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From The Edinburgh Review.
FONTAINEBLEAU.1

lilies of France, the balls of the Medicis, the famous "girony of eight" of Navarre. Here, also, are the monograms of Louis XIII. and Anne of Austria, of Louis XIV. and Maria Theresa, of Louis XV. and of Marie Antoinette. Here, finally, is the imperial bee of Napoleon I.

No public building in France appeals to the historical imagination more eloquently than the palace of Fontainebleau. None awakens so rich and varied a group of striking associations; none is so thickly haunted with memories of the past; none is tenanted by In the course of centuries the rude the ghosts of so brilliant a crowd of fa- hunting-lodge of early kings, the donmous men and women. It is a docu-jon-keep which stood in the centre of ment to which twenty kings have set the chers déserts of St. Louis, was their sign-manuals, a chronicle in stone transformed into an enchanted palace, of the history of France, a dumb yet eloquent preacher of the mutability of human greatness.

years it has been the favorite home of kings and queens, the birthplace of princes, the refuge of exiled sovereigns, the prison of a pope and a king of Spain, the bower of royal lovers, the scene of the triumphs and defeats

thos of French history, the stage on which the actors in its brilliant comedies or ghastly tragedies have played their striking parts.

surpassing in its beauty the fabled abode of Morgana, which became in turn the Chez Soy of Francis I., the Successive sovereigns from 1137 to belle et délicieuse résidence of Anue 1870-from Louis le Gros to Napoleon of Austria, the maison des siècles of III. — have enriched it with memorials Napoleon I. During the passage of of their rule. Within its precincts, by ancient custom, the royal wives of monarchs have brought into the world the heirs to the throne. Upon its buildings the uncrowned queens of France from Diane de Poitiers to Madame de Pompadour - have lavished their which constitute the glory and the paluxury, their caprice, and their extravagance. The ermine of Anne of Bretagne, the porcupine of Louis XII., the pierced swan of Claude of Lorraine, which are so conspicuous on the walls Nor is Fontainebleau content to reand ceilings of Blois, are absent from cord only the rise and fall of dynasties. Fontainebleau. But, beginning with Its interest is not exclusively historical. the salamander of Francis I., there is It is artistic also. Seven centuries of scarcely a king, a queen, or a mistress, changing taste have left their mark whose memory is not preserved in the upon its walls. It is a mosaic of stone buildings of the palace. Here is the and colors, into which are dovetailed monogram of Henry II,, so constructed the various.stages in the history and that it may be read as that of himself progress of French art. Upon its walls and Catherine de Medicis or Diane de some of the greatest of French archiPoitiers; here are Diane's crescent tects, sculptors, and painters have moons, her stags, her leverets, her inscribed their work. From Fontainebows and arrows; here is the S and arrow, which commemorates la belle Gabrielle with a pun upon her surname of Estrées, and by its side is the monogram of her royal lover, Henry IV., and his wife, Marie de Medicis. Here, again and again repeated, are the

1 1. Le Trésor des Merveilles de la Maison Royale

de Fontainebleau. Par le R. P. F. Pierre Dan. Paris 1642.

2. Le Palais de Fontainebleau. Par Jean-Joseph Champollion-Figeac. Paris: 1866.

3. The Anglican Church Magazine. No. LIV. (March, 1891.) London.

bleau emanated the first great artistic movement in France. It would be unjust to ignore the early efforts of Louis XII. and his minister, Cardinal Georges d'Amboise, or to depreciate the native genius displayed in the château of Blois. But the impulse given to art by the brilliant group of Italian artists which Francis I. gathered round him at Fon

tainebleau

by Rosso, Primaticcio, Niccolo dell' Abbate, and many others was as great as it was indisputably general. From the Ecole de Fontaine

bleau Claude Lorraine derived his mag- "secular" oaks. "green-robed senaical light, and Poussin drew his tragic tors of the woods" whose forms may note. And from the sixteenth century well have sheltered Charlemagne, as onwards, each successive step in the popular tradition asserts, or concealed glory or the decadence of French paint- the dark spectral form of the “Grand ing, architecture, or sculpture, is chron- Veneur," or shaded the velvet cheek of icled in the buildings or the decoration Diane de Poitiers. And, dotted here of the palace. Their records carry us and there among the trees, gleam the from the Italian Renaissance of Fran- white tents of the soldiers, who make cis I., in which, in the first flush of of the forest a camp of exercise, and their inspiration, the newly imported whose blue and red uniforms, cooking classic elements conquered the Gothic fires, and picketed horses give life and forms of native growth, to the pure color to its sombre depths. classicism of Henry II.; from the bas- As the first great movement of French tard Renaissance of Henry IV. to the art emanated from the palace, so the flowing lines and wealth of color by last great movement has found its which the artists of Louis XIII. de-source in the forest, which has inspired parted from the antique model; from the genius of Millet, Rousseau, Diaz, the pompous emphasis of Louis XIV. Corot, and the modern Barbizon school to the charming, but capricious, grace of French painters. The simple poetry of Louis XV.; from the classic art of of natural life is the discovery and the the Empire to the Gothic revival of the | revelation of its founders. It was not Restoration. the shy grace of a Dryad, nor the spirHistorically, and artistically, Fon-itual ecstasy of a Madonna, nor the tainebleau is the jewel of French pal- smile of a Bacchante, which was their aces. And the brilliance of the gem is inspiration, but the mystery of the enhanced by the unrivalled beauty of woods, the savage gloom of a forest, the setting. The frame is worthy of the rude pathos of humble toil. It was the picture. The forest stands alone in the forest that Corot brought to peramong the forests of France in its di- fection his art of arresting the momenversity. Every variety of tree-pop-tary changes of nature, and of blending lars and chestnuts, maple and birch, the green of leaves and grass with the oaks and junipers — flourishes in abun- grey of his fleecy clouds; here, too, dance. The wild and savage scenery Rousseau acquired his emotional appreof Salvator Rosa alternates with the hension of landscape, and Diaz bestowed calm and peaceful landscape of Claude on the glades of sylvan scenery the Lorraine. Stonehenges and Carnacs glow of color in which his Spanish inof moss-colored rock, rich-colored pla- stinct delighted. And, above all, it was tières, or ridges of sandstone, bare, on the outskirts of the forest that the naked, boldly outlined hills, present Homer of rural life—but a Homer in abrupt contrasts with tree-clad slopes, patois-caught, and fixed upon his tranquil plains, quiet pools, like the canvas, the cadenced, rhythmic moveMare aux fées, or the Mare aux ser- ment of the sower, and the painful, pents, and turfy sweeps, such as labored effort of the overladen woodthat near the woods of Bas Bréaux, cutter, or translated into form and where Pan himself might be content to colors the terrible page in which La shepherd his flocks. Here are masses Bruyère describes the hopeless unof curiously scaled grey stone, resem- eventful toil of the French peasant, or bling primeval lizard-like monsters, revived the pious sensations of his own petrified as they approached their prey; Norman childhood, when, at declining while, above and around them, twisting, day, the peasants raise themselves writhing, and contorting into fantastic erect from their toil to repeat the "Anshapes, rises a forest growth of juni- gelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ.' pers, which look like the wild figures of a corybantic dance. Here, too, are

Fontainebleau sums up in itself the history of the French nation and of

French art. It will be possible in the first of our reign, there being present following pages to indicate only a few in our palace those whose names and of the associations which the forest and signatures are subscribed below." The the palace suggest. The palace owes charter, which confirms the foundation its existence to the forest. Official exi- of the Abbey of Val-Sainte-Marie in gencies of State dictated the selection Auvergne, is said to be "actum apud of the Louvre, St. Cloud, Versailles, fontem Bleaudi." The "fons Bleaudi " the Tuileries, Vincennes, or St. Ger- became Fontainebleau. But the origin mains, as residences of French sover- of the term is lost in the mists of aneigns, Chinon, the Windsor of Tou- tiquity. Ancient antiquaries, delightraine, which crowns the line of cliffs ing in that guess-work which threw that rise above the Vienne, was a discredit on their learning, exercised stronghold that defied the English in- their ingenuity in explanations. Some vader. Bourges afforded a refuge to invented an eponymous hero; others the roitelet from his powerful rival, the argued that the word commemorated king of England. Blois and Amboise the sagacity of the dog Blaut which and Angers were strongholds that discovered the spring; others traced command the passages of the Loire. the name to the clearness of the water, But Fontainebleau was emphatically a which made a French Calirrhöe of the hunting-lodge.

1

The ancient province of the Gâtinais (Pagus Wustinensis) on the left bank of the Seine was united to the French crown by Philip I. in 1068. Within its limits was situated the ancient forest of Bieria, which had become proverbial in the Middle Ages for the size and beauty of its trees. In the "Roman de la Rose a hero bears a lance, the handle of which, cut in the forest of Thuerie, was so strong that

Il n'en croît nulle telle en Bière. The whole country took the name of Bière, and the word still survives in official documents and in the local nomenclature of the Department of Seineet-Marne. But the name of the more modern palace was gradually extended to the forest, and entirely superseded its ancient title.

Before the year 1068 it would be vain to seek for any mention of the palace of Fontainebleau. Between that date and 1137 the first royal residence was built. In the latter year occurs the first record of the palace, though that record in itself affords a proof of its anterior existence. A charter of Louis VII. is extant which closes with this protocol in Latin : "Given at FontaineBléaud, in public, in the year 1137, the

1 In Low Latin, Bieria, or Bierria, means a plain; hence the Bieria Sylva means the forest of the plain.

"Fontaine-belle-cau." All that can be said with certainty is that the etymology of the word is the "Fontem Blialdi," and its meaning "the spring of the mantle;" but the attempt to trace the derivation of the title must be abandoned to the imagination.2

There existed, then, at Fontainebleau, in the first year of the reign of Louis VII., a royal palace, which was capable of holding the king and all the great officers of his court, and which was, with certainty, built at least in the time of his predecessor, Louis VI., called "the Fat." Nothing more unlike the modern palace can be imagined than this mediæval donjon. Those who are familiar with the house of Jacques Cœur at Bourges know how, three centuries later, defensive strength was still at least as much the aim of builders as comfort or splendor; on the inner side a palace, it is on the outer side a fortification. Fontainebleau in the days of Louis VII. was a fortified castle, a gloomy keep occupying the site of the present Cour Ovale, flanked by towers, protected by lofty walls, strengthened by a moat, and approached by a drawbridge. Few traces