionate to the building that commemorates them, they
were tender indeed. There has been much discus-
sion as to the architect employed by Francis I., and
the honor of having designed this splendid residence
has been claimed for several of the Italian artists who
early in the sixteenth century came to seek patronage
in France. It seems well established to-day, however,
that Chambord was the work neither of Primaticcio,
of Vignola, nor of Il Rosso, all of whom have left
some trace of their sojourn in France; but of an
obscure yet very complete genius, Pierre Nepveu,
known as Pierre Trinqueau, who is designated in the
papers which preserve in some degree the history of
the origin of the edifice, as the _maistre de l'oeuvre de
maconnerie._ Behind this modest title, apparently, we
must recognize one of the most original talents of
the French Renaissance; and it is a proof of the vigor
of the artistic life of that period that, brilliant pro-
duction being everywhere abundant, an artist of so
high a value should not have been treated by his con-
temporaries as a celebrity. We manage things very
differently to-day.
The immediate successors of Francis I. continued
to visit, Chambord; but it was neglected by Henry IV.,
and was never afterwards a favorite residence of any
French king. Louis XIV. appeared there on several
occasions, and the apparition was characteristically
brilliant; but Chambord could not long detain a
monarch who had gone to the expense of creating a
Versailles ten miles from Paris. With Versailles, Fon-
tainebleau, Saint-Germain, and Saint-Cloud within easy
reach of their capital, the later French sovereigns had
little reason to take the air in the dreariest province
of their kingdom. Chambord therefore suffered from
royal indifference, though in the last century a use
was found for its deserted halls. In 1725 it was oc-
cupied by the luckless Stanislaus Leszczynski, who
spent the greater part of his life in being elected
King of Poland and being ousted from his throne,
and who, at this time a refugee in France, had found
a compensation for some of his misfortunes in marry-
ing his daughter to Louis XV.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 22 of 145
Words from 10964 to 11492
of 75796
