The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King (44 page)

There has been much argument about the portraits of Diane de Poitiers and whether they were stylized rather than true likenesses. It must be assumed that some are stylized portraits because the early
drawings of her by Clouet are certainly lifelike. Some of the later portraits are even said to have been interchanged with portraits of the blond favorite of François I, Anne d’Etampes.
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There are contemporary sources that claim Diane’s beauty was only truly visible in animation, when her eyes sparkled with wit or intelligent conversation. Enough accounts claiming her to have been fascinating and beautiful exist for there to be some truth in the stories. In Henri’s eyes, she certainly remained the striking young woman of his first tournament.

Stories of Diane de Poitiers’ beauty secrets abound: that she bathed in crushed gold, or the milk of pregnant animals; used sorcery and magic potions—and many more. There is no evidence that Diane practiced sorcery (unlike Catherine) and no one is mentioned in contemporary writings as having worked for her in that capacity. Diane’s only beauty aids were a powder made of musk and rosewater and a paste used against wrinkles that she mixed herself, from the juice of a melon, crushed young barley, and an egg yolk mixed with ambergris.
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She applied the paste to her face like a mask. Whenever Diane was alone, she slept propped upright on deep pillows to avoid creasing her face.

Diane’s beauty regime was entirely natural and makes good sense even today. We know that young ladies of the time were advised against cosmetics because they wrinkled the skin at thirty and turned the teeth black. Indeed, some young women were poisoned by cosmetics. According to a popular beauty manual of the time, brides who wished to seduce their husbands were advised to bathe daily and keep themselves clean and tidy. They were also advised to boil a variety of pleasant scents in their rooms if they did not wash so often, and to douse their hair and clothes, gloves, collars, and hats with delicious perfumes. Ideally, they brushed their teeth once a week with a mixture of a powder of crushed red coral, “dragon’s blood,” tartar of white wine, cuttlefish bones, peach stones, and cinnamon. A manual by the king’s surgeon, Ambroise Paré, mentions teeth made from bone and ivory that he attached
to the real ones alongside with gold thread. (The manual does not relate whether this technique actually works.) As for the hands, they were treated with a mixture of mustard, honey, and almonds, or lemon and sugar. Hair extensions were commonplace: poor women would often bring their children to have their hair cut off and sold to a grand lady.

D
ESPITE all the legal precautions taken by the king, Henri knew that Diane’s acquisition of Chenonceau might one day be questioned, but from 1548, Anet was truly her home in perpetuity. Anet lies approximately fifty miles west of Paris in a valley between the rivers Eure and Vesgre, near the towns of Evreux, Dreux, and Mantes. The easiest way to reach Anet from Paris was by boat on the Seine. The journey by road took two days and required a minimum of fourteen horses.

Less than two hours’ gallop from Blois or Amboise, Anet is the perfect
château de chasse
, or hunting lodge. Originally called Ennet, an abbreviation
of the name of a tree growing by the river, it later became Annet, and finally Anet. The first château d’Anet, built in the tenth century, was transformed into a fortress by Charles II the Bad, king of Navarre in the mid-fourteenth century. A hundred years later, Anet was given to Pierre de Brézé, grandfather of Louis, for his help in chasing the English out of Normandy. The Brézé family enlarged the fortress haphazardly in every direction, without any regard to symmetry. Between 1545 and 1547, Diane acquired considerable land around Anet to enlarge the estate. She drained marshes, replaced much of the soil, and built the new château, which became known as one of the most perfect examples of French Renaissance architecture. Philibert de l’Orme began work at Anet in 1543 and carried on for the next ten years. Throughout the reconstruction, despite the dust and noise, Diane and Henri continued to stay at Anet. The bulk of the work was done from April to November 1548, when Diane joined the king on a lengthy “progress” of his kingdom. By the end of the year, the central block had a roof.

Although there were still finishing touches to complete, the château was finished by 1553. For the enormous task of remodeling Anet, Philibert de l’Orme was given a free hand by his illustrious patroness, provided he incorporated any alterations carried out by Louis de Brézé during his lifetime. The whole edifice was originally meant to be seen as a monument to Louis by his eternally grieving widow. This plan placed too great a restriction on the design and was later abandoned, but in a niche at the bottom of the main grand, sweeping staircase, Diane placed an imposing statue of Louis de Brézé.

Much of the work was carried out in black and white French marble, and the chimneypieces and other decorations were to be made in
the shape of tombs. Diane was careful to use local materials as much as possible and not to shop abroad. Most of the stone and marble came from Rouen and Paris, sent to Anet by barge up the Seine and then on the Eure to the “port of Anet.” Diane’s passion was for interior decoration, and she supervised every detail. From Ferrara in Italy she commissioned antique statues, as well as fine leather—natural and dyed, some even embossed—to cover the walls. Countless contracts exist for the decorations and for marble, porphyry, pictures, and books.

Ultimately, Anet was a temple to the goddess Diana, a temple Diane erected to herself. It is said no man praises us unless we first praise ourselves. At Anet, Diane set out to glorify herself. She succeeded by blending the persona and virtues of the goddess Diana with her own. Henri paid for much of the work, and Anet was regarded as a royal residence. But there was never any doubt that it was the home of the duchesse de Valentinois. Just as Fontainebleau had been his father’s masterpiece, Anet would be Henri and Diane’s.

Although François I was responsible for bringing the Renaissance to his country, Diane must be given some of the credit for the development of the
French
Renaissance. She had long realized that Henri did
not have the same passionate interest in the arts as his father, and would never become a major patron. But François I’s School of Fontainebleau had been an extraordinary achievement, which she felt Henri II should continue. In his name, she decided to found the School of Anet, exclusively for young
French
craftsmen and artists, which the king could partly fund through her. Students at the school were encouraged to develop their own ideas for works of art with which to fill the château. At the time of Louis de Brézé’s death, Diane had found the seventeen-year-old sculptor Jean Goujon working as a stonemason in Rouen.
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His brilliant monument for the Grand Sénéchal in the cathedral there had brought him fame, and he came to teach at the school at Anet, where he created several superb portraits of the châtelaine as the goddess of the chase.

Philibert de l’Orme, Diane’s architect for Anet, had been an eighteen-year-old prodigy in Rome, where he had three hundred men working under his direction, and had gone on to build Fontainebleau for François I. As all the great and renowned artists of the day taught or worked at Anet—Pierre Lescot, François Clouet, Primaticcio, Pierre Bontemps, Jean Goujon, Jean Cousin, the cabinetmaker François Scibec de Carpi, among others—the talented young students had the best possible masters. Nor were the lesser arts and crafts neglected. Diane discovered that bookbinding, enameling, and pottery seemed to appeal more to Henri’s refined but less intellectual tastes.

Anet had featured strongly in Henri’s life since his youth. It was there that he recuperated from his Spanish ordeal, and there that his marriage was negotiated. Military campaigns were planned at Anet, and it was to Anet that Henri ran when his father lay dying and he feared for the future. Anet was a sanctuary and a temple, and yet it was also a home. The royal children loved to be at Anet, and Henri broke with convention by rushing there immediately after the birth of his son Charles. There is a record of the dauphin and Mary Stuart being there with the other children for a long stay in November 1550, of which the boy writes: “was with my king and my cousin of Valentinois and have to say what pleasure we had staying at Ennet … the beautiful house, wonderful gardens, galleries, aviaries and many other glorious and good things. I have never slept better than in the big bed in the king’s room.”

In 1553, the English ambassador wrote: “I left for the court which was at Anet, admirable and sumptuous mansion belonging to Madame de Valentinois, three leagues from Poissy; after my audience with the king, Madame de Valentinois arranged for me to have a meal in one of the galleries and then I saw all the wonders of the house which were so grand and so princely that I have never seen anything like it.”