Gardens of the French Renaissance
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Gardens of the French Renaissance is a garden style, initially inspired by the Italian Renaissance garden, which evolved later into the grander and more formal Garden à la française during the reign of Louis XIV, by the middle of the 17th century.
In 1495, King Charles VIII and his nobles brought the Renaissance style back to France after their war campaign in Italy. They reached their peak in the gardens of the royal Château de Fontainebleau, the Château de Blois, the Château d'Amboise, and the Château de Chenonceau.
French Renaissance gardens were characterized by symmetrical and geometric planting beds or parterres; plants in pots; paths of gravel and sand; terraces; stairways and ramps; moving water in the form of canals, cascades and monumental fountains, and extensive use of artificial grottoes, labyrinths and statues of mythological figures. They became an extension of the chateaux that they surrounded, and were designed to illustrate the Renaissance ideals of measure and proportion, and to remind viewers of the virtues of Ancient Rome.
Chronology of the French Renaissance Garden
- Château d'Amboise (1495)
- Château de Blois (1499) - (gardens were destroyed in the 19th century.)
- Château de Gaillon (1502 to 1550)
- Château de Bury-en-Blesois (1511–1520)
- Château de Chenonceau, (1515–1589) gardens of Diane de Poitiers (1551) and Catherine de' Medici (1560)
- Château de Chantilly (1524)
- Château de Fontainebleau (1528-1447)
- Château de Saint-Maur (1536)
- Château d'Anet (1536)
- Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1539–1547) -old Chateau and gardens
- Château de Villandry (1536)
- Château d'Anet (1546–1559)
- Montceaux-les-Maux (1549–1560)
- Château de Vallery (1550)
- La Bastie d'Urfe (1551)
- Château de Dampierre-sur-Boutonne (1552–1600)
- Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1539–1547) -new Chateau and terraces
- Château de Charleval (1560)
- Tuileries Palace and Gardens (1564–1593)
- Château de Verneuil (1565)
- Château d'Anet (1582) New Gardens.
- Château de Fontainebleau (1594–1609) New gardens by Claude Mollet
- Tuileries Garden in Paris (1599) by Claude Mollet, Delorme, Duperac
- Luxembourg Gardens in Paris (1612–1630)