Such is the early Renaissance architecture of France. Notwithstanding its factitiousness, and its ornamental incongruities, it still has, as I have said, a distinctly French expression, though it has not the reasonable character of the native art of the Middle Ages in its integrity. But the departure from their own ideals and traditions was destined to be carried further, and at length to reach results which should still more profoundly contradict the true native spirit. This further transformation was wrought during the second half of the sixteenth century under the influence of several noted architects who stand in relation to the French Renaissance very much as Vignola, Palladio, and their followers stand in relation to that of Italy. The art of these men will be considered in the next chapter. CHAPTER XII LESCOT AND DE L’ORME Among the architects of the later French Renaissance Pierre Lescot and Philibert De l’Orme were preëminent. The change which they effected gave the French architecture a more marked neo-classic dress, yet still without wholly eliminating its native character. This change was of course analogous to that which had been wrought in Italy by the later designers of that country, but the resulting forms in France were different from those of the Italian art, and were to the last peculiarly French, though, as before remarked (p. 179), not expressive of the French genius in its integrity. This was entirely natural. The architecture of a people inevitably retains much of its original character while yielding to foreign influences. It had been so with the Italian art of the Middle Ages when it was subjected to the Gothic influence, and it could not be otherwise with the French art of the sixteenth century when the later Renaissance wave swept over it. Lescot and De l’Orme came strongly under the influence of Vignola and Palladio, their Italian contemporaries, and they fully accepted the Italian belief in the superiority of the neo-classic principles of design to those which had given rise to what they considered the architectural barbarisms of the Middle Ages. Lescot, says Berty,[122] “was one of the first French architects to employ the ancient style in its purity,” and De l’Orme, according to Milizia,[123] “exerted all his industry to strip architecture of her Gothic dress and clothe her in that of ancient Greece.” [Illustration: FIG. 116.--Du Cerceau’s engraving of the Fountain of the Nymphs.]