Château de Beauregard, Loire Valley
The son of John Doulcet Francis, Master of the House of Deniers of Louis XII, was dismissed for defrauding the Crown during the Italian campaigns, and Beauregard then confiscated and incorporated into the royal domain.
In 1521, Francis I, who used until the château as a hunting rendezvous, offered it to his uncle René de Savoie, who died at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, and the area fell to his widow.
In 1545, at a price of 2000 gold crowns, the estate was purchased by John Thier, Secretary of State for Finance for Henry II and a great humanist, protector of poets Joachim du Bellay and Pierre Ronsard.
From 1553, Jean du Thier appealed to many foreign artists who were working for King Henry II to undertake the interior decoration.
At the foot of the windows of the south wing, Jean du Thier created a typical Renaissance garden, strictly scheduled.
His son, Paul Ardier, President of the Chamber of Accounts and the husband of his granddaughter, Gaspard de Fieubet, Chancellor of the Queen Mother Anne of Austria, continued his work.
The Comtesse de Sainte Aldegonde, born Adelaide Josephine Bourlon Chavagne, widow of the Duke of Castiglione, succeeded him to the château.
On 8 October 1839, his daughter, Marie-Josephine Valentine (1820-1891), married to Alexandre-Edmond de Talleyrand-Périgord castle, Duke of Dino and son of the Duke of Talleyrand; she became the mistress of wealthy Russian subject Anatole Demidoff, made Prince of San Donato in 1840 by ducal decree and ephemeral husband of Mathilde-Laetizia Bonaparte, daughter of Jerome prince and cousin of Napoleon III.
The domain belongs since 1925 to the family of Gosselin from which the Count Guy of Cheyron Pavilion, which today continues the restoration of the château and the gallery of portraits with his wife.
You would have to imagine the other side of the court, another wing, probably the body of the primitive home of the 15th century, including Jean du Thier during the constructing duration of the château.
The gallery of portraits (Galeries des Illustres in French), the largest in Europe to have survived to our days, is the masterpiece of the château : built during the first half of the 17th century at the request of Paul Ardier, it is 26 meters long, its pavement is entirely made of 5 500 Delftware tiles and its walls are decorated with 327 portraits of famous people having lived between 1328 (date of the beginning of the reign of Philippe VI of France) and 1643 (death of Louis XIII).
Paul Ardier, owner of Beauregard in 1617, realized in the whole gallery of his château, a historian dream tell through a collection of portraits 315 years of history of France.
The most famous Italian collection was that of Paul Jove bishop of Nocera gathers in his villa by Lake Como, set consisting of 240 paintings of political and artistic personalities who enjoyed a considerable impact in Europe.
These collections have been dispersed or permanently lost the galleries such as Henry IV ordered the Louvre Richelieu in his Cardinal's palace (Palais Royal) .
The excess of the project and the care taken in the realization of the book rendered the famous gallery since its creation, which remains today the largest collection of historical portraits of characters known in Europe .
One guard had to forget all the people who have triumphed over kings; it is the Mona Lisas, beautiful Agnes and those illustrious conquerors without Henri fourth that would have been invincible prince."
- Jean de La Fontaine Another collection of portraits are visible in France, but its theme and scale are very different; this is that which was gathered in the seventeenth century, the castle of Bussy- Rabutin in Burgund.
Ernest de Ganay tells the Neuville castle in Gambais in 1939 a "curious royal portrait gallery", some attributed to students Clouet; consists of 192 leading figures in the history of France from François I to the 1789 Revolution, it would have been created in the eighteenth century by Francis Nyert.
We recognize famous works such as Charles VII by Jean Fouquet, Marie de' Medici by Van Dyck or the Count of Olivares by Velasquez.
Regarding the characters of the oldest kingdoms, when pictorial representations did not exist, paint school students worked after medals, drawings but also by observing, in churches, funeral effigies and stained glass.
The temporal boundaries were strictly fixed: the timeline begins at the throne of Philip VI of France in 1328 and ends with the death of Louis XIII in 1643.
Europe's sovereign draw three centuries of French diplomatic history: Spain, Austria, Hungary, Sweden ... Until the Turkish sultans of Murad I in Suleymaniye, testify to the Ottoman power.
Paul Ardier son continued the work begun in the gallery by decorating a room adjoining tables corresponding to the reign of Louis XIV, but this collection, there is nothing left; only the entablature of the ceiling still bears the name and dates of the Sun King.
Originally, the workroom was connected to the Gallery through a small door sacrificed in the seventeenth century at the time of the establishment of the portrait collection.
In 1551 Henry II gave to his minister and friend 1500 trees (oak, elm, beech, holly and hazel) to take in the royal forests.
From Jean Thier and plans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we note the presence of a significant amount of fruit trees (cherry, plum, almond, walnut).
An inventory of the early eighteenth century counted 74 orange and lemon reflecting the real interest of Beauregard lords for their orangery.
The eighteenth century also saw the appearance in France previously unknown species brought back from scientific expeditions in North America and the Middle East .
Inspired by a Gilles Clément project, the Beauregard gardens evidence a concern to ensure the link between the past centuries and modern times.
The various collections of trees and plants (oak, cedar, bamboo, decorative barks) are the direct descendants of the botanical likes of Jean Thier.
