Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 5, 2008

Catherine de' Medici's building projects included the Valois chapel at Saint-Denis, the Tuileries Palace, and the Hôtel de la Reine in Paris, and extensions to the château, near Blois. Born in 1519 in Florence to an Italian father and a French mother, at the age of fourteen, she left Italy and married Henry, the second son of Francis I and Queen Claude of France. King Francis set his daughter-in-law an example of kingship and artistic patronage that she never forgot. She witnessed his huge architectural schemes at Chambord and Fontainebleau. Upon Henry's death in 1559, Catherine found herself the effective ruler of France. Over the next three decades, she launched a series of costly building projects aimed at enhancing the grandeur of the monarchy. Catherine loved to supervise each project personally. Though she spent colossal sums on the building and embellishment of monuments and palaces, little remains of Catherine's investment today: one Doric column, a few fragments in the corner of the Tuileries gardens, an empty tomb at Saint Denis. The sculptures she commissioned for the Valois chapel are lost, or scattered, often damaged or incomplete, in museums and churches. Catherine de' Medici's reputation as a sponsor of buildings rests instead on the designs and treatises of her architects. These testify to the vitality of French architecture under her patronage. (more...)

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