Dampierre Castle (Yvelines)

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Aerial view of the castle from the southeast
View of the castle from the northwest

The Dampierre Castle ( French Château de Dampierre ) is a classicist castle complex in the French municipality of Dampierre-en-Yvelines . The village is located about 15 kilometers southwest of Versailles and 30 kilometers southwest of Paris in the department of Yvelines in the region Ile-de-France .

On the foundations of a previous structure from the 16th century from 1675 by Charles Honoré d'Albert , Duke of Chevreuse and Luynes , according to plans by Jules Hardouin-Mansart built that housed surge numerous members throughout its history the French royal family as guests. These included, for example, King Louis XIV in 1682 and his successor Louis XV. and Louis XVI. as well as the French queens Anna of Austria and Maria Leszczyńska , who stayed several times at Dampierre Castle at the invitation of her lady-in-waiting Marie Brûlart , the Duchess of Luynes. The Marie de Rohan-Montbazon complex also served as a domicile when it was banned from the Paris court after the Chalais and Fronde conspiracies . In the first half of the 19th century, some parts of the castle were restored by the architect Félix Duban .

Dampierre Castle is one of the largest French castles that is still privately owned because it has been owned by the Albert de Luynes family since 1663 . It is since 30 May 1928 as a monument historique under monument protection and is, together with the surrounding him park open from April to September daily to the public. Its interiors can be viewed as part of a guided tour.

history

Beginnings

The roots of the complex lie in a modest manor, which was mentioned in a document as early as the 14th century and which fell victim to a fire during the peasant uprising known as Jacquerie in 1358. During the reign of Louis XI. Rebuilt by Jacques de Thumery, the property was embellished with the creation of a pond in 1480. In 1528 the royal secretary (French: secrétaire du roi ) Je (h) acquired the Seigneurie Dampierre from Duval (also du Val) . He not only expanded the land owned by the government through appropriate acquisitions, but also let the then existing building of the old manor house in 1535 to modernize. In its day it consisted of several two-story buildings, which were grouped around a courtyard and surrounded by a moat . Access was granted by a drawbridge that led to a fortified gatehouse . A small garden was also part of the ensemble . In 1547 Jean Duval received the French King Francis I at his castle, which from 1550 served Pierre Séguier as a model for the construction of his castle La Verrière .

Modifications in the 16th and 17th centuries

View of the palace complex after the renovations under Charles de Lorraine-Guise , engraving by Jacques I. Androuet du Cerceau

Charles de Lorraine-Guise , Archbishop of Reims , bought Duvals Castle on February 16, 1551 and had the existing buildings extensively modified and expanded. Both Claude Foucques , who was vouched for as Charles' architect in 1565, and Francesco Primaticcio could be thearchitects of this work. After completion of the work, in which, among other things, new farm buildings were erected and a studiolo inside was equipped with frescoes by Francesco Salviati in 1554, Dampierre Castle presented itself as a closed four-wing complex surrounded by moats, the appearance of which Jacques I. Androuet du Cerceau on engravings in the second volume of his work Les plus excellents Bastiments de France . Accordingly, it hadwindows framedby brick and round towers on the northern corners, and its wings werecoveredbygable roofs . In the south-west of the complex was a garden ground floor , which was surrounded by a wall with three pavilion towers. The land that surrounded the palace complex was criss-crossed by canals that had been built from 1550 onwards.

Heir to this property became in 1574 Charles' nephew Henri I de Lorraine, duc de Guise , whose widow Catherine de Clèves retired to Dampierre after his murder. Catherine's son Claude de Lorraine, duc de Chevreuse , had another residential building built, called Astrée , after he became the owner of the castle . It was named after paintings in its interiors, the motifs of which were inspired by Honoré d'Urfé 's shepherd novel L'Astrée . At the same time there was already an island at the western end of the castle pond with five pavilions . The lord of the castle donated the complex to his wife Marie de Rohan-Montbazon, the Duchess of Chevreuse, who became known for her affairs and intrigues and who had been exiled from the royal court in Paris to Dampierre after her participation in the Fronde, while she was still alive . In 1663 she bequeathed the property to Louis Charles d'Albert , Duke of Luynes, the son of her first marriage to the Connétable of France , Charles d'Albert, duc de Luynes .

Louis Charles' son Charles Honoré had the old palace buildings almost completely demolished around 1670 and built a palace in the classicist Baroque style on their foundations from 1675 according to plans by Jules Hardouin-Mansart . During the work that was not yet completed in 1685, the old palace garden was replaced by new baroque gardens , which also included two vegetable gardens. The new systems were designed by the royal landscape architect André Le Nôtre , who among other things used the already existing canals fed by the Yvette for the symmetrical design . Shortly after Louis XIV moved his residence to Versailles in 1682 and Dampierre was thus closer to the new center of power in France, the palace was enlarged again and received a more elaborate interior. For example, in 1685 the stables were enlarged and at the end of 1688 the sculptor David Bertrand was commissioned to design stucco decorations on the chimneys in the interior. Two of them are still preserved today on the first floor of the castle.

Restoration under Félix Duban

The vase pictures in trompe l'œil technique on the vestibule walls date from 1839 onwards.

Further changes followed over the next 100 years or so. For example, under Duke Charles Philippe d'Albert, the five pavilions on the pond island were replaced by new buildings in 1742 and 1743, which were probably built by Jean Cailleteau , and Charles Louis d'Albert left the Astree wing at the end of the Astree wing in 1765 build an orangery . In contrast to many other French castles, Dampierre survived the turmoil of the French Revolution completely unscathed, but over the years water damage had developed on the Corps de Logis , so that it had to be repaired from 1839 under the Honoré Théodoric d'Albert de Luynes . He commissioned the architect Félix Duban with the restoration , on whose designs the current appearance of the neoclassical ballroom on the first floor and the design of the staircase in the vestibule go back. Right at the start of the restoration work, the lord of the castle, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, commissioned the ballroom of his castle to be decorated with two murals. Ingres had been given preference over Horace Vernet and Paul Delaroche , whom the Duke had also considered. Duban , who was a friend of Ingres', arranged the contact to the artist . Ingres decided against the fresco technique and began with the execution of the first mural The Golden Age (French: Âge d'or ) in oil painting directly on the plastered wall in August 1843, but he never finished it because he was out of favor in 1848 Dismissed the Duke's service. The second picture he planned, The Age of Iron (French: Âge de fer ), never passed the sketch stage. Together with Ingres, three of his students were involved in the design of the ballroom: Hippolyte and Paul Flandrine and Pierre-Charles Simart .

description

The Corps de Logis seen from the east
Arcades on the first floor of the farm building

The ensemble of buildings in the palace complex consists of a central main building, which is surrounded on all sides by moats, and the courtyard to the north- west of it , which is bordered to the north and south by two elongated farm buildings. In the north-west, there is another forecourt in front of it, with ancillary buildings on the north side. The two courtyards are separated from each other by a low balustrade . Access to the forecourt is provided by an artistically forged lattice gate in the Régence style, which was made to designs by Louis-Adam Loriot . It was placed between two single-storey entrance pavilions with a mansard roof in 1758.

The palace buildings are surrounded by a 450  hectare palace park, most of which is characterized by forest. The entire facility is dominated by a 1600 meter long, straight central axis. It begins on a viewing hill on the opposite side of the street from the castle entrance, continues through a central access path to the main building and ends behind the garden ground floor at an intersection in the forest of the park.

Castle building

The most striking feature of the two-storey, elongated buildings that delimit the courtyard are the arcades on their ground floor, each with nine arches. Further farm buildings adjoin the two buildings; to the south, for example, the former horse stables, which are now used as a restaurant.

The core of the castle building is a three-wing corps de logis , the three floors of which are closed off by a slate-covered mansard roof. The plastered quarry stone building has corner blocks made of ashlar and cornices and window frames made of brick. Its short side wings have small round towers at the outer corners. The long central axis of the palace complex is particularly emphasized on the main building by two-storey central risalites on the north and south facades. Its upper ends in the form of triangular gables are supported by half - columns and show the initials of the palace builder Charles Honoré d'Albert. On the garden side, a monumental, three-flight flight of stairs leads from the entrance in the central projection onto a platform and down into the garden. It also serves as a bridge over the moat.

The kitchens and servants' rooms are located in the basement of the Corps de Logis . The interiors on the mezzanine floor still have their original furnishings from the 18th century. The white and gold paneling of the Louis XV salon is particularly valuable in terms of art history . (French: salon de Louis XV ), which is considered a masterpiece of the Rocaille style ( Rococo ), as well as the elaborate boiseries in the dining room, which date from the time of Louis XIV and are attributed to the French cabinet maker Bernard Toro . The decor of the vestibule dates from the first half of the 19th century and is inspired by the Queen's Staircase (French: escalier de la Reine ) in the Palace of Versailles. The ceiling painting is by Charles Gleyre , while the three vase pictures on the walls using the trompe l'œil technique were painted by François-Édouard Picot . The Penelope statue in the vestibule from 1848 is the work of Jules Cavelier . The most remarkable room on the upper floor of the main building is the large ballroom, which is called the Minerva Hall (French: salle de Minerve ). Its neoclassical design goes back to a restoration under Félix Duban . He has an unfinished fresco by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres , in front of which there is a reduced copy of the statue of Athena by the Greek sculptor Phidias .

Castle Park

Only an octagonal water basin surrounded by balustrades and the star-shaped avenues in the castle park, some parts of which were destroyed by a storm in December 1999, remain of the former André Le Nôtres garden . The once artistically designed parterres are now planted with lawn. In the south-west of the palace complex there is an L-shaped, kinked, 18 arpents-large palace pond, the banks of which are lined with horse chestnuts . At its western end there is a small island on which one of the original five pavilions still stands.

literature

  • Jacques Androuet du Cerceau : Les plus excellents bastiments de France. Volume 2. Lévy, Paris 1870, pp. 1-4, doi: 10.11588 / diglit.1562 .
  • Thomas Christ: The castles of the Ile-de-France. Wiese-Verlag, Basel 1994, ISBN 3-909164-18-8 , pp. 43-44.
  • Gérard Denizeau: Larousse des châteaux. Larousse, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-03-505483-4 , pp. 274-275.
  • Annie Fettu: Château de Dampierre. Cahiers du temps, Cabourg 2002, ISBN 2-911855-47-7 .
  • Claude Frégnac: Merveilles des châteaux de l'Île-de-France. Hachette, Paris 1963, pp. 78-85.
  • Ernest de Ganay: Châteaux et Manoirs, Île-de-France. Volume 5. Vincent, Fréal et cie, Paris 1939, pp. 39-47.
  • Thomas de Luynes: Château de Dampierre. In: Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos (ed.): Guide du Patrimoine. Île-de-France. Hachette, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-01-016811-9 , pp. 208-212.
  • Franz Albrecht Medicus (Ed.): Castles in France. Wegleiterverlag, Paris 1944, pp. 168–169.
  • Bernard de Montgolfier: Dictionnaire des châteaux de France. Larousse, Paris 1969, pp. 109-110.
  • Georges Poisson : Ile-de-France castles around Paris. Prestel, Munich 1968, pp. 262-267.
  • Janine Poisson, Pierre Poisson: Versailles and the royal castles of the Ile-de-France. Minerva, Geneva 1983, ISBN 3-88059-211-X , pp. 58-59.
  • Jules Felix Vacquier: Anet, Dampierre, Écouen. Notices historiques et descriptives (= Les Anciens châteaux de France ... Volume 4). Content, Paris 1922.
  • Île-de-France, Chartres, Chantilly, Senlis. Michelin, Paris 2006, ISBN 2-06-711753-X , pp. 172-173.
  • Le château historique de Dampierre. Reproductions en phototypie, interiors des appartements de reception, details de sculpture ornementale, mobilier historique, peintures, statues, cheminées, bronzes d'art, etc. etc. Guerinet, Paris [1905].

Web links

Commons : Dampierre Castle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry of the castle in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French), accessed on January 15, 2020.
  2. ^ A b Jean-Pierre Babelon: Châteaux de France au siècle de la Renaissance . Flammarion, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-08-012062-X , pp. 725 .
  3. ↑ Thomas de Luynes: Château de Dampierre. 1992, p. 209.
  4. ↑ Castle history on the castle website , accessed on January 15, 2020.
  5. ↑ Geroges Poisson: locks of Ile-de-France around Paris. 1968, p. 265.
  6. ^ Patrick Taylor: Gardens in France. A travel guide to the most beautiful gardens. Birkhäuser, Basel / Boston / Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-7643-6005-4 , p. 64.
  7. ↑ Thomas de Luynes: Château de Dampierre. 1992, p. 211.
  8. ↑ Thomas Christ: The castles of the Ile-de-France. 1994, p. 43.
  9. ↑ Antoine-Nicolas Dézallier d'Argenville: Voyage pittoresque des environs de Paris, ou description des maisons royales, châteaux & autres lieux de plaisance, situations à quinze lieues aux environs de cette Ville. 4th edition. Debure, Paris 1779, p. 204 ( digitized version ).

Coordinates: 48 ° 42 '17.3 "  N , 1 ° 59' 17.2"  E