page_title: Gardens of the French Renaissance
section_title: Gardens of Fontainebleau
hierarchical_section_title: Gardens of the French Renaissance / History / Gardens of Fontainebleau
caption_attribution_description: Fontaine de Diane
context_page_description: The Gardens of the French Renaissance is a garden style, initially inspired by the Italian Renaissance garden, which evolved later into the grander and more formal jardin à la française during the reign of Louis XIV, by the middle of the 17th century.
  In 1495, King Charles VIII and his nobles brought the Renaissance style back to France after their war campaign in Italy. They reached their peak in the gardens of the royal Château de Fontainebleau, Château d'Amboise, Château de Blois, and Château de Chenonceau.
  French Renaissance gardens were characterized by symmetrical and geometric planting beds or parterres, plants in pots, paths of gravel and sand, terraces, stairways and ramps, moving water in the form of canals, cascades and monumental fountains, and extensive use of artificial grottoes, labyrinths, and statues of mythological figures. They became an extension of the châteaux that they surrounded, and were designed to illustrate the Renaissance ideals of measure and proportion, and to remind viewers of the virtues of Ancient Rome.
context_section_description: The Gardens of the Château de Fontainebleau, located in a forest which had been the hunting preserve of the Capetian Kings of France, were created by Francis I beginning in 1528.  The garden featured fountains, parterres, a forest of pine trees brought from Provence and the first artificial grotto in France in 1541.  Catherine de' Medici ordered copies in bronze of the statues which decorated the Cortile del Belvedere in Rome.  A statue of Hercules in repose by Michelangelo decorated the garden of the lake. In 1594 Henry IV added a small island in the lake connected to the court of fountains by a bridge.
caption: Fountain of Diana, in the gardens of the Château de Fontainebleau.
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