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We are told that Corneille Floris introduced Italian ornamentation and grotesque borders; that Pierre Coech, architect and painter, adopted and popularised the designs of Vitruvius and Serlio. Wood carvers multiplied and embellished churches and palaces, the houses of the Burgomasters, the Town Halls, and the residences of wealthy citizens.
Bramante used to boast that he meant to raise the Pantheon in the air; and the plan, as preserved for us by Serlio, shows that the cupola would have been constructed after that type. Competent judges, however, declare that insuperable difficulties must have arisen in carrying out this design, while the piers constructed by Bramante were found in effect to be wholly insufficient for their purpose.
Seeing everything reduced to a miserable manner, and moved by compassion, Sebastiano Serlio, an architect of Bologna, has engraved on wood and copper two books of architecture, in which, among other things, are thirty doors of the Rustic Order, and twenty in a more delicate style; which book is dedicated to King Henry of France.
As soon as Charles V had left the Louvre demolition was at once begun by Francis, and in 1541 an Italian, Serlio, was bidden prepare a set of plans for the Renaissance glory that was to be. Serlio, refusing, or debating the price, was cast aside for the Frenchman, Lescot, whose plan was adopted.
He was standing on a scaffolding high above the ground when the monarch mounted the ladder. Up aloft François held a conference with his beloved workman and, descending, shouted back the words: "You understand, Maître Serlio; let it be as you suggest."
Il Rosso was first employed to carry out the ideas of Francois I. as to painting, and then Sebastian Serlio was summoned from Bologna in 1541 to fill the place of "surintendant des bastiments et architecte de Fontainebleau." Il Rosso-Giovambattista had been a Florentine pupil of Michelangelo, but refused to follow any master, having, as Vasari says, "a certain inkling of his own."
An account of François I and his "young Italian friends" makes mention of the visit of the king, in company with the Duchesse d'Étampes, to the studio of Serlio who was working desperately on the portico of the Cour Ovale. He found the artist producing a "melody of plastic beauty, garbed as a simple workman, his hair matted with pasty clay."
One side of the Cour de la Fontaine, that toward the Jardin Anglais, is terminated by a pavilion of the time of Louis XV.; the other, formerly decorated with statues is attributed to Serlio.
After the porticos, Serlio decorated the Galerie d'Ulysse which has since disappeared owing to the indifference of Louis XV and the imbecility of his friends; and always it was with François: "You understand, Maître Serlio; it is as you wish." The motif may have been Italian, but the impetus for the work was given by the esprit of the French.
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