1.
Diane de Poitiers
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Diane de Poitiers was a French noblewoman and a prominent courtier at the courts of king Francis I and his son, King Henry II of France. She became notorious as King Henrys favourite, because of this, she wielded much influence and power at the French Court, which continued until Henry was mortally wounded in a tournament accident. It was during this tournament that his lance wore her favour rather than his wifes, the subject of paintings by François Clouet as well other anonymous painters, Diane was also immortalised in a statue by Jean Goujon. She was born the daughter of Jean de Poitiers, Seigneur de Saint Vallier and Jeanne de Batarnay. When still a girl, she was briefly in the retinue of Anne de Beaujeu, eldest sister of King Charles VIII, Diane was educated according to the principles of Renaissance humanism, in music, hunting, manners, languages, the art of conversation, and dancing. She learned how to read Latin and Greek, and became a hunter and sportswoman. At the age of 15, she married Louis de Brézé, seigneur dAnet and he was a grandson of King Charles VII who served as a courtier of King Francis I. She bore him two daughters, Françoise de Brézé and Louise de Brézé, in 1524, her father Jean, was accused of treason as an accomplice of the rebellious Connétable de Bourbon. His death sentence was commuted, but he would be confined to prison until the Treaty of Madrid in 1526. When Louis de Brézé died in 1531 in Anet, Diane adopted the habit of wearing the colours of black and white, her personal trademark for the rest of her life. These were among the permitted colours of mourning, which as a widow she was required to wear and they played on her name, Diane, which derived from Diana, the name of the beautiful Roman goddess of the moon. Her keen interest in matters and legal shrewdness became apparent for the first time during this period. She retained her late husbands emoluments as governor and grand-sénéchal of Normandy and she challenged in court, the obligation to return Louis de Brézés appanages to the royal domain. The king allowed her to enjoy the income until the status of those lands has been totally clarified. When still the wife of Louis de Brézé, she became lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude of France, after the queen died, she served in the same capacity to Louise of Savoy, then Eleanor of Austria. After the capture of Francis I by Charles Vs troops during the battle of Pavia, because the ransom was not paid in time, the two boys had to spend nearly four years isolated in a bleak castle, facing an uncertain future. Henry found solace by reading the knight-errantry tale Amadis de Gaula, the experience may account for the strong impression that Diane made on him, as the very embodiment of the ideal gentlewomen he read about in Amadis. As his mother was dead, Diane gave him the farewell kiss when he was sent to Spain
2.
Medici Fountain
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The Medici Fountain is a monumental fountain in the Jardin du Luxembourg in the 6th arrondissement in Paris. It was built in about 1630 by Marie de Medici, the widow of King Henry IV of France and it was moved to its present location and extensively rebuilt in 1864-66. The new palace was modeled after the Palazzo Pitti in her native Florence, the Palace was the work of architect Salomon de Brosse, but the fountain and grotto was most probably the work of Tommaso Francini, the Intendant General of Waters and Fountains of the King. The first difficulty of construction was the lack of water in the Left Bank of Paris, as a result, the city had expanded far from the Right Bank of the Seine, but had hardly grown at all on the Left Bank. This problem was solved by the construction of the aqueduct of Arcueil. After the death of Marie de Medici, the Palace and fountain went through a series of owners, by the middle of the 18th century, when the fountains of Versailles and the Garden à la française were in fashion, the Medici Fountain fell into disrepair. In 1864, during the Second French Empire, Baron Haussmann planned to build the rue de Medicis through the occupied by the fountain. The lateral arcades of the fountain and the crumbling old orangerie behind it had already torn down in 1855. From 1858 to 1864, The new architect, Alphonse de Gisors, moved the fountain thirty meters to make room for the street, since the fountain no longer stood against a wall, the Fontaine de Léda, displaced from another neighborhood, was placed directly behind it. He replaced the two statues of nymphs at the top of the statue with two new statues, representing the Rivers Rhone and Seine. He restored the coat of arms of the Medici family over the fountain and he inserted two statues into the niches, one representing a faun and the other a huntress, above which are two masks, one representing comedy and the other tragedy. He removed the simple basin and water spout which had been in the niche and that is the fountain as it appears today. The fountain which Gisors placed behind the Medici Fountain had a history of its own, the Fontaine de Léda had been constructed in 1806-1809, during the First Empire, at the corner of rue Vaugirard and rue du Regard. It was the work of architect François-Jean Bralle and sculptor Achille Valois. The bas-relief of the fountain depicts the story of Leda and the Swan, Leda holds the swan on her knees, water flowed from the beak of the swan down to a hemispherical basin at the foot of the fountain. Since it was a fountain, it had to be attached to something, so he placed it on the back of the Medici Fountain. LArt des jardins en Europe, Yves-Marie Allain and Janine Christiany, Citadelles & Mazenod, Paris,2006
3.
Italian Renaissance garden
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The style was imitated throughout Europe, influencing the gardens of the French Renaissance and the English garden. The Italian Renaissance garden broke down the wall between the garden, the house, and the landscape outside, the Italian Renaissance garden, like Renaissance art and architecture, emerged from the rediscovery by Renaissance scholars of classical Roman models. Pliny the Younger described his life at his villa at Laurentum. a good life and a genuine one and you should take the first opportunity to leave the din, the futile bustle and useless occupations of the city and devote yourself to literature or to leisure. A garden was a place to think, relax, and escape, the first Renaissance text to include garden design was De Re Aedificatoria, by Leon Battista Alberti. He drew upon the principles of Vitruvius, and used quotations from Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger to describe what a garden should look like. He argued that a villa should both be looked at and a place to look from, that the house should be placed above the garden, where it could be seen and the owner could look down into the garden. Alberti wrote, The construction will give pleasure to the visitor if, toward this end, I would place it on a slightly elevated place. I would also have the road climb so gently that it fools those who take it to the point that they do not realize how high they have climbed until they discover the countryside below. Within the garden, Alberti wrote. You should place porticos for giving shade, planters where vines can climb, placed on marble columns, vases and amusing statues and you should also have rare plants. Trees should be aligned and arranged evenly, each tree aligned with its neighbours, a popular romance, The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, published in 1499 in Venice by the monk Francesco Colonna, also had an important influence on the gardens of the Renaissance. It described the voyage and adventures of a traveller, Poliphile, through fantastic landscapes, looking for his love, the garden was a form of political theater, presenting the power, wisdom, order, beauty and glory that the Medici had brought to Florence. The fountain-maker, an engineer who designed the water system. Concealed fountains which drenched unsuspecting visitors, a grove of trees inspired by the groves where pagans would worship. In Renaissance and especially mannerist gardens, this section was filled with statues of animals, giants. An enclosed private garden within the garden, inspired by the cloisters of Medieval monasteries, a place for reading, writing or quiet conversations. Simples, or medicinal plants and herbs, the oldest existing Italian Renaissance garden is at the Villa Medici in Fiesole, north of Florence. It was created sometime between 1455 and 1461 by Giovanni de Medici the son of Cosimo de Medici, the founder of the Medici dynasty, unlike other Medici family villas that were located on flat farmland, this villa was located on a rocky hillside with a view over Florence. The garden has two terraces, one at the ground floor level and the other at the level of the first floor
4.
French formal garden
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The French formal garden, also called the jardin à la française, is a style of garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. The Garden à la française evolved from the French Renaissance garden, the gardens were designed to represent harmony and order, the ideals of the Renaissance, and to recall the virtues of Ancient Rome. His successor Henry II, who had traveled to Italy and had met Leonardo da Vinci. The Château de Chenonceau had two gardens in the new style, one created for Diane de Poitiers in 1551, in 1536 the architect Philibert de lOrme, upon his return from Rome, created the gardens of the Château dAnet following the Italian rules of proportion. The different parts of the gardens were not harmoniously joined together, all this was to change in the middle of the 17th century with the development of the first real Garden à la française. The first important garden à la française was the Chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte, created by Nicolas Fouquet, Fouquet commissioned Louis Le Vau to design the chateau, Charles Le Brun to design statues for the garden, and André Le Nôtre to create the gardens. For the first time, that garden and the chateau were perfectly integrated, the symmetry attained at Vaux achieved a degee of perfection and unity rarely equalled in the art of classic gardens. The chateau is at the center of this spatial organization which symbolizes power. The Gardens of Versailles, created by André Le Nôtre between 1662 and 1700, were the greatest achievement of the Garden à la francaise. The central symbol of the Garden was the sun, the emblem of Louis XIV, the views and perspectives, to and from the palace, continued to infinity. The king ruled over nature, recreating in the not only his domination of his territories. Andre Le Nôtre died in 1700, but his pupils and his ideas continued to dominate the design of gardens in France through the reign of Louis XV. The major inspiration for gardens continued to be architecture, rather than nature – the architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel designed elements of the gardens at Versailles, Choisy, nonetheless, a few variations in the strict geometry of the garden à la française began to appear. Elaborate parterres of broderies, with their curves and counter-curves, were replaced by parterres of grass bordered with flowerbeds, circles became ovals, called rotules, with alleys radiating outward in the shape of an x, and irregular octagon shapes appeared. Gardens began to follow the landscape, rather than moving earth to shape the ground into artificial terraces. Jacques Boyceau, sieur de la Barauderie the superintendent of royal gardens under Louis XIII and his book, Traité du jardinage selon les raisons de la nature et de lart. Ensemble divers desseins de parterres, pelouzes, bosquets et autres ornements was published after his death in 1638, claude Mollet, was the chief gardener of three French Kings, Henry IV, Louis XIII and the young Louis XIV. The gardens he created became the symbols of French grandeur and rationality, joseph-Antoine Dezallier dArgenville wrote Theorie et traite de jardinage, laid out the principles of the Garden à la francaise, and included drawings and designs of gardens and parterres
5.
Louis XIV of France
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Louis XIV, known as Louis the Great or the Sun King, was a monarch of the House of Bourbon who ruled as King of France and Navarre from 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest of any monarch of a country in European history. In the age of absolutism in Europe, Louis XIVs France was a leader in the centralization of power. Louis began his rule of France in 1661, after the death of his chief minister. By these means he became one of the most powerful French monarchs, under his rule, the Edict of Nantes, which granted rights to Huguenots, was abolished. The revocation effectively forced Huguenots to emigrate or convert in a wave of dragonnades, which managed to virtually destroy the French Protestant minority. During Louis reign, France was the leading European power, and it fought three wars, the Franco-Dutch War, the War of the League of Augsburg. There were also two lesser conflicts, the War of Devolution and the War of the Reunions, warfare defined Louis XIVs foreign policies, and his personality shaped his approach. Impelled by a mix of commerce, revenge, and pique, in peacetime he concentrated on preparing for the next war. He taught his diplomats their job was to create tactical and strategic advantages for the French military, Louis XIV was born on 5 September 1638 in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. He was named Louis Dieudonné and bore the title of French heirs apparent. At the time of his birth, his parents had married for 23 years. His mother had experienced four stillbirths between 1619 and 1631, leading contemporaries thus regarded him as a divine gift and his birth a miracle of God. Sensing imminent death, Louis XIII decided to put his affairs in order in the spring of 1643, in defiance of custom, which would have made Queen Anne the sole Regent of France, the king decreed that a regency council would rule on his sons behalf. His lack of faith in Queen Annes political abilities was his primary rationale and he did, however, make the concession of appointing her head of the council. Louis relationship with his mother was uncommonly affectionate for the time, contemporaries and eyewitnesses claimed that the Queen would spend all her time with Louis. Both were greatly interested in food and theatre, and it is likely that Louis developed these interests through his close relationship with his mother. This long-lasting and loving relationship can be evidenced by excerpts in Louis journal entries, such as, but attachments formed later by shared qualities of the spirit are far more difficult to break than those formed merely by blood
6.
Charles VIII of France
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Charles VIII, called the Affable, French, lAffable, was a monarch of the House of Valois who ruled as King of France from 1483 to his death in 1498. He succeeded his father Louis XI at the age of 13 and his elder sister Anne of France acted as regent jointly with her husband Peter II, Duke of Bourbon until 1491 when the young king turned 21 years of age. During Annes regency, the great lords rebelled against royal centralisation efforts in a known as the Mad War. Preoccupied by the succession in the Kingdom of Hungary, Maximilian failed to press his claim. Upon his marriage, Charles became administrator of Brittany and established a union that enabled France to avoid total encirclement by Habsburg territories. The coalition formed against the French invasion of 1494-98 finally drove out Charles army, Charles died in 1498 after accidentally striking his head on the lintel of a door. Since he had no heir, he was succeeded by his cousin Louis XII of France from the Orléans cadet branch of the House of Valois. Charles was born at the Château dAmboise in France, the surviving son of King Louis XI by his second wife Charlotte of Savoy. Charles succeeded to the throne on 30 August 1483 at the age of 13 and he was regarded by his contemporaries as possessing a pleasant disposition, but also as foolish and unsuited for the business of the state. She would rule as regent, together with her husband Peter of Bourbon, Charles was betrothed on 22 July 1483 to the 3-year-old Margaret of Austria, daughter of the Archduke Maximilian of Austria and Mary, Duchess of Burgundy. The marriage was arranged by Louis XI, Maximilian, and the Estates of the Low Countries as part of the 1482 Peace of Arras between France and the Duchy of Burgundy. Margaret brought the Counties of Artois and Burgundy to France as her dowry, in 1488, however, Francis II, Duke of Brittany, died in a riding accident, leaving his 11-year-old daughter Anne as his heiress. The Regent Anne of France and her husband Peter refused to countenance such a marriage, however, since it would place Maximilian and his family, the Habsburgs, on two French borders. The French army invaded Brittany, taking advantage of the preoccupation of Frederick III and his son with the succession to Mathias Corvinus. Anne of Brittany was forced to renounce Maximilian and agree to be married to Charles VIII instead, in December 1491, in an elaborate ceremony at the Château de Langeais, Charles and Anne of Brittany were married. The 14-year-old Duchess Anne, not happy with the arranged marriage, however, Charless marriage brought him independence from his relatives and thereafter he managed affairs according to his own inclinations. Queen Anne lived at the Clos Lucé in Amboise, there still remained the matter of Charles first betrothed, the young Margaret of Austria. Although the cancellation of her betrothal meant that she by rights should have returned to her family, Charles did not initially do so
7.
Palace of Fontainebleau
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The Palace of Fontainebleau or Château de Fontainebleau is located 55 kilometres southeast of the centre of Paris, and is one of the largest French royal châteaux. The medieval castle and later château was the residence of French monarchs from Louis VII through Napoleon III, Napoleon I abdicated his throne there before being exiled to Elba. Today, it is a museum and a UNESCO World Heritage Site that is located in the commune of Fontainebleau. The earliest record of a castle at Fontainebleau dates to 1137. It became a residence and hunting lodge of the Kings of France because of the abundant game. It took its name one of the springs, the fountain de Bliaud, located now in the English garden. He commissioned the architect Gilles le Breton to build a palace in the new Renaissance style and it included monumental Porte Dorée, as its southern entrance. As well as a monumental Renaissance stairway, the portique de Serlio, beginning in about 1528, Francis constructed the Gallery Francis I, which allowed him to pass directly from his apartments to the chapel of the Trinitaires. He brought the architect Sebastiano Serlio from Italy, and the Florentine painter Giovanni Battista di Jacopo, known as Rosso Fiorentino, another Italian painter, Francesco Primaticcio from Bologna, joined later in the decoration of the palace. Together their style of decoration became known as the first School of Fontainebleau and this was the first great decorated gallery built in France. Broadly speaking, at Fontainebleau the Renaissance was introduced to France, in about 1540, Francis began another major addition to the chateau. Using land on the east side of the chateau purchased from the order of the Trinitaires, he began to build a new square of buildings around a large courtyard. It was enclosed on the north by the wing of the Ministers, on the east by the wing of Ferrare, the chateau was surrounded by a new park in the style of the Italian Renaissance garden, with pavilions and the first grotto in France. Primaticcio created more monumental murals for the gallery of Ulysses, following the death of Francis I, King Henry II decided to continue and expand the chateau. The King and his wife chose the architects Philibert Delorme and Jean Bullant to do the work and they extended the east wing of the lower court, and decorated it with the first famous horseshoe-shaped staircase. In the oval court, they transformed the loggia planned by Francois into a Salle des Fétes or grand ballroom with a coffered ceiling. Facing the courtyard of the fountain and the pond, they designed a new building. At Henris orders, the Nymphe de Fontainebleau was installed at the entrance of Château dAnet
