Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 1.djvu/527

 FALKLAND PALACE 507 THIRD PERIOD that both James iv. and James v. employed Frenchmen on their build- ings. James v. visited France, and spent some time at the Court of Francis i., to whose daughter Madeleine he was married at Loches in 1537. He was no doubt much impressed with the magnificent buildings he then saw in the district of the Loire, and was smitten with the passion for the erection of splendid palaces in the Renaissance style which was then so pre- valent in France. The result seems to have been that he brought back with him, on his return to Scotland, French workmen to carry out his designs. We find traces of their handiwork both at Stirling and Falkland. The " Stirling Heads," and those in the medallions on the north front of Falkland Palace, are precisely similar to those which form a leading feature in the designs of most of the French chateaux of the period, while the details of the Falkland corridor have a very striking re- semblance to those of early French Renais- sance work. In the caps and bases of the columns and pilasters, for instance, we see the same peculiar reminiscence of the Late Gothic method of interpenetration of mouldings which is characteristic of French work, while the foliage of the caps and the forms of the mouldings strongly resemble similar work of this period in France. In illustration of this, compare the de- tails of Falkland with those of the so-called House of Francis i. (Fig. 42) in Paris. There is a similar interpenetration of the caps, and the heads, surrounded with wreaths, are identical in character in both. In the French example these heads are all portraits of kings and queens of the period. Possibly those at Falkland were also copied from the life. These are clear instances of work executed by foreign artists. But they stand quite alone in the history of Scottish Architecture, and they anticipate by about half a century the Renaissance work of the " Fourth Period " in the time of James vi., so frequently spoken of by FIG. 435. Falkland Palace. Details of Corridor in Courtyard.