Architecture: The Manse That Mocked a Monarch

Baroque has been called debased and deformed, false and exaggerated. It has also been called Europe's last great universal style. It flowered amid the extravagances of 17th century Italy, given its distinctive form by Bernini and Borromini. Yet the more restrained variant that France developed has proved almost as influential, and has inspired countless castles and churches, palaces and gardens. France's first great baroque monument was the chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte, built between 1656 and 1660. This year, for the first time in centuries, visitors can view Vaux-le-Vicomte in all its oldtime splendor.

What the visitor in fact sees, when he first passes through the huge, wrought-iron gates, is a palace that seems to the sophisticated eye merely a blend of French and Italian architectural styles. The chateau's peaked roofs, developed by France's François Mansart are coupled with an Italianate dome reminiscent of St. Peter's. The entrance vestibule, decorated with Tuscan columns, leads into an 88-ft.-long white oval Grand Salon circled by arched French windows and crowned with stucco caryatids.

Through the windows may be seen its spacious, 170-acre formal garden, marshaled with airy grace into a tapestry of boxwood mazes, promenades, canals, fountains, staircases, statuary and grottoes that stretch to the horizon. The ornate Chambre du Roi, which lies to the left of the Grand Salon, illustrates the other French addition to the baroque. Luscious nudes hover overhead in trompe-l'eoil with voluptuousness that the Italians never envisioned—or permitted themselves.

Time to Disgorge. Splendid though the Chambre may be, le roi never slept in it. For the story of Vaux-le-Vicomte is of an older man who overreached himself. The man was Nicolas Fouquet, an urbane nobleman who had become France's Finance Minister a year before the young Louis was crowned at the age of 15. He thought of Louis as a young whippersnapper, and with some justice he felt he had been of more service to the state. Renowned as a courtier, conversationalist and diplomat, he had devised dozens of ingenious schemes to finance France's war with Spain, and when he decided to build himself a château on a tract of land that he owned halfway between Paris and Fontainebleau, he spared no expense. He summoned Louis Le Vau, the leading architect of the day, Charles Le Brun, a painter and interior decorator, and a landscape designer named André Le Nôtre. A special workshop with Flemish artisans was set up nearby at Maincy to execute Le Brun's tapestry designs. The chateau's 105 rooms were furnished with armchairs of Chinese plush and Persian carpets, vermilion and silver vases, crystal chandeliers and gold clocks.

As work progressed and costs spiraled, visitors drove daily from Fontainebleau to watch the construction. The young King became both irritated and suspicious. Where did Fouquet get all that money? He appointed his chief aide, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to delve into the Finance Minister's books.