Festivities, parties, banquets...
A world of history, seduction, excesses, chateaux, weddings, fever and flames. La Fête can be a celebration, an exhibition or a game of seduction. La Fête means masks and sparkling lights, all the better to conceal one's identity or to be on show. La Fête is a subject as vast as our imagination. It covers a multitude of traditions, from the culinary arts to the secrets of pyrotechny and water engineering, and from landscaping to the architecture of the ephemeral.
Can there be a better incarnation of La Fête than Vallery?
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In the 13th century, when minstrels strolled around the mediaeval citadel, pyrotechnists engineered the festivities. The fortress could then accommodate 5,000 men in arms; a vast enclosure wall flanked with towers from different ages remains from this epoch. But the pyrotechnist did not survive the mutations of the Renaissance; he was dethroned by the architect… the architect of the feast… a feast of architecture. Façades erected by Pierre Lescot were clad in polychromatic marble, windows be-came wider and they opened onto geometric gardens.
On April 16th in the year of Our Lord 1548, some land in Vallery was acquired for the sum of 95,000 pounds - a veritable fortune at that time - by King Henry II's favourite, Le Maréchal de Saint André. The marshal dreamed of a fabulous palace in which to host festivities the like of which none had ever been seen in the kingdom of France. He therefore called upon the most talented architect of that time: Pierre Lescot.
Pierre Lescot's destiny was nothing short of fantastic: Canon of Notre Dame de Paris for 25 years, he enjoyed the supreme honour of constructing the Louvre under the reign of five successive kings.
 Pierre Lescot 1515 - 1578
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The most illustrious artists worked at Vallery, some of whom had contributed to the king's palace at Fontainebleau, such as Francesco Primaticcio, or "Le Primatice" as he was known in France. The polychromatic marbles on the façade, the corner stones with their vermiculated indentations and the tall...
...sculpted chimneystacks that stood out proudly against the greenery, were all in tune with the Chambord and Chenonceaux dream. But at Vallery, the wall-hangings glistened with gold, silver and silk, and the furniture was even more splendid than the king's.
As Madame de Lafayette wrote: "Marshal Saint André, who was always looking for opportunities to highlight his magnificence, begged the king, under the pretext of showing him his recently constructed house, to do him the honour of going there to dine with the queens. The marshal was overjoyed to be able to unveil such lavish and obviously displayed extravagance in front of Madame Cleves."
Construction work was completed at a brisk pace and the king and his court came to stay in Vallery on the 19th and 20th of March, 1550. According to Brantôme: "Any one who saw Vallery furnished in those days would have been unable to estimate the extent of the treasures it held, or how much they were worth." |
