Château de Gaillon

The Château de Gaillon is a

History

The somewhat battered and denuded Château de Gaillon, begun in 1502 on ancient foundations

The Gothic range that formed an irregular outer court is entered through a massive gatehouse, remodeled in 1509, with octagonal corner towers and steep-pitched slate roofs. The decorative elements of its shallow-relief carvings in panels and pilasters are drawn from the Classical repertory. Behind the first, irregular court Cardinal d'Amboise constructed a range, the Galerie des Cerfs with the central triumphal gateway, the Porte de Genes (the "Genoa Gate"), which set apart a trapezoidal cour d'honneur surrounded by two-storey ranges, two facing one another with arcaded lower storeys. High pitched slate roofs were rhythmically pierced with dormers. A helical staircase tower stood in one corner.

The north range^[2] was the new Grand'Maison, begun in 1502, which contained the suite of apartments of Cardinal d'Amboise. Between the chapel and the Tour de la Sirène at the northeast corner of the château, runs the vaulted gallery open to the view over the valley of the Seine. It is the first French loggia with an outward-looking aspect.

At the center of the court once stood the finest fountain in France, which received its own plate in

It was twenty-two feet high, surmounted by a sculpture of John the Baptist, whose presence was a reminder of such fountains' origins in baptismal fonts, above stacked vase forms with lactating Graces and urinating boys by Bertrand de Meynal and Jérôme Pacherot. Masks spat water from two superposed basins above an octagonal tank with heraldic and emblematic bas-reliefs. At the time it was built the fountain at Gaillon perhaps had no equal in Italy, unless it was inspired by a feature in the gardens of Poggio Reale, laid out for Alfonso II of Naples. The lower octagonal Carrara marble basin was removed from Gaillon when the fountain was disassembled by the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld in 1754 and set up in the gardens at Liancourt (Oise). In 1911 it was removed to the Château de la Rochefoucauld, where it may be seen today on the upper terrace.

From the main court, a second-turreted gatehouse in one corner opened onto a bridge across the moat that provided access to a large courtyard, on the far side of which a range of new buildings with a central towered gateway opened into the splendid enclosed

At Gaillon

Gaillon was burned out in a violent fire in 1764, but reconstructed: here the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld received

One section of Fra Giocondo's facade of Gaillon was removed under the direction of Alexandre Lenoir in the early nineteenth century for his Museum of French Monuments in Paris. Lenoir's collection of architectural remnants stood on land across the Seine from the Louvre, the very ground that the French government provided for the establishment of the École des Beaux-Arts around 1830. At the direction of architect Félix Duban the portal was integrated into the courtyard design and served as a model for students of architecture. Recently the elements of the Galerie des Cerfs and the Porte de Gênes have been restored to their original positions at Gaillon once again.

The Château is distinctly battered in its present appearance. An idea of the refinement of its furnishing can be derived from the marble bas-relief of St, George and the Dragon, executed in 1508 for the high chapel by

Notes

References

• William Howard Adams, 1969. The French Garden 1500-1800. (New York: Braziller). Androuet du Cerceau's plans and views are figs. 8–10.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Château de Gaillon.

• Château de Gaillon - official site
• Views of Château de Gaillon on old postcards
• Ville Gaillon: le Château de Gaillon
• The marble basin from the Château de Gaillon garden fountain - (at the Château de la Rochefoucauld)

49°9′40″N 1°19′47″E / 49.16111°N 1.32972°E / 49.16111; 1.32972