THE HRST STAGE OF ITALIAN INFLUENCE

the Great Hall (fig. 78).
Now the palace with its
courtyard and gate towers
is just as completely in the
Gothic tradition as the hall
with itshammerbeam roof.
Of the Italian Renaissance
there is nothing but
a limited number of
ornamental details, the
medallions with the heads
of Roman emperors on
the gate towers and the
putti and foliage in the
spandrels of the hall roof.
They are competently
done, but no attempt is
made to bridge the gulf
between English construc-
tion and Italian decoration.

So while the first stage in the process of assimilation had been
identical in Britain and France, their ways separated at the second
already. The distance widened at the third. In the thirties two or three
of the most talented French architects of the younger generation,
Philibert Delorme (c. 1515-70), Jean Bullant (c, 1515-80) and
perhaps Pierre Lescot (c. 1510-78), had gone to Rome where they
had devoted their time to the study of Antiquity and the Renais-
sance, and in 1545 Serlio had begun to publish parts of his treatise
on architecture in French at Lyons. Thus the facade of the Louvre
towards the court designed by Lescot in 1546 is both classical and
French (pi. LXXX). Italian forms are handled with ease and at the
same time with a freedom which proves that they had become the
architect's natural idiom. The central motif especially is beyond a
doubt of Italian origin: the triumphal arch motif with coupled
columns in superimposed orders and niches between each pair. The
motif goes back to Bramante if not further, and was also used by
Bullant at Ecouen (c. 1550) and by Delorme at Anet (also c. 1550).
The pediments on brackets above windows and the garlands held by
cupids are also of Italian stock, but there is an agility in the presen-
tation, a polish and a graceful splendour, that are French in the

78. HAMPTON COURT: GREAT HAIX, DETAIL
FROM THE HAMMERBEAM ROOF, 1533. PROBABLY
BY JAMES NEEDHAM.