The Relais du Plessis offers a special deal for springtime '09

The Relais du Plessis is a new group of new holiday houses constructed in Chaveignes, next to the town of Richelieu.  

We have received this e-mail advertisement for special offers of accommodation in this current 2009 springtime period.  Is it worth a try ? Local visitors say that the public and restaurant facilities are impressive and that the new cottages look very charming too.

CLICK here for more details and information.

and HERE for earlier posts on the project.

THIS BLOG HAS A NEW URL ADDRESS

I have just changed this blog's www address (actually its URL - uniform resource locator) from the former cumbersome leblogdeleminencerouge to:

http://richelieu-eminencerouge.blogspot.com/

The name I picked long ago was a) long and cumbersome, b) in French - hard for some, c) required one to know that cardinals of the Roman church are addressed as 'Eminence', d) that cardinals have a red robe.  

Crucially, it did not include the word Richelieu, and so was not to be found in a Google search for Richelieu.  

Now that you have found the blog-site at the new address (presumably), maybe you should update your 'bookmark' for the site.

This NEW ADDRESS is surely better, even if it frustrates my current faithful readers for a while.

The problems of geometric order

Thr parc de Richelieu comprises one of the most extravagant garden designs of its day. The 17th century new château in the form of a 'country house' - unprotected and without defensive walls - was replacing the ancient fighting castles which had still been important in the endless civil guerres de religion of the French sixteenth century.

The manner of the landscapes that flanked these new opulent large-windowed neo-classical Wonderlands was drawn from contemporary Italian projects (the Villa Lante for example) that were seen as the correct architectural inspiration; part of the general strategic counter-reformation 'project' run from the Vatican. These villa gardens had in turn had been conceived from classical Roman precedent, filtered by 16th century architects such as Vignola and Palladio.

The new designs saw much allegoric symbolism in strict geometric layouts, often reinforced by avenues and allées of trees.

As the years passed by, the country houses of Whig England in particular would initiate a garden of the picturesque - called le jardin anglais in France - typified by the famous gardens of 'Capability' Brown and Humphrey Repton.  These were neo-naturalistic gardens based on a different neo-classical allusion, the pictures of Claude Lorraine, that portrayed a free 'natural' landscape with ruins and peasant swains.

One of the problems of the French classical garden of avenues is that so trying and tedious thing, the WEATHER. The Touraine winter storms of February 2009 were savage, if slightly less so than those in Aquitaine to the south-west. But the avenues of the parc de Richelieu suffered. Many of the avenue's trees were up-ended, and the gardeners had a major effort in reducing these formerly healthy trees to log. They will of course be re-planted, once the old root has been extracted (the line must be maintained, of course), but in the meanwhile the folly and conceit of avenue planting is only too obvious, with horrible gaps giving a lie to the frail ambitions of a layout of strict geometry. 

Had the designer laid it all out in the manner of a later irregular jardin anglais, few would find the storm's inheritance objectionable.

But now we, les richelais, will have to wait a long time till the 'gap teeth' of the parc's avenues are re-filled by major arboreal root-canal work.

Super-Sarkopoleon

Doesn't his face suddenly look convincingly Napoleonic? - must be that bicorne!

N 

13 Grande Rue - restoration continues

Our new friends, Catherine et Loïc, continue with the restoration of the dépendances - back extensions - of this Grande Rue mansion. The mansion was heavily adapted by a wealthy doctor in the nineteenth century, who 'updated' the old house to suit 19th century taste, as far as was possible in a row of otherwise identical 17th century hôtels particuliers. This makes it a rather 'inauthentic' but fascinating building, a 'palimpsest'* of overlaying architectural cultures. This type of situation is of particular interest to architectural historians and conservationists. 

Catherine is absolutely determined to save as much as can be saved of this complex patrimony.

Not much has been done to the house since those days and the new owners have a large restoration project in front of them. Prudently, they are starting with the old servant's quarters at the back that look out onto the long sunny garden. Beyond these quarters, after the carriage 'barns', is a truely 19th century polychrome fantasia which was a serre - a greenhouse - probably for growing medicinal herbs as well as flowers, and acting as a winter-garden for the grand house. Beyond that are the stables with stalls for three horses, probably a riding horse and a pair for the doctor's carriage.

Some of the ground floor rooms of the main house have decor intact from about 1840, with plasterwork, gilding and the most florid of wallpapers from the era of Napoleon III.

A long way to go, but what a house it will be.......

to be continued

The serre or conservatory

The garden from the first floor

Colour experiments

Older posts on 13 Grande Rue

Post A and Post B

* palimpsest palɪm(p)sɛst

noun

a manuscript or piece of writing material (originally papyrus)  on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.

• figurative: something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.

Green bamboo

While walking during February in the parc de Richelieu, formerly the grounds of the cardinal's magnificent château, one craves the first signs of spring's arrival. But one searches in vain for the new green shoots of the native plants and trees, which are dulled to watercolour hues by winter's long sleep.

EXCEPT just next to the new embarquadère, where punts may be hired to view the park's canals and water systems from close up, there is a small grove of BRIGHT GREEN bamboo. The plants seem very happy and are growing like crazy. They have been thinned this year - maybe that stimulates all this VERDANT growth.

Richelieu's knockers - 2

Click to see Richelieu's knockers - 1, and Paris' Place des Vosges knockers.  

In the 17th century Frenchmen were very interested in them as you can see......

Events in Richelieu 2009

Our kind notaire, Maître Pierre Gravel, has sent us this schedule of the various events that are planned for the town and canton of Richelieu during the summer of 2009.

In particular the festivities with the twinned town of Schaafheim from 12-14 June.

And the very successful Festival of Music in the first half of August.

Programme Ri

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Thierry Courossé - photographe tourangeau

I found these fine pictures of a web photo site

 flickr

I tried to find the e-mail address of M. Courossé to ask his permission, but I could not (now see the comment below from Thierry C).  So I hope he will not be offended if we publicise his photography with these three 'borrowed' photos from his flickr page.  He, like everybody else, has been enchanted by the curious 'l'Année dernière à Marienbad' quality of the parc de Richelieu, with its 'ghost' castle.

Click on the pictures to enlarge them for your screen.

The orangery in the parc de Richelieu

The site of the former château de Richelieu; now the parc

Looking down le grand canal

L'année dernière à Marienbad (1961) 

Alain Resnais & Alain Robbe-Grillet; 'rive gauche' & 'nouveau roman'

Jean-Louis' photos of Richelieu in the snow.

* La CITÉ IDÉALE fully whitened in early January 2009 *

The author of the french-language blog for the people of the Richelieu canton, Jean-Louis Laurence, has put up a splendid set of pictures of Richelieu in the recent snows. 

 CLICK HERE 

to a direct link to his public Google PICASA album of photos. Try clicking on the 'diaporama'- slideshow - button.

All credit to Jean-Louis Laurence, the Eugène Atget of Richelieu - do we have any competitors?

Here's another Atget site this time recreating the views he took.

'Le Cardinal Soleil' by engraver Abraham Bosse

Abraham Bosse
A hommage to Richelieu, 1638-1639
Engraving: 235 x 235 ; 370 x 240 with poems
Bibliothèque de France

Bust portrait of the Cardinal de Richelieu (1585-1642), encircled by a sun of which the rays form a double acrostic of his name on the frame of the compass of which it forms the centre (ARMAND IEAN DV PLESSIS), celebrating his virtues in Latin, the principles of his actions, and the principal points of his politics and theology.

The attributes placed at the corners (books, herald’s wands and anchors) recall his role at the head of the Navy, his eloquence, his support of the arts and his actions in support of the Church. Below the engraving, two poems in French, signed ‘Of your Eminence – The very illustrious and very faithful servant, IAC (QUES) LABBE’, completing this apologia.

The first compares him to the god Mars having made the name of France fearsome in every place [and] his King victorious everywhere, and the other to Hercules, the support and wise counselor of the King. Below the composition, a sentence proclaims: SEMER ERIT FAUSTUM MAGNI NOMINIS OMNE (he will always be the happy omen of so great a name). The engraving was published between 1638, the date at which Melchior II Tavernier (1585-1665) installed himself in la Sphère Royale, and the 7 may 1639 when, with other copper, he sold the plate to François Langlois (1588-1647). First issue singly, it was then printed as a tableau by Tavernier himself, and accompanied by verses.

The idea of the radiant sun having at its centre the portrait of the Cardinal seems to have come from Bosse in 1635, with the plate executed for the Eclaircissemens chronologiques et necessaires of Jacques d’Auzoles Lapeyre, where he inscribed the names of forty Academicians on the sun’s rays, each accompanied by a star, showing thus that SON EMINENCE DUCALE was their best supporter, the person who lit them up, just as he illuminated the Kingdom, that is evoked by a Fleur de Lys surmounted by a royal crown above the title A L’EMINENTE. This scheme is taken up and expanded to add the entire activities of the cardinal. The first engraving was only a summary sketch where Richelieu was hardly recognizable; this one is counts among the most successful portraits of Abraham Bosse, who is generally negligent in this area.

In the bottom margin, on the left hand side: By Melchior Tauvernier, engraver and printer of the King, staying on the Island of the Palace on the quay of the Sphère Royale.

The Très Riches Heures 2 - the winter months

 AUTUMN * WINTER * SPRING * SUMMER

***

January
Jean du Berry on the RHS

February

March
The castle in the background is the Château de Lusignan.

See the three autumn months here