The Château de Chanteloup was an imposing 18th-century French château with elaborate gardens, compared by some contemporaries to Versailles.Watson 1966, p. 156. It was located in the Loire Valley on the south bank of the river Loire, downstream from the town of Amboise and about southwest of the royal Château d'Amboise. From 1761 to 1785 Chanteloup belonged to King Louis XV's prime minister, the Duke of Choiseul. The château was mostly demolished in 1823, but some features of the park remain, notably the Pagoda of Chanteloup, a significant tourist attraction.Pagode de Chanteloup website.
History Origins In the 16th century the site was nothing more than a tenanted farm, but it was elevated to a fief in January 1668. François le Franc, a fruit seller to the Duke of Alençon (youngest son of Henry II of France and Catherine de Médicis), purchased it on 7 June 1583 and erected a house with a chapel. He became the mayor of Amboise in 1588. Claude-Arnoul Poncher, who acquired the property by his marriage to Marie-Madeleine le Franc (daughter of François le Franc, grandson of François le Franc, the fruit seller), sold it on 21 October 1695 to Louis le Boultz, the Grand Master of Waterworks and Forests of Touraine, Anjou and Maine.Carré de Busserolle 1879, p. 110; André 1928, pp. 21–22; Chenu & Stainier 2014, p. 2. Around 1700 Louis le Boultz created large, well-ordered gardens and added other structures, so that it was no longer a simple country house.Chenu & Stainier 2014, p. 2.
1708–1761: D'Aubigny Creation of the château On 22 February 1708, Louis Le Boultz sold the house and seigneury of Chanteloup to Jean Bouteroue d'Aubigny, who also acquired the office of Grand Master of Waterworks and Forests of France for the département of Touraine, Anjou and Maine. D'Aubigny was the secretary for the Princesse des Ursins from 1701 to 1714, a period when she was very influential at the court of Philip V of Spain, the grandson of Louis XIV. D'Aubigny hired the well-known French architect Robert de Cotte in 1711 to remodel the house into a château. Robert de Cotte also worked on the Princess's apartments at the Royal Palace in Madrid and on designs for the Spanish king's country estate on the outskirts of Madrid, the Buen Retiro. The Château de Chanteloup was probably intended for her future use, but she was never to see it. At her death in 1722, as her sole heir, d'Aubigny retained sole possession of the château and its park.Chenu & Stainier 2014, p. 2; "Chanteloup History", Chanteloup website; Neuman 1994, p. 229 note 4; Gallet 1995, pp. 289–290.
D'Aubigny's focus in 1711, when construction began, was on Spain and the south. Robert de Cotte modified the central part, the corps de logis and the two pavilions at its ends (most of which already existed), and added the lateral wings flanking the cour d'honneur, a design typical of a château, so that the ensemble faced south. The principal entrance to the forecourt leading to the château was on the south side, on the road to Spain.André 1935, pp. 24–26. There was a passageway from the cour d'honneur through the west wing to the service court (basse cour) and stables on the west.Plan of the premier étage of the Château de Chanteloup . Bibliothèque de l'Institut de France, Paris. Digital copy from the website of the Agence Photo de la RMN. The remodeling included the creation of an east-facing gallery in the east wing and a chapel in the northwest corner, both with a project of decoration entrusted to Henri de Favanne, d'Aubigny's favorite painter, who had already worked on d'Aubigny's Parisian hôtel.Moreau 2008, p. 1.
Creation of the French formal gardens D'Aubigny also extended and enhanced the gardens and the park, which due to the terrain and the river were mostly to the south. The park was divided into numerous geometrically arranged groves of tall trees (bosquets), bordered by alleys lined with a variety of species of trees, and decorated with ornamental ponds. It was enclosed on the east, west, and south by a wall and on the north by a moat, and encompassed an area of about 500 arpents ().André 1935, p. 26; Moreau 2008, p. 3.
D'Aubigny died in the Château de Chanteloup in April 1732. Saint-Simon, who died in 1755, described Chanteloup in the period after d'Aubigny's death, as "one of the most beautiful and singular places in all France, and the most superbly furnished."Saint-Simon 1857, p. 100.
A plan of 1761 from the Municipal Library of Tours shows gardens around the château in the formal French style, perfected by André Le Nôtre in the latter half of the 17th century, with parterres of broderie and lawn, galleries of topiary, extensive bosquets (especially to the east and southeast), water basins, tree-lined paths and kitchen garden (potager) on the west side, south of the stables and other service buildings.MBA Tours 2007, p. 9; Grateau 2015, p. 70 (source of the reproduction); André 1935, p. 35 (garden plan drawn by André after the original); Watson 1966, p. 157 (style).
1761–1785: The Duke of Choiseul
Grand Park The Marquise d'Armentières, a descendant of d'Aubigny, sold the château in 1761 to King Louis XV's prime minister, the Duke of Choiseul, who also acquired adjoining land, increasing the size of the estate to 6,000 arpents ().André 1935, p. 27; Watson 1966, p. 156. For comparison, the gardens and park of Versailles, when they reached their greatest extent under Louis XIV, covered an area of .Hoog 1996, p. 372. A 1761 general site plan, from the French National Archives in Paris, shows that one of the first changes Choiseul made was to cut numerous tree-lined avenues and alleys in complex geometric patterns in the newly acquired Forest of Amboise to the south of the château, creating a Grand Park. Seven of the avenues converge on the half-moon (demi-lune) parterre of the Spanish Gate, forming a classic French patte d'oie (goose-foot pattern), a feature seen at several grand French châteaux of the 17th century, including the Château de Richelieu, Vaux-le-Vicomte, and Versailles.MBA Tours 2007, p. 9; Moreau 2008, pp. 3–4; Watson 1966, p. 157.
Master plan Choiseul engaged the architect Louis-Denis Le Camus to modernize and enlarge the château.Gallet 1995, p. 290. A master plan (grand dessein) was developed which was never to be completely realized.Grateau 2015, p. 84. A version of 1761 at the Bibliothèque nationale de France shows numerous proposed modifications and additions to the château of Robert de Cotte.", 1761", Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans, GE A-1124 (RES). For example, this plan shows a theatre wing running east from the southern end of the east lateral wing, which is not seen in numerous later representations of the château. Other features, which were realized in one form or another, included additional courtyards, stables, and service buildings to the west of the château. Six miniature paintings by Louis-Nicolas van Blarenberghe dated 1767, which decorate a gold snuffbox, show the architectural composition as intended by Choiseul and his architect, such as the theatre wing, rather than that which had actually been built.
North facade and entrance In 1765, one of the additions actually executed was the extension of the north facade to the east and west with two 9-bay, open peristyles, recalling the Grand Trianon at Versailles. Each was topped with a promenade enclosed with balustrades decorated with ornamental vases and terminated with rectangular pavilions, the one on the east with a Salle des Bains (Bath Hall), and the one on the west with a chapel. Each of the matching pavilions was raised by one storey and covered with a terrace with a balustrade.André 1935, pp. 28–29; Watson 1966, p. 156; Grateau 2015, p. 84.
Choiseul and Le Camus also shifted the main entrance to the north, allowing access from the road along the Loire by which carriages arrived from Amboise and Paris. The great entrance grille, the Grille Dorée (Golden Grille), was 12 toise (about 24 yards) in length and was flanked by two guard pavilions, which still exist. The gate was surmounted by the Choiseul arms. Although the Choiseul arms have been lost, the gate itself is now found at the prefecture of Indre-et-Loire in Tours. The forecourt contained a sunken central parterre, surrounded by a retaining wall (ha-ha), and in its center, an ornamental basin (pièce d'eau) with two water-jet fountains (jets d'eau). The carriage drive forked, passing to either side of the parterre and crossing two parallel bridges over the moat into the entrance court, which had a long central parterre with broderie of cut grass and low bands of flowers and a circular central ornamental basin with a single jet d'eau.André 1935, pp. 28–29, 32–33; Moreau 2008, p. 5; Watson 1966, p. 156.
Waterworks The gardens of the Petit Parc (Small Park) to the south of the château were modified very little but there was a significant exception: a long terraced cascade running from the demi-lune parterre of the former Spanish Gate to a pièce d'eau just to the south of the cour d'honneur. The demi-lune parterre itself was transformed into a lake.Grateau 2015, pp. 84, 86; Watson 1966, p. 157. The cascade is depicted in two of Van Blarenberghe's snuffbox miniatures and in a 1768 painting by Jean-Pierre Houël, part of a series of six overdoors for the music room of the château, of which four survive.Conisbee 1996.
Around 1770 another important water feature was added, a canal, leading to the south side of the demi-lune lake and aligned on the central axis of the château and the Grand Park. The canal is shown on a 1770 site plan attributed to Le Camus and is depicted in paintings by Louis-Nicolas Van Blarenberghe and Nicolas Perignon.André 1935, after p. 28; Watson 1966, p. 157, plate 750; Grateau 2015, pp. 82, 89 (Van Blarenberghe), 96 (Perignon). The demi-lune lake and the canal still exist, although the canal is filled-in and has become a lawn.Moreau 2008, p. 5; Watson 1966, p. 157; Satellite view of the Canal de la Pagode at Zoom Earth.
Colonnades on the cour d'honneur Colonnades were an architectural feature that seemed to please Choiseul.According to André 1935, p. 28. Le Camus used them again to fill in the setback of one toise (about two yards) of the south facade of the corps de logis (facing the cour d'honneur) with a seven-bay colonnaded portico, including a central avant-corps of three bays with a wider set of steps (perron) leading down to the courtyard.André 1935, pp. 28–29; Watson 1966, p. 156. The portico can be seen in a view of the south facade of the château taken from the middle of the cascade, painted around 1770 by Nicolas Perignon.Grateau 2015, pp. 96–97. In the center of the corps de logis, Le Camus created a large entrance hall, through which one could pass to reach the courtyard on the south, the cour d'honneur. To the left of the entrance hall was a series of three large rooms, and to its right a large dining room with windows facing north, rather than the cour d'honneur as before.André 1935, pp. 28–29.