The glory of the French Renaissance had begun to wane when Louis XIII. came to the throne in 1614, and by the time of his death it 1643 it had become hardly more than a tradition. It strongest period had been during that century which embraced the reigns of five sovereigns, Francis L, and II., and Henry II., III., and IV. This was from 1515 to 1610, and, of all monarchs who held the throne of France, Francis I., who sat upon it thirty-two years, did more for it in raising the standard of art than had been done by his predecessors in a century, though Henry II. and Henry IV. had made their reigns notable.

Rich, ambitious to have France as great in art as Italy, Francis was a liberal patron, and invited to Paris, the centre of all literature and art in France, painters, sculptors, and architects. Italy had difficulties to contend with from the fact that she was divided into many small principalities and dominated by many schools. Florence, Milan, Sienna, Naples, - each had their distinctive styles; but in France the court of Francis was the pivot upon which all the arts turned. He built that series of chateaus which remain among the wonders of the world, - Chambord, Chenonceau, and Fontainebleau. He left traces of his taste on mediaeval Amboise, remodelled the Louvre, and finished the restoration of Blois which had been begun by Louis XII. The throes through which France has passed has swept away some of her choicest historic monuments, but Fontainebleau remains a true example of French Renaissance. With this fine old palace are connected some of the most critical moments of French history. In one of its rooms was signed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; Conde was murdered here in the library, or Gallery of Diana. On the great curved staircase Napoleon bade adieu to what remained of the Old Guard before he went to Elba, and on a little table in one of the six rooms which might be called the suite of the First Empire, extending back of the gallery of Francis I. he signed his act of abdication.

Figure 71. BEDROOM OF ANNE OF AUSTRIA AT FONTAINERLEAU.

The decorations of this palace are superb, the very flower of the French Renaissance. Oak, carved and gilded, wainscots the walls in many of the rooms, but in the chamber of Anne of Austria, shown in Figure 71, the wainscoting consists of carved panels framed in marbles, and above them carved figures stand out from the painted walls, which are divided by oak mouldings into sections, while a beautiful carved cornice of scallop-shells on a gold ground surrounds the room.

The French, as no other nation has ever done, set in a fitting shrine the beautiful furniture which they made; the decoration of walls, doors, ceilings, and fireplace always playing an important part in the whole scheme. The French "style," a word on which Lady Dilke strongly insists in her great work on "French Furniture of the XVIII Century," was unmistakably impressed on all they attempted. The woodwork was lighter and more openly carved than Italian work of the same period. Even when made by Italian workmen who swarmed to the French court under promise of abundant employment and rich emolument, the work was imbued with the French spirit and an elegance with which even Italy could not vie.

The noble appreciation which had grown up in France was fostered by Louis XIV. when he came to the throne, not so much for art's sake as for his own aggrandizement, and to make his court the most elegant in the world. Louis contemned the style of elegance and luxury begun in an earlier reign, and artists of even superior merit were set to work to make beautiful the homes of those uncrowned queens on whom the "Grand Monarch" lavished such immense sums of money. Versailles was enriched, the lovely gardens planned by Le Notre, with their superb flower beds and fountains, the "green carpet" of turf down which the monarch loved to walk, were all made with enormous outlay of money.

The hotels and buildings at Versailles set apart for the service of the king and his attendants were numbered by hundreds. There were the royal stables, the new hotel of the Governor of Versailles, the green rooms of the actors who performed at the palace, the hotel of the keeper of the wardrobe, the hotel of the guardsmen, the English garden, the riding-school, the king's icehouses, the houses of the body-guard, and so on. Street after street was filled with these buildings, besides those devoted to falconry, boar-hunting, the kennels, the little stables, and those filled with shops, vegetable gardens, etc., and in addition that great habitation occupied by more than two thousand persons, with other buildings called "Louises" where the king assigned temporary or permanent lodgings. The great stables built in 1682 and costing 3,000,000 francs are some of the few buildings left to show the magnificence of old Versailles. They were so ample and beautiful that under the direction of the great Louis himself they served sometimes as a ballroom, sometimes as a theatre, and more .often as a circus for the princes.

There is a bound volume extant, bearing the name of Mansart, in which the cost of the palace is given at 153,000,000 francs. This was but the casket itself without any of its furnishings. Louis preferred to live in the open air, and the gardens were merely outdoor drawing-rooms, where people conversed and exchanged the compliments of the day. Round his person the king loved to group his retinue, and down the broad staircases of the gardens sixty ladies with hoopskirts measuring twenty-four feet in circumference could move easily. On the outskirts were a swarm of courtiers and servants in uniforms, costumes, and liveries as brilliant as the rainbow.