[2] “François I. voulant avoir dans Paris un palais digne de sa magnificence et dédaignant le vieux Louvre et l’hôtel des Tournelles, amas irrégulier de _tournelles_ (tourelles) et de pavillons gothiques, avait fait démolir, dès 1528, la grosse tour du Louvre, ce donjon de Philippe-Auguste duquel relevaient tous les fiefs du royaume. C’était démolir l’histoire elle-même; c’était la monarchie de la renaissance abattant la vieille royauté féodale.”—Martin, _Hist. de France_. The example set by François I. was followed by his successor, Henri II. (reigned 1547-59), for whom Niccolò dell’ Abbate (1515-71), an artist of secondary importance, was working from 1552 onwards. Henri II.’s queen, Catherine de Médicis, was also a patron of art, being herself a collector of coins and medals. To her influence was due the decoration of the Château of Fontainebleau and the erection of the Palace of the Tuileries,[3] which was subsequently connected with the Louvre by means of the Long Gallery, now Room VI. Her eldest son, François II. (reigned 1559-60), the husband of Mary Queen of Scots, first converted the new buildings of the Louvre into a royal residence. Henry IV. (reigned 1589-1610) enlarged the Tuileries, and almost completed the Long Gallery, which now contains such a large proportion of the pictures. Louis XIII. (reigned 1589-1610), his eldest son, seems to have taken little interest in the royal collection; but his mother, Marie de Médicis, invited Rubens (1577-1640) to Paris to decorate the Palace of the Luxembourg with that series of imposing canvases representing her own life-history which are to-day seen to their best advantage in the Salle Rubens (Room XVIII.) of the Louvre. [3] An inscription on a tablet placed high up on the left of the Pavillon Sully records that François I. began the Louvre in 1541, and Catherine de Médicis the Tuileries in 1564. No complete record has been found of the pictures which formed the royal collection previous to the year 1642. To that date belongs a meagre Catalogue of the objects of art which then remained at Fontainebleau, but it is supposed that when Louis XIV. (reigned 1643-1715) succeeded to the throne he inherited about one hundred pictures, the property of the Crown. With his accession a new era in the history of art in France began.