Hôtel du 16e siècle
MonumentHidden Treasure
À Restigné, cet hôtel particulier du XVIe siècle séduit par sa tour polygonale à vis de pierre et son extraordinaire épi de faîtage sculpté : un personnage grotesque juché sur deux taureaux, véritable curiosité de la Renaissance tourangelle.
© Wikimedia Commons
History
Nestling in the heart of Restigné, a wine-growing village in the Bourgueil region of Indre-et-Loire, this town house is one of the most endearing examples of Renaissance civil architecture in rural Touraine. Far from the sumptuousness of the great residences of the Loire region, it embodies the measured elegance typical of the houses of provincial nobles, where decorative ambition is expressed with discernment in the details rather than in the ostentation of the volumes. What immediately sets the building apart is the wealth of sculpted ornamentation. The north facade, pierced with sculpted gable dormers, reveals the hand of craftsmen who mastered the codes of the nascent French Renaissance. But it is undoubtedly the finial on the west gable that catches the eye: a grotesque figure, a fanciful character seated on two bulls, manifesting the iconographic humour so dear to the sculptors of the 16th century. This decorative fantasy, rare in the Touraine countryside, is enough to make the building an architectural curiosity in its own right. The mansion is divided into two construction phases, as can be seen in the silhouette of the building itself: the 16th-century main building, with its ground floor and attic space, sits alongside an 18th-century wing added at right angles, which masks the original eastern facade. This temporal stratification, common in French domestic architecture, gives the building a composite and lively character, reflecting the successive adaptations to the needs of its inhabitants. The polygonal tower adjoining the south facade houses a stone spiral staircase - a typical feature of Renaissance homes - which links the levels with functional elegance. Visitors with an eye for architecture will appreciate the coherence of a modest but meticulous architectural programme, in which each element fulfils both a structural and a decorative role. Listed as a Historic Monument since 1962, the building enjoys official recognition that underlines the heritage value of this type of residence, which is often overlooked in favour of more spectacular châteaux.
Architecture
The Restigné town house illustrates the vocabulary of the French Renaissance in its provincial variation: a rectangular main building with a single storey over a ground floor, crowned by an inhabited roof space lit from the north by two dormer windows with sculpted gables. These dormers, adorned with mouldings and sculpted motifs typical of the Renaissance repertoire, are one of the most striking features of the north facade. The masonry, probably made of tuffeau - the white stone that is emblematic of the Loire Valley, soft to work with and ideal for sculpture - gives the whole building that golden luminosity that is so characteristic of buildings in the Touraine region. The south facade is organised around an above-ground polygonal tower, an architectural feature that is both functional and ostentatious, and contains a stone spiral staircase serving the different levels. This type of staircase-tower, a legacy of the late Middle Ages that was perpetuated in the early Renaissance, was common in domestic architecture in the Loire during this period. The eighteenth-century wing, added at right angles to the east, adopts a more sober architectural style in the classical tradition, and today conceals the eastern facade of the original building. The most distinctive feature of the building is undoubtedly the finial on the west gable: a sculpture depicting a grotesque figure sitting on two bulls. These roof finials, often in glazed terracotta or sculpted stone, were common in 16th-century civil architecture, but their iconographic programme is rarely so elaborate. The grotesque figure and the bulls refer to a symbolic and humorous register characteristic of the Mannerist Renaissance, oscillating between decorative fantasy and allegorical meaning.
Related Figures
Commanditaire anonyme de 1555 — notable local, vraisemblablement officier ou marchand tourangeauHenri II — roi de France sous le règne duquel fut édifiée la demeure (1547-1559)Sculpteur anonyme des lucarnes et de l'épi de faîtage — artisan de talent formé aux ateliers de la LoirePropriétaire inconnu du XVIIIe siècle — commanditaire de l'aile classique en retour d'équerreAndré Malraux — ministre des Affaires culturelles sous lequel fut prononcée l'inscription MH en 1962
