Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [36]
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RENAISSANCE
The Renaissance, which began in Italy in the early 15th century, set out to realise a ‘rebirth’ of classical Greek and Roman culture. It had its first impact on France at the end of the 15th century, when Charles VIII began a series of invasions of Italy, returning with some new ideas.
The Early Renaissance style, in which a variety of classical components and decorative motifs (columns, tunnel vaults, round arches, domes etc) were blended with the rich decoration of Flamboyant Gothic, is best exemplified in Paris by the Église St-Eustache on the Right Bank and Église St-Étienne du Mont on the Left Bank.
Mannerism, which followed Early Renaissance, was introduced by Italian architects and artists brought to France around 1530 by François I; over the following decades French architects who had studied in Italy took over from their Italian colleagues. In 1546 Pierre Lescot designed the richly decorated southwestern corner of the Cour Carrée of the Musée du Louvre. The Petit Château at the Château de Chantilly was built about a decade later. The Marais remains the best area for spotting reminders of the Renaissance in Paris proper, with some fine hôtels particuliers from this era such as Hôtel Carnavalet, housing part of the Musée Carnavalet and Hôtel Lamoignon. The Mannerist style lasted until the early 17th century.
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BAROQUE
During the baroque period – which lasted from the tail end of the 16th to the late 18th centuries – painting, sculpture and classical architecture were integrated to create structures and interiors of great subtlety, refinement and elegance. With the advent of the baroque, architecture became more pictorial, with the painted ceilings in churches illustrating the Passion of Christ and infinity to the faithful, and palaces invoking the power and order of the state.
Salomon de Brosse, who designed Paris’ Palais du Luxembourg (see Jardin du Luxembourg, Click here) in 1615, set the stage for two of France’s most prominent early baroque architects: François Mansart, designer of the Église Notre Dame du Val-de-Grâce (Map), and his young rival Louis Le Vau, the architect of the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, which served as a model for Louis XIV’s palace at Versailles.
Other fine examples of French baroque are the Église St-Louis en l’Île; the Chapelle de la Sorbonne; the Palais Royal; and the 17th-century Hôtel de Sully, with its inner courtyard decorated with allegorical figures.
Rococo
Rococo, a derivation of late baroque, was popular during the Enlightenment (1700–80). The word comes from the French rocaille (loose pebbles), which, together with shells, were used to decorate inside walls and other surfaces. In Paris, rococo was confined almost exclusively to the interiors of private residences and had a minimal impact on churches and civic buildings, which continued to follow the conventional rules of baroque classicism. Rococo interiors, such as the oval rooms of the Hôtel de Rohan-Soubise (see Archives Nationales, Click here), were lighter, smoother and airier than their baroque predecessors, and tended to favour pastels over vivid colours.
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NEOCLASSICISM
Neoclassical architecture, which emerged in about 1740 and remained popular in Paris until well into the 19th century, had its roots in the renewed interest in classical forms. Although it was, in part, a reaction against baroque and its adjunct, rococo, with emphases on decoration and illusion, neoclassicism was more profoundly a search for order, reason and serenity through the adoption of the forms and conventions of Graeco-Roman antiquity: columns, simple geometric forms and traditional ornamentation.
Among the earliest examples of this style in Paris are the Italianate façade of the Église St-Sulpice, designed in 1733 by Giovanni Servandoni, which took inspiration from Christopher Wren’s Cathedral of St Paul in