Villesavin Castle

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Aerial view of the castle from the southeast
Villesavin Castle seen from the northwest

The castle Villesavin is a French country castle in the local area of Tour-en-Sologne in the Loir-et-Cher department of the Center-Val de Loire region . Located between the castles of Chambord and Cheverny on the banks of the Beuvron in the Sologne , it is one of the smaller Loire castles .

Its builder in the second half of the 16th century was Jean Le Breton , royal finance secretary and administrator of the county of Blois under King Francis I. The work on Villesavin was completed in the first quarter of the 17th century under Jean Phélipeaux. Equipped with an orangery during the 18th century , the complex received some architectural extensions in the style of historicism at the beginning of the 19th century , making it one of the rare examples in the Loire Valley that has building details in this style. The castle is now privately owned, but is open to the public for tours.

On October 5, 1928, were the Corps de Logis of the palace complex and the wall and ceiling paintings of the chapel as a monument historique under monument protection provided. In March 1952, an elaborately crafted fountain followed in the courtyard , while the rest of the palace was added to the list of monuments in July 1959 .

description

building

Carrara marble fountain bowl in the courtyard

Villesavin Castle is a Renaissance building with a classicist influence, the stone walls of which were built from limestone and then plastered . The complex has a horseshoe shape and encloses a courtyard of honor, on the southeast side of which is the Corps de Logis with two corner pavilions . At its south-western end there is a right-angled west wing with another pavilion at the end. The eastern counterpart of the west wing is not a separate wing of the building, but a curtain wall , on the side of the main courtyard six tone - medallions from Bologna carries. They show the heads of Roman emperors . At the northern end of the wall is the fourth corner pavilion of the main castle. Like its western counterpart, it has a high pyramid roof which, like all the roofs of the palace complex, is covered with slate shingles.

The main courtyard is bordered on its undeveloped northern side by a wide moat . A stone bridge forms the entrance to the courtyard, which used to be planted with lawns and bushes. In its center is a white Carrara marble fountain bowl in the Renaissance style, which is a Lombard work. Its triangular base and fountain stand have reliefs in the form of chimeras and fantastic sea creatures.

Corps de Logis

The garden facade of the palace
The salon
Exterior

The single-storey corps de logis stands on a high basement with a vaulted ceiling , which is visible from the garden side, but not from the raised and thus higher courtyard of honor. The main floor of the castle therefore is at ground level on the courtyard side. With this arrangement, Villesavin is a rare example in French palace construction, because the bel étage is usually on the first floor. The facade of the Corps de Logis facing the courtyard is five-axis . The windows in the axes are framed by pilasters . The building has a central projection from the 19th century on the courtyard side with a niche on each floor. In the ground floor there is a bust of Franz I, while the niche on the top floor houses a statue of Diana , the goddess of hunting . The nine-meter-high ground floor is closed off by an eleven-meter-high roof with gates . These are decorated with pilasters, vases, armor, volutes and flame pots and finished off with concave tympana . They used to show the coats of arms of Jean Le Breton and his wife.

In front of the garden facade is a small porch from the 19th century, which can be reached via a two-flight staircase. On its ground floor there is a loggia , the vault of which shows the coat of arms of Jean Le Breton. It bears the cabinet above , which was still used as an oratory in the 18th century . The hood of the porch has a closing, open lantern , so that the entire structure resembles the loggia of Chantilly Castle . On its outer walls there is an inscription that identifies the builder of the castle and the year of construction. Its pilasters repeat the decor of the rest of the garden facade on all floors. This is no longer completely symmetrical because a second window has been broken out in the southern corner pavilion.

inside rooms

In the middle of the Corps de Logis there are entrances to a vestibule with stone stairs in both the north and south facades . This leads to rooms in the habitable top floor. However, the stately rooms are all on the representative ground floor with its high, straight walls. There are still some remains of old wall paintings on these, including in the orangery room ( French hambre de lʼorangerie ) , which are reminiscent of the Fontainebleau school . One of the corner pavilions of the Corps de Logis had an elaborately crafted coffered ceiling with the initials I and A for Jean Le Breton and his wife Anne Gedoyen until the 1930s. It is only known from photos, because the original wooden paneling disappeared without a trace around 1935 and was replaced by a replica . The rest of the interior of the castle dates from the beginning of the 19th century.

Corner pavilions and palace chapel

Fresco paintings in the chapel in the northeast pavilion

The north-western corner pavilion of the complex shows the year 1537 on its facade and houses the so-called Hall of the Guards ( French Salle des gardes ). Half of its northeast counterpart on the ground floor is occupied by a chapel with a two-bay cross - ribbed vault . There you can find the initials Jean Phélypeaux and his wife Élisabeth Blondeau. Its walls are covered with valuable fresco paintings that were carried out at the beginning of the 17th century. The vaulted ceiling shows paintings with motifs of the Passion from the Blesoier workshop of Jean Mosnier . The current windows of the chapel are no longer original. Originally they showed scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses and coats of arms of courtiers of King Francis I. Next to the chapel there is a small hallway with a coffered ceiling on the ground floor of the northwest pavilion. A narrow stone staircase leads from there to the attic with the room for the former chaplain . It has a fireplace and is paneled with paneling , which, like the ceiling paintings in the chapel, dates from around 1620.

Farm buildings

To the east and west are the Corps de Logis complexes with former farm buildings, each of which surrounds its own inner courtyard. The western of them is called Cour des écuries ( German  court of the horse stables ) or Cour des communs , the eastern Cour de la ferme or Basse-cour . The former gardener's apartment, a stable, a barn (whose south wall shows the year 1638 as the year of construction), a bakery and the two-story orangery of the castle are grouped around the latter . Its facade is divided into six axes on the southern garden side by windows. The window openings on the upper floor, however, are visibly bricked up. At the eastern corner of the orangery there is a massive round tower that has served as a dovecote since it was built in the 16th century and is one of the few surviving examples in the Loire Valley. With its 1,500 nesting places and an old turntable ladder made of oak, it is very similar to the pigeon tower of Talcy Castle . The Cour des écuries is framed by a coach house , the former stables for horses and cows and the basement apartment called Aile dʼoffices for the former estate manager. The portholes of this western farm yard are richly decorated with sculptures: small stone figures, flowers, ribbons, foliage and candelabra. The upper floors of almost all farm buildings used to be used as granaries.

Park and former gardens

The palace complex is surrounded by a wooded park, the part of which north of the palace buildings is 14  hectares in size. Its southern part still gives an idea of the former design as a two hectare English landscape garden , which was bordered in the north by the Beuvron. These two former parks were completed by an orchard and vegetable garden east of the castle building and a spruce forest to the west, which was called La garenne . In addition, the Corps de Logis existed just south of a second, 24  Are large, symmetrically designed kitchen garden as a transition to the landscaped park. It was divided into four parterres by straight paths , in which, among other things, lemon and orange trees as well as myrrh trees and currant bushes were cultivated. Nothing is left of this artfully laid out garden today. In its central axis was an island in the Beuvron, on which another garden with two parterres was laid out. The marble fountain, which is now installed in the main courtyard of the palace, originally came from there. In 1820 it was used as a flower pot on the island.

history

Owners and residents

Even though Villesavin Castle was never in royal possession, many members of the French royal family stayed in the buildings as guests. These visitors included Franz I, Katharina von Medici , Maria de 'Medici and Ludwig XIII.

The first owner known by name of Villesavins was Guy I. de Châtillon , Count of Blois , who bought an already existing manor house there in 1315 . The property was sold at the end of 1526 to Jean Le Breton, the builder of Villandry . From 1528 he was the royal finance secretary and administrator of the county of Blois and accompanied Francis I on his Italian campaigns. On his death in 1543 he left Villesavin and Villandry to his wife Anne Gedoyn, who bequeathed the property to their daughter Léonor and her husband Claude Burgensis in 1547. Léonor did not live in the castle himself, but lived in Paris. She cleared the buildings and ceded them in repayment of debts of 150  livres tournois .

In 1611 Jean Phélypeaux acquired the property for 26,000 livres. His family owned the property until the beginning of the 18th century when it was sold on July 2, 1719 to René Adine, director of the French East India Company . His family called themselves "de Villesavin" after their new property. The heiress Marie de Villesavin brought the plant to the family of her husband, the Marquis Charles Robert de La Pallu, in 1779 . During the French Revolution , the facility was expropriated, but not damaged. Only the furniture was sold on August 19, 1793.

The emptied castle was acquired on December 20, 1820 by the later convinced legitimist Jules de Chardebœuf , comte de Pradel, the first chamberlain of Louis XVIII. who had the castle changed in the style of historicism. When he died in 1857 it came to his widow Angélique de Martel, who left it to her relative Anatole de Bizemont in 1870. He bequeathed the property to his former cook, whom he married in his second marriage. However, the lack of maintenance of the buildings gradually degenerated the castle. Despite large land sales, the owner did not have the money to maintain the facility. In 1919 the castle had 2500 hectares of land, in 1937 it was only 40 hectares. When the grandfather of the current lord of the castle, Lars de Sparre, took care of the run-down buildings that year, they had been empty and abandoned for many years. In order to preserve the castle, he opened it to visitors. Together with his wife Veronique, Lars de Sparre continues the restoration and repair work of his grandparents and his parents today.

Building history

The current name of the complex has Roman roots and in this way documents very well how old the settlement of the place is. Villesavin developed from the Latin Villa Savini , the name of a Roman villa that stood on the Via Adriana, a trade route from Chartres to Britain . However, the first system to be proven by building research dates back to the 14th century.

In its place, Jean Le Breton had a country castle built between 1526 and 1537, which was the first secular building in France to be built around a central staircase from the outset. This type of construction has not been used since the time of Charlemagne . Another architectural novelty were the four corner pavilions of the complex, which were later also realized in this style in Fontainebleau . The castle was built at the same time as Chambord, and the same French and Italian artists and craftsmen worked on it as on the prestigious Franz I.

Map of the palace complex before 1731 by an unknown cartographer

When Jean Le Breton died, the buildings were not all finished, so Jean Phélipeaux continued the construction work. The frescoes in the chapel were first commissioned by him and completed together with the oratory on the occasion of a visit by Mary de Medici in 1611. In the first quarter of the 17th century, Phélipeaux also had work carried out in the Basse-cour and on its economic buildings.

The de Villesavin family had the castle orangery built by 1731 and added one floor to it in the first year of the French Revolution in 1789. The palace complex survived the revolutionary years relatively unscathed, only the former angel statues of the elaborate marble fountain bowl were lost due to destruction. The large pigeon tower built under Jean Phélipeaux - although a sign of feudal prerogatives - was retained, as was the chapel of the castle, which was used as a dog kennel during the revolution.

Under Auguste La Pallu, Villesavin Castle was extensively repaired and changed until 1819. He had the trenches of the complex filled in and the drawbridge , which had become useless, and the wall on the entrance side torn down. He also had the central, historicist porches on both long sides of the Corps de Logis carried out and the now ruinous portholes replaced. The leveled trenches were restored in the second half of the 20th century.

With the sale of Villesavins to the Comte de Pradel in 1820, a very detailed description of the castle from that year exists. According to this, it had a billiard room, a large dining room, a library and various apartments in the cabinet system on the ground floor at that time . Many of the rooms were furnished with valuable parquet floors and marble fireplaces. After de Pradel acquired the facility, he continued the renovation work of his predecessor. It is thanks to him that Villesavin Castle has numerous architectural details in the historicist style, which is otherwise very rare for the Loire Valley. During his aegis, the portals of the farm buildings were monumentalized and the marble fountain was given its current place in the main courtyard. Before that he stood in the English landscape garden on a small island in the Beuvron.

Since 1937 the buildings have been restored and maintained by the de Sparre family. In an interview, today's lord of the castle said that the necessary reconstruction work - measured against the progress of the previous restorations - would continue for the next 350 years.

Todays use

The castle has been open to the public since 1954. Some of his rooms with furniture from the 16th to 18th centuries can be visited as part of a guided tour; including the old, originally preserved kitchen in the west wing of the castle, the grill device on the fireplace is still functional today. The orangery is also rented out for parties.

Villesavin Castle is also home to two museums. In the former coach house, a collection of old carriages and prams can be viewed, while the Musée du Marriage, which has been open since April 2000, shows more than 1,500 exhibits related to weddings. The exhibits from the period from 1835 to 1950 include, for example, an extensive collection of wedding robes and bridal crowns , most of which date from the 19th century.

Around 20,000 visitors come to Villesavin every year and in this way finance the urgently needed repairs and maintenance work on the castle with their entrance fees.

literature

  • Jean-Pierre Babelon: Châteaux de France au siècle de la Renaissance . Flammarion, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-08-012062-X , pp. 222-224 .
  • Wilfried Hansmann : The Loire Valley. Castles, churches and cities in the «Garden of France» . 2nd Edition. DuMont, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-7701-3555-5 , pp. 96-97 ( digitized version ).
  • Wiebke Krabbe (transl.): The castles of the Loire . Komet, Frechen 2001, ISBN 3-89836-200-0 , pp. 110-111.
  • Jean-Marie Pérouse de Montclos, Robert Polidori : Castles in the Loire Valley . Könemann, Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-89508-597-9 , p. 350-355 .
  • René Polette: Lovable Loire castles . Morstadt, Kehl 1996, ISBN 3-88571-266-0 , pp. 113-114.
  • Patrick Ponsot: Le château de Villesavin. In: Bulletin Monumental. Vol. 148, No. 4, 1990, ISSN  0007-473X , pp. 383-416, doi : 10.3406 / bulmo.1990.4356 .
  • Werner Rau: Travel mobile. Loire Valley . 1st edition. Rau Verlag, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-926145-27-7 , pp. 62-63.
  • Bernhard Schneidewind: The Loire Castles. The signpost through the garden of France . Ullstein, Frankfurt / M., Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-550-06850-6 , pp. 204-205.
  • Françoise Vibert-Guigue (Ed.): Center, châteaux de la Loire . Hachette, Paris 1991, ISBN 2-01-015564-5 , pp. 271-272.
  • Castles on the Loire . Michelin, Landau-Mörlheim 2005, ISBN 2-06-711591-X , pp. 146-147.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b R. Polette: Lovable Loire castles. 1996, p. 114.
  2. ↑ a b J.-P. Babelon: Châteaux de France au siècle de la Renaissance. 1989, p. 224
  3. ^ P. Ponsot: Le château de Villesavin. 1990, p. 397.
  4. ^ P. Ponsot: Le château de Villesavin. 1990, p. 394.
  5. ^ P. Ponsot: Le château de Villesavin. 1990, pp. 401-403.
  6. ^ P. Ponsot: Le château de Villesavin. 1990, p. 413, note 33.
  7. ^ P. Ponsot: Le château de Villesavin. 1990, p. 406 and the corresponding note 99 on p. 416.
  8. ↑ Private website for the Villesavin Chapel , accessed on May 15, 2016.
  9. ^ P. Ponsot: Le château de Villesavin. 1990, p. 399.
  10. ^ F. Vibert-Guigue: Center, châteaux de la Loire. 1991, p. 272.
  11. ^ P. Ponsot: Le château de Villesavin. 1990, p. 408.
  12. ^ P. Ponsot: Le château de Villesavin. 1990, p. 383.
  13. ↑ J.-P. Babelon: Châteaux de France au siècle de la Renaissance. 1989, p. 222.
  14. ↑ a b c P. Ponsot: Le château de Villesavin. 1990, p. 385.
  15. ^ P. Ponsot: Le château de Villesavin. 1990, p. 413, note 22.
  16. ↑ a b P. Ponsot: Le château de Villesavin. 1990, p. 386.
  17. ^ Jean-Louis Boissonneau: Villesavin fête soixante ans dʼouverture. In: La Nouvelle République. Edition of August 11, 2014 ( online ).
  18. ↑ Castles on the Loire. 2005, p. 146.
  19. ^ W. Krabbe: The castles of the Loire. 2001, p. 110.
  20. ^ W. Krabbe: The castles of the Loire. 2001, p. 111.
  21. ^ F. Vibert-Guigue: Center, châteaux de la Loire. 1991, p. 271.
  22. ^ P. Ponsot: Le château de Villesavin. 1990, p. 406.
  23. ^ A b Marie-Paule Angel: Dure, la vie de château! . In: La Gruyère . July 2004 ( Memento from April 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive )

Coordinates: 47 ° 32 ′ 48 ″  N , 1 ° 30 ′ 51 ″  E