II. THE BOURBON OR CLASSIC PERIOD (1589-1715): _a._ STYLE OF HENRY IV., covering his reign and partly that of Louis XIII. (1610-45), employing the orders and other classic forms with a somewhat heavy, florid style of ornament. _b._ STYLE OF LOUIS XIV., beginning in the preceding reign and extending through that of Louis XIV. (1645-1715); the great age of classic architecture in France, corresponding to the Palladian in Italy. III. THE DECLINE OR ROCOCO PERIOD, corresponding with the reign of Louis XV. (1715-74); marked by pompous extravagance and capriciousness. During this period a reaction set in toward a severer classicism, leading to the styles of Louis XVI. and of the Empire, to be treated of in a later chapter. +THE TRANSITION.+ As early as 1475 the new style made its appearance in altars, tombs, and rood-screens wrought by French carvers with the collaboration of Italian artificers. The tomb erected by Charles of Anjou to his father in Le Mans cathedral (1475, by _Francesco Laurana_), the chapel of St. Lazare in the cathedral of Marseilles (1483), and the tomb of the children of Charles VIII. in Tours cathedral (1506), by _Michel Columbe_, the greatest artist of his time in France, are examples. The schools of Rouen and Tours were especially prominent in works of this kind, marked by exuberant fancy and great delicacy of execution. In church architecture Gothic traditions were long dominant, in spite of the great numbers of Italian prelates in France. It was in _châteaux_, palaces, and dwellings that the new style achieved its most notable triumphs. +EARLY CHÂTEAUX.+ The castle of Charles VIII., at Amboise on the Loire, shows little trace of Italian influence. It was under Louis XII. that the transformation of French architecture really began. The +Château de Gaillon+ (of which unfortunately only fragments remain in the École des Beaux-Arts at Paris), built for the Cardinal George of Amboise, between 1497 and 1509, by _Pierre Fain_, was the masterwork of the Rouen school. It presented a curious mixture of styles, with its irregular plan, its moat, drawbridge, and round corner-towers, its high roofs, turrets, and dormers, which gave it, in spite of many Renaissance details, a mediæval picturesqueness. The +Château de Blois+ (the east and south wings of the present group), begun for Louis XII. about 1500, was the first of a remarkable series of royal palaces which are the glory of French architecture. It shows the new influences in its horizontal lines and flat, unbroken façades of brick and stone, rather than in its architectural details (Fig. 175). The +Ducal Palace+ at Nancy and the +Hôtel de Ville+ at Orléans, by _Viart_, show a similar commingling of the classic and mediæval styles. [Illustration: FIG. 175.--BLOIS, COURT FAÇADE OF WING OF LOUIS XII.]