Château Chambord, result 1 of 1

French

Château Chambord

Chateau; photographs

France, Blois

black and white photography

20.8 x 27.5 cm

French royal château near Blois, Loir-et-Cher. It was built by Francis I. Construction started in 1519 and speeded up after 1526; it continued throughout Francis I's reign and was brought to a close under Henry II towards 1550, when the château was almost completed. It was later repaired and finished in the original style under Louis XIV. The project, conceived in 1518–19, is extraordinary both for its sheer scale (the façade is 156 m long) and, still more, for its originality. The four enormous, round corner towers and the fantastic outline of the building's upper parts, bristling with chimney stacks, dormer windows and turrets, evokes the great princely châteaux of the end of the 14th century, while the square central keep (referred to as the 'donjon' from 1527), also with four round corner towers, resembles that of the château of Vincennes. The size of the keep, however, was without precedent (each side measures 44 m), and its centralized plan with a Greek cross-shaped hall and four apartments on each floor was evidently of Italian origin: it is based on the same scheme as that of St Peter's in Rome. Similarly, the symmetrical organization of its volumes, the modular divisions of the layout and all the decorative sculpture—which is exceptionally beautiful—are explicable in terms of the influence of Italian ideas and forms. The paradox of Chambord is that it is at once the most traditional and the most innovative of the châteaux of the Loire. Chambord was Francis I's personal project, and he had undertaken the immense construction with all the enthusiasm of the early years of his reign. He pursued the project for 30 years, even though the court had left the Loire Valley in 1525 and he himself spent only a few brief periods at the château. His obstinacy is explained less by his desire to build a hunting lodge for his own pleasure than by his conviction of the political importance of the arts: he wished to build an exceptional structure that would bear eternal witness to his glory and to that of his kingdom. Chambord took on its full, political, significance when Francis took the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to visit it, or when Henry VIII of England sought to imitate it at Nonsuch Palace in Surrey, another castle 'sans pareil'.Grove Dictionary of Art

Washington University (Saint Louis, Mo.) Art & Architecture Library

173

Volume 05: France/Vienna Page 19

collotype print

Number assigned by photographer or print studio.

lower left, in white: No173 C. Peigne phot. TOURS.; lower right, in white: CHAMBORD. [beneath:] CHAMBOR [cut off]; on album page, lower left, in black ink: Chambord.