Maintenon Castle
The Maintenon castle ( French Château de Maintenon ) is a country castle in the French city of Maintenon in the Eure-et-Loir about 60 kilometers southwest of Paris and about 17 kilometers northwest of Chartres . The moated castle is located in the Center-Val de Loire region in the fertile landscape of the Beauce and goes back to a medieval castle .
Located in the Eure valley, it became known in the 17th century primarily through its owner at the time, Madame de Maintenon , the mistress and secret wife of Louis XIV . At that time there were numerous other members of the court in addition to the French king . For example, Madame de Montespan gave birth to her daughter Mademoiselle de Blois on May 4, 1677 .
The castle and the surrounding park were placed under monument protection as a Monument historique on July 25, 1944 and can be visited from mid-February to mid-December.
description
Maintenon Castle is a three-wing building that is connected to the Saint-Nicolas church in the north by a long gallery building . The associated park is located to the south and west of the palace . In contrast to the palaces usually planned with an open courtyard to the associated settlement in the Baroque period , the courtyard of Maintenon Castle is open towards the park.
Castle building
The outer
The oldest part of today's castle is the mighty square donjon on the southwest corner. Its four floors, of which the top with machicolations features are of a high, with slate -covered sloping roof completed. The coat of arms of Françoise d'Aubignés can be found above its door.
Through the west wing and the north-west corner tower, the donjon is connected to the northern wing of the building, the two-storey Corps de Logis , which also has a pitched roof. Its north-facing exterior facade, built in the 16th century under Jean Cottereau, was made of light-colored stone . The arched portal was integrated into a pavilion and is flanked on both sides by small turrets, which show the emblems of their builder Jean Cottereau: three lizards. In between there is a small balcony above the gate entrance, to which a drawbridge led in the Middle Ages . On the tympana of the skylights crowning skylights can be found on this side also the initials of the owner, but these devices are not originals but ingredients of a restoration made in the 19th century. Only the portholes above the entrance with its pilasters and tabernacle date from the time the wing was built. The facade facing the inner courtyard was made of red brick , which is loosened up by the use of diamond-shaped black bricks. The frames of the cross- frame windows on this side, made of light house stones, are reminiscent of the wing of Louis XII. in Blois . The upper floors of the Corps of Logis are accessed via an octagonal stair tower on the courtyard side. In addition to its corner cuboid, it has a sculpted decoration above the entrance with a Gothic -looking keel arch field , in which, next to Jean Cottereau's emblem of the three lizards, Saint George with the dragon can be seen.
Jean Cottereau's coat of arms stones are located above the arches of the open gallery of the north wing facing the courtyard. The round arches continued on the adjacent ground floor of the east wing. At its southern end, this single-storey building opens into a four-storey round tower , the roof of which has a lantern with a weather vane . Its top floor rests on corbels, which have the hallmarks of Jean Cottereau, and has machicolations.
inside rooms
Many of the interiors of the palace are open to the public for a fee and have been restored in the 17th century style. These include the former garden hall (French: salle des gardes ) with wood paneling and wall covering made of Cordovan leather , which was later used as a dining room, as well as the former bedroom of Louis XIV. The majority of the visitors are not able to see the grande galérie authentic portraits of members of the Noailles family and the former apartments of Madame de Maintenons are open to the public. Its structure follows the “classic” model: an anteroom with wall coverings made of leather with gilding is followed by a bedroom with a canopy bed behind a wooden balustrade with gilded balusters . A portrait of Louis XIV hangs above the fireplace in the bedroom, which was made from an original by Hyacinthe Rigaud . The bedroom is bordered by two smaller cabinets , one of which was used as a study and the other today shows various portraits next to a litter , including one of Madame de Maintenon, which was made by Pierre Mignard .
In the east wing of the castle is the small oratory in the style of the flamboyant , whose stained glass windows show scenes of the Passion next to the coat of arms of Jean Cottereau and date from the 16th century. The room has a ceiling with groin vaults . Two marble statues represent the Virgin Mary and the Archangel Gabriel .
Saint-Nicolas church
The Saint-Nicolas church, connected to the north wing of the castle by a long gallery, was built by Jean Cottereau in the first quarter of the 16th century in place of a previous building from the 12th century. The latter was destroyed in the Hundred Years War . Very likely - in accordance with the custom of the time - Cottereau had it built as a burial place for his family, but it is not known whether he was actually buried there, because neither his exact date of death nor his burial place are known. However, it has been confirmed that his grandson Jacques II d'Angennes was buried in the church in 1647. His tomb is no longer preserved because it was destroyed along with the graves of the canons during the French Revolution .
The pointed gable church building has a typical Gothic rose window on its front . Below is his arched portal with an archivolt , which is decorated with carved foliage and arabesques . Its pointed arch windows each have tracery at the top . The roof of the church is closed off by a small tower that previously served as a bell tower, but today no longer houses a bell. Inside there is a semicircular apse under a ribbed vault at the end of the nave .
Castle Park
The palace park is now presented in the style of an English landscape garden and is based on a baroque garden designed by André Le Nôtre . Like many of Le Nôtre's works, it is divided by a dominating canal fed by the waters of the Eure and Voise . In its northernmost section, its water flows around a garden island with a lawn parterre typical of French gardens . The extensive park is criss-crossed by numerous other moats , over which more than 30 bridges run. A section of the canal is flanked by two Allen, the Le-Nôtre-Allee (French: Allée Le Nôtre ) and Racine-Allee (French: Allée Racine ) are called and thus to their spiritual father and a castle during the 17th century Maintenon's welcome guest, Jean Racine , who wrote his two pieces Esther and Athalie there . In the southern part of the garden are the picturesque ruins of the never completed aqueduct of Maintenon , which Louis XIV commissioned. The area of the park further away from the castle is now used by a golf club .
history
The roots of today's palace complex go back to the 13th century, when the castle at that time consisted only of a mighty donjon that was built by vassals of the Count of Montfort . At the end of the 15th century, it was owned by Amaury (de) Loresse and expanded into a square complex surrounded by moats, at the corners of which stood the donjon and three round brick towers, which were connected by curtains with battlements .
In the first decade of the 16th century, the property came to a believer in the Lords of Maintenon: Jean Cottereau. He dressed under the four French kings Louis XI. , Karl VIII. , Louis XII. and Francis I held the office of treasurer of France (French: trésorier de France). Shortly after the complex passed into his possession, he began extensive renovations, which transformed the fortified castle into a country palace in the style of the French Renaissance . Cottereau had a corps de logis built on the north side between the two corner towers, the sculpted decorative elements of which are partly reminiscent of Gothic forms. The low east wing was also built under it, as was the Saint-Nicolas church, completed in 1521, to the north of the castle, the construction of which resulted in the establishment of a church chapter with a dean and six canons the following year. The entire construction work continued until the 1520s, because the outer facade of the north wing was not completed until that decade. Cottereau also had the first fruit and vegetable garden laid out on the palace area - based on his own designs - but this is no longer preserved today.
The elder of Jean's two daughters, Isabeau (also called Isabelle), married Jacques I. d'Angennes, seigneur de Rambouillet , on February 13, 1526 , and passed the castle and the estate to her husband's family. After Maintenon had been raised to barony under his son Louis Charles François in 1595 , Louis Charles' son achieved the elevation of the property to marquisate in 1641 .
Maintenon Castle remained in the possession of the Angennes family until it was sold on December 27, 1674 by Charles François d'Angennes to Françoise d'Aubigné, who later became the mistress of Louis XIV and Marquise de Maintenon. The purchase was only possible after a donation of 25,000 livres from the king. He also raised the property in 1688 to a marquisate with peerage (French: marquisat-pairie ). At the time of the purchase by Madame de Maintenon, the system was in very poor condition. In order to be able to relax there away from the court of Versailles , she had the old-fashioned castle extensively altered and converted into a homely country house. A new wing of the building was built on the west side between the donjon and the north-west corner tower, which housed the Françoise d'Aubignés apartments. Most of the plans for the interior design were based on ideas from her confessor, Abbé Gobelin. The lady of the castle had the rooms of the northern corps de logis completely renovated and after 1684 connected the wing to the Saint-Nicolas church with a gallery over 60 meters long. Ludwig XIV also used the gallery during his frequent visits to Maintenon Castle in 1685/86 to reach the royal gallery in the church for masses . The king's presence was mainly based on the fact that in those years he wanted to regularly find out about the progress of the construction work on the Eure Canal and the aqueduct, which is still in ruins in the palace park, which was supposed to transport the water of the Eure to Versailles. For the duration of his visits, he therefore had a bedroom and a study in the Corps de Logis that had been specially furnished for him. The baroque garden, which was obligatory at the time, was planned by André Le Nôtre and laid out to the south of the castle. In order to be able to enjoy an undisturbed view of the new palace garden, Françoise d'Aubigné had the southern curtain between the donjon and the south-eastern round tower torn down. The costs for the extensive renovations and new buildings amounted to 140,000 francs.
Madame de Maintenon gave the castle to her niece Françoise Amable d'Aubigné on the occasion of her wedding to the then Duke of Ayen and later Duke of Noailles, Adrien-Maurice de Noailles , the son of the French marshal Anne-Jules de Noailles . His heirs had the castle restored and repaired in the 19th century . Duke Paul de Noailles had the gallery renewed and furnished it with portraits of his ancestors. Poisson calls the changes in his publication "unfortunate" and "clumsy". The work carried out also includes redesigns of the courtyard-side archway of the Corps de Logis, which were carried out during the reign of Louis-Philippe based on the model of the east wing, and changes to the outer facade of the north wing. Also in the 19th century, the palace park, which was laid out as a baroque garden, was redesigned in the style of English landscape gardens.
The final scenes of the 1981 film Der Profi were shot in Castle Maintenon. This remained the property of the Noailles family until 1983, when Geneviève de Noailles donated it to the Fondation du château de Maintenon . The facility has been managed by the Eure-et-Loir department since 2005.
literature
- Jean-Pierre Babelon: Châteaux de France au siècle de la Renaissance . Flammarion, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-08-012062-X , pp. 80-83 .
- Françoise Chandernagor , Georges Poisson : Maintenon . Norma Éditions, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-909283-66-6 .
- Auguste Darvant: Le château de Maintenon . In: Charles Claude Marie Casati: La Renaissance française. Art national français primitif 1450 á 1550 . Leroux, Paris 1906, pp. 145-160 ( online ).
- Léon Gaudeffroy: Le château de Maintenon . Reprint of the 1915 edition. Res Universis, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-87760-153-6 .
- Charles Métais: Églises et chapelles du diocèse de Chartres . Volume 2. Self-published, Chartres 1900, pp. 13-23 ( online ).
- Francis Miltoun: Royal Palaces and Parks of France . LC Page, Boston 1910, pp 296-308 ( online ).
- Guillaume de Morant: Le château de Maintenon . In: Châteaux et Lieux d'Histoire en Eure-et-Loir . Self-published, Mainvilliers ( online ).
- Georges Poisson: Castles of the Ile-de-France . Prestel, Munich 1968, pp. 131-136.
Web links
- Castle website (French, English)
- Maintenon Castle. In: Structurae (French)
- Photos from Base Mémoire
References and comments
- ↑ Maintenon Castle in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French), accessed on April 15, 2009.
- ↑ a b c J.-P. Babelon: Châteaux de France au siècle de la renaissance , p. 80.
- ^ F. Miltoun: Royal Palaces and Parks of France , p. 307.
- ↑ a b A. Darvant: Le château de Maintenon , p. 152.
- ↑ a b G. de Morant: Le château de Maintenon , accessed on April 20, 2009.
- ↑ The details of the exact year are very different in the literature: 1503, 1505, 1506 and 1509.
- ↑ Some publications wrongly mention King Heinrich II.
- ↑ Babelon dates the work to the period from 1505 to 1510. Cf. J.-P. Babelon: Châteaux de France au siècle de la renaissance , p. 80.
- ^ A b Congrès archéologique de France: Séances générales tenues à Chartes en 1900 . A. Picard, Paris 1901, p. 50 ( online ).
- ↑ C. Métais: Églises et chapelles du diocèse de Chartres , p. 15.
- ↑ a b c mairie-maintenon.fr , accessed January 17, 2012.
- ↑ A. Darvant: Le château de Maintenon , S. 155th
- ↑ G. Poisson: Castles of the Ile-de-France , p. 132.
- ^ Congrès archéologique de France: Séances générales tenues à Chartes en 1900 . A. Picard, Paris 1901, p. 49 ( online ).
- ↑ J. Clermont: Le château de Maintenon . In: La Semaine des familles . No. 6, 1890, ISSN 1246-5623 , p. 82 ( online ).
- ↑ a b G. Poisson: Castles of the Ile-de-France , p. 136.
Coordinates: 48 ° 35 ′ 8 " N , 1 ° 34 ′ 41" E